I was listening at an excellent podcast episode from “99% Invisible”, about how the US flag got designed and crafted. It happens to be that there is an actual surviving specimen of the Star Spangled Banner (not our anthem, but an actual flag), which is now housed at the Smithsonian.

An object like this, is part of a nation’s history. It represents all the events that happened around it and that it was a witness of, and it makes us wonder about the people that came before us and that crossed its path.

It made me think, with all the technology advances, how will such a human thing of saving a keepsake to remind us about something of importance will change? This flag was made with the technology available at the moment. Fabric, needle, and thread.

How will mementos from the future look like?

I am already accustomed with having a copy of the first Mac, or the Motorola “brick”, but I still cannot bring my head around on how will we look back in time to a piece of code, a 3D printed object, or an NFT minted decades ago.

Perhaps our human frame of mind requires an upgrade.

That things are speeding up is nothing new for anyone, but the rate of change is increasing quite dramatically.

In a previous post, I described the process that I use to publish on this newsletter, and if you may remember, I try to keep a backlog of articles, because most of the time I get busy with projects and work or family-related things that would prevent me to publish on a daily basis. With some articles that I have written beforehand, I can always take one and publish it if needed, I don’t need to write them on the spot.

What this means is that I have some articles that have been written a few weeks in the past. Some of them, maybe even a couple of months, but never more than that.

This is not a scientific measure by any means, but since I started publishing this newsletter, it has already happened to me twice, that I had to go back and edit an article before publishing it to keep it current because there were events that happened.

Even though this is an anecdotal reference, it is astonishing to me that something like this could happen twice in such a short time.

“May you live in interesting times” says a Chinese proverb.