Yuyutsu,

I appreciate the poetic defence of older methods, but it raises an unavoidable question: At what point, exactly, did humanity lose its ability to reflect?

Was it the moment we moved past punch cards? The rise of the internet? Email? Smartphones? Or was it, perhaps coincidentally, around the time you reached the age where everything started feeling too fast?

It’s striking how often people draw the line of "meaningful civilisation" just after they’ve fully come of age - as if reflection and wisdom peaked the moment they got comfortable.

If there’s a lesson in what mhaze said, it’s not that modern tools are inherently corrosive - it’s that every generation romanticises the pace of its own formative years, and treats what comes after as decline.

That, too, is a form of nostalgia - not insight.