Tech Memento Mori
Reflecting on tech days past
“Sic transit gloria. Glory Fades. I’m Max Fisher” - Max Fischer introduces himself to his teacher in the film Rushmore, written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson.
Many years ago when I was working at Twitter, I found an old AOL postcard that proudly announced AOL’s big new feature for the year: color fonts in email! You too could now change font colors in your favorite email composer!
Reading this in the 2010s I found this quite amusing. How could there be so much fanfare over this small change? And yet, as time passed, I felt a bit sad for the team working on this feature while the ultimate business was doomed to irrelevance: Was this the best thing they could have been working on? If they’d worked on something else, would it have made a difference? And more selfishly and reflectively, was I working on the equivalent of “color fonts in email”?
Of course the answer was “yes” – I was working on a version of “color fonts in email.” Most of the projects I worked on that year are now gone: in some cases the features evolved and took on lives of their own. In most other cases, the features or products have been deprecated or faded away. A lot of the products I worked on were important when we were working on them; they helped users, they had good reasons for being and I still am proud of those launches. But even then, they are all blips in the longer arc of time.
Tomorrow is the Mexican Day of the Dead so I’m in a reflective mood. For those that don’t know, Día de los Muertos is a “holiday [that] involves family and friends gathering to pay respects and to remember friends and family members who have died. These celebrations can take a humorous tone, as celebrants remember funny events and anecdotes about the departed.”
If you haven’t participated in it, you might have seen some of the famous drawings associated with it, e.g., these famous skeleton etchings by Don Lupe Posadas:
I love Día de los Muertos because it is a great time to reflect on time and impermanence. My family put out our ofrenda this weekend with pictures of friends and family that have passed away. As the candles around the photographs burn at night, it helps us remember those without whom we would (literally) not be here today.
Reflecting on impermanence is one of the best ways I know of grounding myself in the present moment and being grateful. As the Buddha famously said, “of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.”
There is a Latin phrase called “memento mori” which is apt:
The Latin phrase memento mori literally means, "Remember that you must die." The phrase has its origins in ancient Rome, where it is believed that slaves accompanying generals on victory parades whispered the words as a reminder of their commander’s mortality, to prevent them from being consumed by hubris (excessive pride and self-confidence). The concept has become a familiar trope in the visual arts from the medieval period to the present.
In Christian contexts, the memento mori acquired a moralizing purpose, urging the faithful to turn away from fleeting earthly pleasures and focus instead on the afterlife.
Of course memento mori are everywhere around us.
Working in tech, I see the cycle of birth and death in turbo. Tech memento mori are reminders that nothing lasts forever and in most cases, not very long at all. Companies that are kings today, will be irrelevant in 5, 10, 20 years…
With Stable Diffusion and other AI generative models, we can see the frothiness in almost real-time: every day there is a new model or use case that feels transformative only to fade away and get replaced by an even better model the next week. It’s a veritable Cambrian explosion. And like the Cambrian explosion, 99.99% of it all is headed towards extinction.
When you’re in the middle of the change, however, it all feels very permanent. People’s identities get merged with their creations. Ego rears its head and defensiveness rises: “How dare you question the value, importance and permanence of this product I’m working on? Of course it’s here to stay!!”
As Twitter comes into the news (yet again), it is a personal memento mori. So many things that so many people worked so hard to build, either are already forgotten or will soon be washed away… It’s grounding to remember that this is the nature of it all. It was like this for AOL, Netscape, Silicon Graphics, IBM, Xerox, and all the hundreds and thousands of companies that came before, and all the tens, and hundreds of thousands of people that worked there and were proud of what they did.
Facebook had a “Little Red Book” that would be given to new employees when they first joined the company. It contained various ideas that Zuck found important. One quote inside stood as warning:
“If we don’t create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will. […] The internet is not a friendly place. Things that don’t stay relevant don’t even get the luxury of leaving ruins. They disappear.”
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Looking back, the most meaningful things I did at Twitter were any benefits I could provide to the people I worked with. Most everyone on my teams has now gone on to other companies. The real long-lived contributions were those things I did to improve their lives, and inspire new thoughts and behaviors. My actions were my only true possessions.
And so I leave you for another week.
Be mindful, be kind.
Sic transit gloria.
