I remember when getting formatted text output meant manually inserting codes in text and then printing the document out to see the result. ‘WYSIWYG’ text processing made things much easier and faster. Some people probably spent the time saved trying out endless garish font combinations that were the bane of novice composition. People can now spend time making pictures as opposed to creating or tweaking content. Becoming consumerized and commoditized is a sign of Poser’s success. The pioneers are always going to feel a sense of superiority over the consumers, like the mountain men dissing the dudes who, surprise, actually didn’t want to sleep on the ground and crap in a hole.

“Something got lost along the way. Maybe it was the adventure of something new.”

I think that nostalgia is pretty common, no matter what the subject. I’ve heard any number of people who lived through WWII say that in a way, it was the greatest time in their lives. I imagine part of it is the tendency to view the past through rose colored glasses. Still, there’s undoubtedly something different about a new thing while it’s still confined to a relatively small group – there’s a sense of excitement and camaraderie that’s bound to dissipate as things become bigger. The Antonia/WM folks were certainly excited so it’s probably possible to recreate that some of that feeling in new projects. I think that you really can’t go home though. 3D or computing in general is never going to seem as it was in infancy – at least not to us gray beards. We have seen so much technology that it’s hard to be really amazed any more. We’d likely see even some super robot as just a really smart computer. It would take something entirely new like Star Trek’s transporter or holodeck to really be amazing I think.

Wolf, much as I agree regarding ‘group think,’ or as I call it, the seeming hive mindedness of the current generation, I think that it is a separate issue. The more fundamental thing you allude to in speaking of ‘automation and prefabrication,’ is as old as history. People not being able to use a pay phone? What would happen if automobiles and food stores vanished – how many people would know how to hunt, cultivate or saddle a horse if one were available – for that matter, how many people don’t know how to drive a standard transmission vehicle? You could easily do a funny video showing people under 40 or so trying to use a rotary dial phone. A technology that doesn’t become more automated and prefabricated is probably one that didn’t survive. Our embrace of technology has certainly left us vulnerable, to a disturbing degree, to natural or manmade disasters. That trend probably goes all the way back to when we became dependent on agriculture though.

Strangely, the penguin seems to have dropped this egg and left it for us to incubate. Probably a passing flash of nostalgia or a bad taco. 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken