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REFLECTIONS
The Value of Going Back to Go Forward
I write today from a cafe on my college campus. I haven’t sat in this chair or in this square for 23 years. I was a member of the Class of 2000. Our twenty-year reunion was, well…yep, 2020. It went down with the ship, like countless graduation ceremonies, proms, events — and businesses and marriages. In the storm of it all, a college reunion wasn’t a cancellation to complain about. Our class secretary did her best to rally the troops online, so we could see the faces, read the names, and raise a glass from a safe distance. It was a valiant effort to put us all in the mind space of who we were to one another two decades ago. Being here today, I am reminded that the mind space is much easier and more meaningful when you can return to the physical space.
For the last 20 years, and for countless before I am sure, our focus has been squarely on the future — “our” meaning you and me, us, society, the collective we. We are living through the largest technological revolution since the coal-fired steam engine kicked off the Industrial Revolution. To sell that technology so fast and furiously, we were first sold a very sexy story that tech equals the future. That narrative has re-pointed our collective focus on all that will come. Eyes on the road ahead. What has atrophied in that process is our understanding of the value of the past, of…
