Well… that’s obviously ridiculous.

Imagine arriving at work on Monday morning confidently. walking into the Monday morning’s executive meeting.

Imagine the CEO he smiles confidently and says, “Starting today, we’re removing every computer from the company.”

The room goes silent. He continues. “We’re bringing back typewriters.”

• No smartphones.
• No cloud computing.
• No AI.
• No digital communications.

After all…

The company performed perfectly well before any of those technologies existed. So why shouldn’t they work today? Everyone reading this immediately thinks the same thing.

“That’s ridiculous.”

Good. Because that’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

Now let me ask a different question. Why do we sometimes accept remarkably similar reasoning elsewhere? Now ask yourself one question.

Why is it ridiculous?

• Not because typewriters never worked. They did.
• Not because older technologies have no value. Many still do.

It sounds absurd because… The solution no longer fits the problem.

And that’s where the real question begins. Every generation inherits yesterday’s solutions. Leadership is deciding which still solve tomorrow’s problems.

• Sometimes we preserve history.
• Sometimes we preserve craftsmanship.
• Sometimes we preserve culture.
• Those are valuable.

But occasionally…

• Nostalgia
• Aesthetics
• Ideology

Or simple familiarity… begin competing with functionality, safety, resilience and evidence. That’s where architecture begins to matter.

We don’t literally replace computers with typewriters. But we sometimes allow nostalgia… to outweigh today’s knowledge about what a system actually requires.

Buildings. Restoring yesterday’s appearance while expecting them to satisfy today’s safety, accessibility, security and operational requirements.

Infrastructure. Selecting familiar technologies because they worked before instead of asking what combination best serves today’s system.

Business. Protecting legacy processes because they’re familiar rather than because they’re still the best architecture.

Government. Treating restoration of the past as though restoration itself were a strategy for the future.

And many other industries and organizations in the headlines of today

• Energy. Renewable Energy vs Fossil Fuels
• Technology. AI vs scalability
• Consumer products. Traditional vs Smart
• Military US Navy. Steam vs EMALS 

The examples change.

Every generation inherits the responsibility to preserve what still works, replace what no longer does, and distinguish carefully between the two.

• Old doesn’t mean obsolete.
• New doesn’t mean better.

The architectural question remains remarkably similar.

Does the solution still fit the problem?

The KeyMedia Question

The Observatory isn’t interested in asking: Should old technologies return? 

It asks: What happens when yesterday’s preferences begin shaping tomorrow’s decisions?

• History deserves preservation.
• Beauty deserves admiration.
• Craftsmanship deserves respect.

But none of them should quietly replace functionality, safety, evidence and long-term resilience as the primary design objective.

Perhaps leadership isn’t measured by how faithfully it recreates yesterday. Perhaps it’s measured by how responsibly it prepares for tomorrow.

Final Question

If your CEO replaced computers with typewriters because “that’s how we used to do it”…

Would you call it strategy?   Or nostalgia?

Mic drop. Walk away.