The Wayback Machine

Someone has flipped the switch and attempted to activate the Wayback Machine.

It's rather freaky.

And it's not just in one area of my life.

The thing is, it is impossible to jump in the machine and go back to where we were before. It's really hard for me to understand why anyone would even want to anyway. Even though I sometimes look wistfully at some parts of my life and might want to spend a moment there again or re-live an experience ... I have moved on from there. The world has moved on from there. And because of that, nothing will never ever be the same again. And that's OK! I have learned - repeatedly - that when you try to go back, you can't help but view that time, those people and those events through the filter of all that has happened since.

It does not work.

When you're focused on going backward, to another time and place, you are not fully in the present. And you're certainly not looking ahead. Pining for the days of yore, the way it used to be, the old days ... takes away from now, the way it could be and the days to come.

A lot of lessons come from "back there," for certain. I do not discount that. We should study history so we might learn from it. Pass on the stories to the next generation. Enrich the experience of the current context. Absolutely.

Did you know there really and truly IS a Wayback Machine? I first learned of this years ago, when my work on Web projects jumped to another level. Go ahead and check out that link. You can find most any Web site as far back as it's archived. More than 150 billion pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Kind of incredible, really. And sometimes it's nice to know you can go there, visit and say, "I remember when."

However, I think the whole idea that you really can never go back is well illustrated with this Internet Archive/Wayback Machine: The intervening years and events will always impact those old archived pages and how you view them.

There were some good times back there. Some not-so-great times, too. I'm not going back. I much prefer to be in the present and to ponder the possible.

How about you?