The Half-Life of Wonder

I remember one day in 7th grade, there was a story going around in the car line outside the band hall that there was a senior at the high school who had just gotten a Razor flip phone. Obviously, this was a big potatoes rumor.

“Can’t those like connect to the internet?”

“They cost like $700.”

Just a bunch of hyped up 7th graders who were still under a landline-influenced-world, musing about the evolution of technology.

We’ve all got some version of this anecdote, pending you’re not 15 right now.

I remember another “woah-the-future-is-going-to-be-krrraaaazyy-moment”:

Me to another middle schooler, probably in social studies: “I heard in the future, we’ll have phones that you can see the other person’s face through while you talk to them.”

Yeah, no duh Andrew. This was all so novel to me though! I had a PS2, talked to my friends on an AT&T landline, had never sent a text message, and social networks were totally out of my field of vision. Most of what I experienced technologically was what most other people were experiencing too. There weren’t these massive leaps yet that could easily test our comprehension. A landline turned into a small flip phone in your pocket. That’s cool, but it’s not revolutionary.

But the Razor was this first thing that really felt like it was new territory.

Then Xbox live: “I can play COD in Amory, MS while someone else is in Irvine, CA?”

Then Facebook: “I can write messages one someone else’s wall and we can all have this social experience?”

Then the video iPod: “I can watch The Office on this thing?”

Then the iPhone.

Each of those leaps felt like something huge. “Things are different now” kind of huge.

There was wonder. People gasped when Steve Jobs came out on stage and unveiled a new product.

But, wonder is under siege.

When the Apple Vision Pro came out, if you're like me, you probably had some feeling like, "Wait, I thought this already existed or something…”

Since we’re now in this era where our relationships with technology are so baked in and wonder is hard to come by — and even the lowest common denominator of our current innovation is 1000× 10 years ago — we forget that it’s almost always been novel and revolutionary. When we get to a certain cruising altitude with what is widely available, we assume it’s always been there — or it’s always been that good. It hasn’t!

I used ChatGPT so much now for basic searching of information that it’s commonly lost on me how profound that experience is. Some of you reading this are thinking, “Yeahhh, ChatGPT… What’s the big deal?” I don’t blame you, especially if you don’t use it, but look at the two examples below and you tell me you don’t see the profundity.

Example 1: ChatGPT explains Heavy Industry in Space in the voice of Shaquille O’Neal. Read that whole thing.

Example 2: Google Search for Heavy Industry in Space. boooooo.

So.. the half-life of wonder.

Because of the leap from the Razor to ChatGPT and being this close to Mars — and not just ChatGPT, but now Sora — we’re in danger of loosing the wonder that these leaps should impress on us.

My friends, wonder is abundant in the progress and innovation of the world.

While I focus on technology in this essay, the real danger that becoming unimpressed by these leaps brings is that it trickles into the rest of life.

To not be in wonder at what humanity is up to with things like text to video generation (Sora) and launching reusable rockets into space, is to look at an old Sycamore tree and feel as if you’ve seen all Sycamore trees before.

Hope you find something wonderful today.