Sometimes it feels like progress is moving faster than we can process.
Since 2020, we've seen one dramatic shift after another. Large language models and other generative tools are part of that, but so is the sense that before we can make sense of one change, the next one has already arrived. We're left trying to figure out what it all means while already dealing with the fallout.
When we started Feeding Curiosity we were very optimistic. Not in the sense that we thought the problems we faced were easy, but because we were confident that we could work through them. We could learn. We could adapt. We could find better ways.
We had to stop and figure out where we were going. I never felt certain enough to say I knew exactly what that direction should be.
But underneath that optimism, I keep coming back to a question: what are we actually aiming for?
It's easy to frame the future around what we can build or automate, or how far we can push the boundaries. Those are the questions that draw me in. But they miss something. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should, or that it will make us the kind of people we want to become.
That's part of the reason Nolan's take on The Odyssey has stuck with me. Beyond the arguments about the adaptation itself, it's remarkable that we're coming back to this story at all.
It's 2026 and we're still trying to wrap our heads around technologies that would have seemed impossible just a few years back. Yet an old story still holds our attention.
Why?
What does it mean that we're still trying to work out this hero, his journey, and what he might tell us about ourselves?
What We Recognize
I don't think we go back to old stories simply because we know them. Sometimes they allow us to see something about our own lives more clearly.
In Book 5 of the Odyssey Calypso offers Odysseus the chance to stay with her and become immortal. He knows that going back to Ithaca will be a life of suffering. He knows that Penelope is a mortal woman. Yet he tells her:
“But even so I wish and long day by day to reach my home, and to see the day of my return.”
What stands out to me is how little explanation that yearning needs. The situation is mythic, but the desire is instantly recognizable. He wants a particular life, with particular people, in a particular place.
I don't think this argues against discovery or against wanting to go beyond our limits. It just makes the idea that a better life means fewer constraints much more complicated.
What makes an offer worth taking? What would we give up to become something more? And what might we realize we never wanted to leave behind in the first place?
We can ask those same questions about technology, without pretending Homer had our machines in mind. The connection is in what matters to us, not in the technology itself.
That sense of recognition is where the distance between the ancient world and ours starts to shrink. I don't have to believe we're the same as the first listeners. I just need to see a choice I recognize and admit I still don't know what I would have done.
A Hero Who Doesn’t Stay Still
Then there's the hero himself.
We're drawn to people whose achievements are inextricably linked to their failings. We admire the ambition, the courage, the sheer will to go on. We also know that those same qualities can be a curse. Persistence can become an inability to stop. Confidence can become arrogance. The desire to do something spectacular can make the mundane feel utterly unimportant.
That makes heroism much harder to pin down than simply being someone you admire.
Tennyson's "Ulysses" gives that sense of uncertainty a different form. The hero is restless at home, looking towards another voyage. Towards the end he says:
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses.”
The poem goes on to describe people diminished by time but still determined “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
There's something going on in that refusal to give up. I can see the attraction in the idea that age, loss, disappointment etc don't necessarily have to be the end of our willingness to do something.
But set against the longing for home at the heart of The Odyssey, it raises another question. When is setting out again brave, and when is it just not being able to handle what you already have?
I don't think that tension weakens the hero. It makes him more interesting.
We can want to belong and want to leave. We can want the security of home and still yearn for what's out there. We can respect someone's determination and still be in doubt as to where that determination will take them.
Maybe that's why we keep returning. We haven't settled what heroism really is, and our own lives keep changing how we see the same person.
Living Inside History
It's always easier to see patterns in the past than in the present.
Looking back, we can line up the events, spot the turning points, and trace the outcomes. Living through change is different. We don't know which developments will matter, which promises will last, or what we'll wish we'd noticed.
I think we all feel that sense of uncertainty at the moment.
We're excited about what's possible, uneasy about what we might lose, and unsure how to weigh the trade-offs. Even when we're paying attention, it can feel like we're reacting to a future that's already been set in motion elsewhere.
Going back to an old story doesn't solve that feeling. It just shifts the scale.
The present is still ours, but it's not the only lens for looking at a human life. There are other stories of ambition, loss, duty, and belonging. We can argue with them, find their assumptions strange or even off-putting. Sometimes we discover that what we thought was unique to us actually has a much longer history.
That doesn't make our problems less real. It just gives us more ways to talk about them, beyond whatever is newest.
It also forces us to rethink how we deal with the past. We don't need to make it perfect to find it valuable. If we dismiss it before trying to understand it, we might miss the chance to learn something about ourselves and history.
The Future That May Be
T. S. Eliot wrote:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”—T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” from Four Quartets.
I'm still coming back to that idea that return can be a form of discovery.
A story can be old without being worn out. We bring our own experiences, notice new details, make different choices, and sometimes get stuck on things we once ignored. It's less about the world changing and more about how we read the story.
That's exactly what I wanted Feeding Curiosity to be from the outset.
I wanted a place to explore what was new and what it could lead to. I still do. Lately, I'm more interested in how those possibilities connect to what we've inherited: the stories, the questions, and the commitments that might help us figure out what to do next.
My optimism hasn't gone. It's just less automatic.
I still think we can tackle the hard problems and build lives worth living. But having a capability isn't the same as knowing how to use it well. That takes judgment, and judgment takes more than keeping pace.
It takes time to really look at what we admire. It takes a willingness to question both our excitement and our fear. Sometimes it means returning to something familiar and admitting we didn't understand it as well as we thought.
Maybe that's why The Odyssey still matters to me in 2026. Even with everything that feels new and unprecedented, I can still see someone trying to find his way home. And I'm still not finished thinking about what that means.
We don't know what our bit of history will look like from the other side. We have to make our choices before we can know what the full consequences of those choices will be.
For now, I just want to stay curious about what's next without losing sight of what came before. The future will ask us to discover new things. It will also ask what we're willing to carry forward.
