Imagine working with a software engineer who, in 2025, is fixated on data compression. Forty years ago, that made sense. Storage was expensive, so compression was always a consideration. But now… it would be anachronistic — a callback to an earlier time. Playing by the old rules. Meeting challenges that no longer exist.
AI, general-purpose robotics, and quantum computing have surrounded us with anachronisms like this. We work on old problems using old approaches from an old frame of reference.
These anachronisms are everywhere. It’s like walking through a walnut orchard after a wind storm. Some are easy and obvious lying on the ground. Others are profound, and will require of us a reordering of our world.
A simple example: Why do you care about elegant code?
Software engineers care deeply about writing elegant, reusable, maintainable code. We build abstractions, avoid repetition, and structure everything carefully because people — slow, fallible, limited people — are the ones who maintain these systems. Elegance is a hedge against future complexity.
But AI will not have the same constraints, which means we’re writing code in a way that solves a problem that doesn’t exist.
5 years from now if an AGI-level developer bot notices a glitch in how iPhone 27 renders your website. Instead of carefully patching the front end, it might just duplicate it, make the fix, and move on. Inefficient by human standards, trivial at machine scale.
Elegant code might become tomorrow’s data compression — once vital, then quietly sidelined as the world changes.
Identity & Cultural Rhythms
Modern life isn’t just built on technical practices; it’s built on time structures and roles that were designed for the industrial era.
The 9–5 workday. Weekends. Semesters. Linear careers that move from education to work to retirement. These rhythms gave us shared cultural time and stable identities.
“I’m a teacher.”
“I’m an engineer.”
“It’s the weekend.”
These weren’t just labels — they were anchors. They synchronized us with one another, letting us share time, purpose, and identity in predictable cycles.
AI and robotics quietly uncouple work from time and place. Work can happen asynchronously, across geographies and time zones, with fluid teams forming and dissolving around problems rather than roles. Collaboration no longer depends on shared schedules.
When that happens, the rhythms themselves start to wobble:
- Identity tied to professions gives way to more fluid, problem-based affiliations.
- Shared cultural schedules fracture — fewer synchronized breaks, less collective temporal identity.
- The linear life phases of school → work → retire blur or vanish entirely.
This shift is harder to see because it doesn’t happen through a single invention. There’s no headline announcing “The Weekend Ends.” Instead, the cultural rhythms that once felt immovable start to fray at the edges. People work at odd hours. They form identities around projects instead of professions. They never quite retire, but they also never fully “start” in the old sense.
It’s subtle but profound — like the quiet death of compression, but applied to the structure of time itself.
Degrees, Credentials, and the Guild System
For centuries, knowledge was scarce. Universities were where you went to get it. Degrees were slow, expensive signals that said, “I’ve absorbed knowledge, and this institution vouches for me.” Professional guilds emerged to certify competence. Testing was slow and costly. Verification was hard.
All of that made sense in a world where information lived in libraries and minds, where learning required physical presence, and where assessing someone’s ability meant interviews and trust. Degrees were shortcuts for trust.
That world is gone.
AI can now teach almost anything instantly, tailored to each person. Skills can be demonstrated through project work, AI-evaluated tasks, or real-time performance. Knowledge isn’t scarce anymore; it’s ambient. And when knowledge isn’t scarce, the degree starts to look less like a golden key and more like a leftover ritual.
The credentialing system doesn’t collapse overnight. Universities won’t disappear in a single decade. But their gravitational pull weakens. Employers care less about where you studied and more about what you can do right now. The gatekeeping power of guilds diminishes when competence can be proven directly.
One day, we’ll look back at four-year degrees the way we look back at painstaking compression routines — meaningful once, but strangely anachronistic in hindsight.
Hunting Anachronisms
The “Age of Anachronism” isn’t really about technology. It’s about noticing when the reasons for old habits have disappeared, even if the habits themselves remain.
Look for things that were built to manage scarcity that no longer exists.
Look for structures designed to manage human limitations that machines have quietly outgrown.
Look for rhythms, rituals, and institutions that persist out of inertia, not necessity.
Compression was one. Elegant code may be next. The identity rhythms of professions and weekends are wobbling. Degrees and credentials are lining up behind them.
The future doesn’t always announce itself with fanfare. Sometimes, it arrives quietly — and it’s the old things that fade that tell us the most about what’s coming.
Steven A Nichols 