Memories of the Past, Cyberpunk Nostalgia, and AI Slop

A self-indulgent weekend divergence from the usual Vektor memory business content. Consider what happens when you give a developer two days off, unlimited internet archive access, and too many ideas crammed into one article."

Writing this article began organically. Which is a funny thing to even have to say in 2026.

What does organic even mean now? I don't care, man; I just want to be free to express myself, man.

I did not write this on a mechanical typewriter.

I wrote it on a PC with my stubby index fingers running Windows software that, miraculously, does not blue screen every ten minutes anymore. It only took Microsoft thirty years to pull that off.

To the left sits an analog record player with some secondhand Yamaha bookshelf speakers I found at a charity shop; to the right of me sits a modern dark wood-paneled Zen PC case, a processor that would have occupied an entire room thirty years ago, and a GPU that can synthesize gargantuan piles of AI slop or brilliant code in roughly ten seconds flat.

And yet, for all that raw power, it still comes down to an algorithm. It always has.

The Sharper Image and the Death of Wonder

When I was a kid I used to walk into The Sharper Image store at Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and just stand there. Looking at technology I could not afford while the staff watched me carefully to make sure I did not break anything.

I also grabbed some brightly colored rock salt candy; I loved that stuff, some core memories right there.