i was watching 3blue1brown’s cosmic ladder video and i don’t know why but it had me thinking about what has changed over the last 5 years. i take 5 years because since i’m 23 now, the periods are comparable.

so 2026 vs 2021

  • while there have been a lot of things that i’m now hugely grateful for, i don’t think there has been any monumental change and rightly so - 5 years isn’t yet a large enough timeframe to cause significant societal level changes. but monumental changes aside, now that i think about the changes, doesn’t feel like anything major has changed. i don’t know whether that is actually what has happened or its just my brain fooling me.

  • what has changed

    • we now have quick commerce. and adoption from families. 5 year younger me would’ve been very excited to know that he’d be able to access niche SKUs that are otherwise not readily available within 10 minutes. present me is indifferent. hedonic adaptation. which is probably why this gratitude works - it reminds your brain of what it’d be like without.

    • social media. this is probably the biggest societal level change of this decade. the aesthetification (if thats a word) of everything for views and likes. and how can i forget - short form content. reels, shorts, etc. wow. everything, everywhere now is short form content. one of the most net negative inventions of this half-decade. i personally hate social media. although i haven’t been completely immune to the negatives.

what else changed? not so easy to think.

  • concert culture. this is something that as the target audience i’ve seen in the past couple of years. and i don’t exactly understand why it wasn’t earlier. but thanks to social media and fomo, we now have international artists coming to india. a positive thing.

can’t seem to think of anything else.

hopefully ai will change the world for the better in the next 5 years more than we can even imagine.