“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

I'm seeing this nostalgic sentiment a lot on forums these days, but it's not just about bringing back ye old usenet groups: you also need to bring back the way people thought back then. It's hard.

The sentiment I'm seeing is that, to avoid the rose-tinted bias of nostalgia, we default to believing there is nothing the past has to teach us, and everything is just better today.