Why The Future Looks Increasingly Like The Past š¼
Uber just reinvented the bus, Grab just reinvented the taxi, live streaming just reinvented broadcast TV, and streamers just reinvented cable bundles - but why?
When you were a kid and you pictured the future, what did it look like to you? Mine was a combination of Back To The Future II, Star Trek and The Last Starfighter. There were definitely a lot more hoverboards, flying cars and doors that went 'whoosh' when you stepped through them than I currently encounter. In fact, despite the onslaught of AI I would argue the future is looking less and less futuristic and more and more nostalgic, but why?.
In the last few months some of the world's most innovative companies have announced brand new innovations that seem eerily familiar. Let's take Uber who announced, on 14 May 2025, Route Share, a 'more affordable, more predictable commute'. And how can Uber deliver on this promise? I'll let them explain...
Route Share is a new, budget-friendly ride option from Uber designed for everyday commuters. By sharing a ride with up to two other passengers along busy corridors, riders can enjoy a reliable ride at a significantly lower cost than UberX.
Route Share offers consistent and frequent pickup options along direct routes during morning and evening commute hours (6-10 am and 4-8 pm local time Monday through Friday). With pickups every 20 minutes along busy corridors during weekday commute hours youāll get the predictability and comfort of Uber, for even less (up to 50% cheaper than UberX). At initial launch, Route Share will be available in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, and Baltimore, with more cities to come.
It's a bus. Uber just invented the fucking bus!
Closer to my home in Singapore our version of Uber (invented in Malaysia to be fair), is Grab who, on 2 July 2025 announced GrabCab, a revolutionary new service comprised of Grab branded cars that can be booked in advance or flagged down on the street, operated by drivers who 'have undergone a rigorous screening process focused on safety, professionalism, and service standards' - as opposed to their private hire drivers I presume? Anyway...
It's a taxi. Grab just invented the fucking taxi!!
Moving on, I was researching the subject of live streaming for a client recently and discovered that more and more people are turning to live streaming when they donāt know what to watch and don't want the burden of having to make a choice. This is being heralded by marketers and agencies as a total paradigm shift in viewer behaviours and I hate to be the one to tell them this but...
It's TV. Live streaming is just fucking broadcast television!!!
Couple this groundbreaking development with the bundling of streaming services into something that looks, sounds and smells an awful lot like the cable packages of days gone by and you might be able to spot a pattern forming.
The Medium Is The Message
But it's not just tech, culture appears to be going backwards too, with nostalgia emerging as one of the most potent forces on the Internet, driving demand for vinyl, cassettes and CDs, VHSs and DVDs, analog and early 2000s digital cameras.
Purveyors of pop culture are capitalising on this trend with endless reboots, remakes and sequels. Just this year we have been treated to remakes of Superman, Naked Gun, The Toxic Avenger, Frankenstein, The Running Man and Anaconda. We've got sequels to Freaky Friday, The Conjouring, Downton Abbey, Spinal Tap, Black Phone, Mortal Kombat, Now You See Me, Wicked, Zootopia, Five Nights At Freddy's and Avatar. And then there's the spin-offs of Tron, Predator and Knives Out - new characters and stories set in the same 'cinematic universe'. Now, that's just Hollywood and there's a whole world of films and filmmakers out there but most of them won't make it to your local cineplex. (There's at least another eight Marvel films coming this year but, as the kids, say, I can't even...).
Our celebrities too are rehashing the past, arguably to detrimental effect - I'm not sure that Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter's 1950s pin-up profiles are progressing the role of women in pop-culture a great deal. (C'mon, is it even a Substack article if there's no mention of Sabrina Carpenter!).
So, having diagnosed the disease, what's the cause?
First, the Internet - the great digital archive of all our childhoods that enables us to dial up any memory at a moment's notice. You can only search for something if you know what you're looking for, which is why we search for the same old songs and clips from TV shows we love - in fact it's one of the biggest drivers of revenue for the IP holders of āFriendsā or ā30 Rockā or āOnly Fools and Horsesā. In a world changing so fast it can be unrecognisable from one year to the next (we only got access to generative AI in 2022 and it's already changing education, work, culture, democracy), we seek comfort in the familiar and our media reflects that back at us.
Then there's AI, the perpetual regurgitation machine that creates nothing but remembers and rehashes everything. AI is not concerned with insight, originality or uniqueness. It is concerned only with what works based on previous data. It ventures nothing new but attempts to offer guaranteed results based on previous successes and in so doing will exhaust trends almost instantaneously through repetition.
The tech bros and advertisers will gleefully blame humans. They will claim we are getting stupider and that our attention spans are getting shorter and that's one way to read the data. Another way is that we are becoming bored with their slop, less engaged and more discerning. That we are turning back to books, CDs and DVDs to engage more deeply with longer formats in a mode they cannot track. However they, like AI, are unlikely to ask an actual human and will instead misinterpret the data until no one is left to engage with their slop. We can but hope, in the meantime support real work by real humans and donāt give your attention (and data) away to the broligarchy so easily.
To Do List
My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do this week:
āWith the help of AI, the pace of corporate tyranny has only accelerated. Any freedoms we used to enjoy, from surveillance and bureaucrats dictating every term of our existence, are rapidly disappearing. The process has become so rapid and all-encompassing that itās clouding our understanding not only of whatās possible, but whatās human.ā
āThatās just one quote of dozens I could pick from this absolute must-read Unherd column by āpunk philosopherā
entitled: Our Future Is AI Serfdom.Substacker
is asking far more potent questions about AI than I in her recent post on the role of AI in killing peopleā¦ which it is currently doingā¦ right nowā¦ whilst you read thisā¦
Honestly, Iāve read so much good writing lately and this is another stella post I came across by āBroligarchyā author and pro-human business consultant Aya Jaff entitled āNo, UBI isnāt a solution to AI killing jobsā
And if you need cheering up after all that may I draw your attention to these glorious, largely phoneless (and yes, nostalgicš«¢) scenes of Gen X going nuts for Oasis at Wembley and demonstrating the value of being present and together (the reaction of the woman who turns around to watch the crowd below her is priceless!). This is why we go to gigs, plays, cinemas and clubs, to share in experiences that bind us together. Is it my imagination, or have we finally found something worth living for? Nx