Are you into retro?
Retro anything...
Fashion, food tastes, furnishings -- you name it.
Retro seems always to be in style -- in fact, it's often haute couture -- the highest.
Yet some retro is viewed as merely old, tired and worn out, and we slavishly pursue the new in denial of what was. In fact, some retro isn't even retro....
Technology has clearly gone that route, as analysts pretend that Amazon isn't a store and that Facebook has created a new human trait called "sharing."
Point being, it's not retro thinking to understand what is and what isn't actually worn out and old -- it's just plain old smart.
Steve Jobs always understood that better than anyone -- while others sold "high tech" and its inherent complications, he launched the revolution by addressing the human consumer in all of us and then sold colors and design. When others obsessed over the technical features of what would be called smartphones and made them complicated small clones of computers, he launched that revolution by simply saying "hello"... and as others layered tools upon tools -- stylus to pad for one -- Jobs said, "So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world. We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with -- born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers."
I was reminded of this as I read about the resurgence of propeller planes in commercial travel. Turboprops to be exact.
Orders for turboprop commercial planes are helping hurting manufacturers, creating jobs and otherwise helping the economy.
And even more, it will give new opportunity for local and regional travel, bringing with it all the added economic benefits that come along with travelers.
Read some of the analysis here:
The critical story, of course, is that jet travel proved to be untenable. Expensive, uncomfortable for what it was, inefficient -- you get the picture. The beauty is that instead of being locked into one version of a story and hence, one solution, the smart planners looked elsewhere, improved on the old without trashing it, and there you have it.
Kind of reminds me of Amazon and Google looking at brick and mortar retail outlets and the proliferation of food carts and live concerts.
The smartest folks look back, look forward and look up and down.
They don't throw the baby out with the bathwater or automatically assume that all that preceded them was old, used up and bad.
Reminds me of what one of my favorite sources once wrote:
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
It's amazing how much we all learn in seven years. As much as things change and as much new as there is -- somehow there is always room to learn from what was - and it seems to me that the smartest money always does.
So the next time you wear "retro" clothing or "retro" glasses, eat "retro" food or carry a "retro" bag -- take a moment....
What do you think?