A Truly New New (Not 'Old Cool')

I was thinking about "yesterday's tomorrows" and the different ways that we can look at past, present, and future. Given that we have such short attention spans because of the firehose of information, we forget that we did something in the past already and somehow it seems new to us. 

I had been reading and watching some videos about the Metaverse--essentially the convergence between the virtual and the real world (which we have been talking about since the 90s--and then Second Life in the aughts). For me, it's always a question of how I can use a new technology in interesting ways for artistic purposes or for social commentary, like Andy Warhol used advertisements and mundane photos in newspapers. Very often it involves a shoe-horning process and I always question why I'm doing it and whether it has any relevance to the original idea. New technologies can give us new ideas, but I think for any creative person, or even someone that's in business, you really have to think about these things before jumping on the bandwagon.

I'm reminded of the Seapunk Twitter meme back in the 10s which was a retro 90s/New Age/Windows 95 vibe. It's interesting how younger generations find cool in The Old. I did it when I became fascinated with a trove of family photographs from the 1920s through the 1960s. That 40-year period is probably traveling into the future, such that 20s-60s becomes 40s-80s or 70s-10s. You eventually realize that for people that actually lived in those decades they aren't necessarily nostalgic for them. My father wasn't nostalgic for his time in Belgium in 1943, but it was Old Cool for me. We need to find things that are truly new to all generations where everybody could say,"Wow, that's really an advancement." I had this feeling last weekend when I saw my first drone show done as a holiday display. I was thinking the future arrived, then realized this kind of thing has been done for 5 years now. For someone in the 2040s, this would be Old Cool.

6/22/2021 (Edited)