The Perfect Future was in the Past we left behind

I was living in Mumbai travelling on the local train trying to make it to my lectures on time, my cellphone, the ever dependable and unbreakable Nokia 3310 kept me in check. I was in contact with my friends, I was entertained with the limited selection of games and in the later models I had good selection of radio.
I had multiple iterations of the Symbian phone until NgageQD which allowed me to game, watch videos and listen to music in a convenient way.
All these activities were part of my day to day life which was spent in splendid company of friends exploring the real world.

How did we get in this precarious scenario of preferring Technology over human contact?

The answer to this lies in the advent of social media and targeted advertisement that allowed Big Tech companies to make unprecedented amount of money by exploiting the very users they pretended to care for and built their products around.
As soon as the companies realized that the longer the world spent its time on the internet, the more it is to learn and exploit them for revenue. The influx of revenue brought in the concept of growth mindset.
How can we have more of this revenue and quickly?
The answer was always there and we kept presenting them with more opportunities for them to exploit our attention. It was only natural for the brilliant minds of the Silicon Valley figure out that the greatest innovation is not in building great products but in building products that keep the great minds engaged indefinitely.
Thus, the inventively designed phones of the past like Sony Walkman, Motorola Razr, Nokia NGage gave way to some of the glass bricks we see today.
A self reflective piece of glass that shows the entire world in a nice OLED screen, all the while losing the essence of the human who is using it. The irony is, I keep going back to the old days where my usage was and to great extent is limited to reminders, texts, calls and music.

Why am I raising such questions and bringing the nostalgia into this post?

The new wave of innovative smartphone designs, the return of the early 2000s fashion and my rekindled love for the Nu-Metal, Alternative & Pop Rock is making me rethink my relationship with Technology again.
Being from the lucky generation that actually remembers the time spent with limited technology to the present times that are drowning in the sea of information, I actually have the option to choose the kind of technology that aligns with me. The latest generation Z is left with no choice but to manage with the information overload and a life overrun by technology.
It feels like we are coming a full circle with the technology. If we ignore the mess that is the half baked LLM loosely threatening to take over our lives, there seems to be healthy competition brewing in the Tech world when it comes to new hardware. It is promising to take us back to the time where devices were unique, user preference actually mattered and customization was not just for nerds and geeks but part of everyday life and everyday use of technology.
For e.g. The new smartphones built by companies like Nothing, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Huawei and even Samsung raise intrigue and give users the choice to get devices that may feel their own. The computers are fun again, likes of Asus, Razer, Framework, System76 and others are making some brilliant products that make users want to try their hands on new hardware and tweak it.
It feels like there is a movement brewing to make tech fun again and the usual big boys of tech have decent competition for the first time in decade. This movement seems to be taking me back to the old days of building PC and PC gaming, all the while tinkering with the devices I use so it feels unique to me.
It is safe to say, what is old is new again and I welcome it with open arms.

Where will the Future take us?

If I am imagining things the right way, the path to the future is exactly where we left the past.
The ideal path to get to the future we all deserve will be to go back to the fork in the road in the past where we took the wrong turn towards the present.
Rekindling my tryst with the individuality that allowed me to explore the tech scene when I was growing up, peaked my interest and allowed me to dive deep into the world of software engineering, I feel like I am tugging along the string that I let go in the past.
After 15 years in the software industry, I felt there was nothing interesting to do anymore and was looking to pivot to the newly formed roles that delve into Product Marketing or Developer Relations. As I dug deeper into the rabbit hole of evolving tech and its origin, the more I found myself going back to the roots and that is where I feel I can restart again with added sense of enthusiasm and blend it with emerging technologies. May be and just may be I will give AI a twirl, I know the younger me would definitely be curious to know how well I can use AI to make stuff for myself.
Technology is beautiful when it allows the individuals to innovate and express their true selves rather than letting them drown in the ever increasing pressures of growth for growth sake.

The future is bright if it is built on values of the glorious times we all seemed to have forgotten.
Here’s hoping we take back the charge.