WTF is Retrograde?

Retrograde is a publication about technology, repeating cycles, and the increasingly powerful feeling that we’ve seen this movie before.

I write about AI, systems, gadgets, internet culture, enterprise software, wearables, productivity, organizational chaos, and the patterns hiding underneath modern tech discourse.

Sometimes that means looking backward to understand what’s happening now. Sometimes it means questioning whether the industry’s loudest ideas are actually new. Sometimes it means asking why every app suddenly wants to become your operating system, therapist, and best friend.

I’ve spent years building and operating systems inside high-growth technology companies during one of the most chaotic and fascinating periods the industry has ever experienced, including the modern AI boom. Long enough to become deeply optimistic about technology, mildly skeptical of certainty, and spiritually exhausted by the phrase “this changes everything.”

Retrograde is an attempt to slow down, think clearly, question everything at least a little, and make sense of an industry that somehow manages to be both genuinely world-changing and completely ridiculous before noon on a Tuesday.

Professionally and spiritually, I’m roughly:

• 38% enterprise systems perspective
• 27% gadget nerd
• 22% endurance athlete
• 19% LEGO-induced financial irresponsibility
• 14% science fiction & fantasy reader
• 79% cheesy romantic
• 11% overanalyzing user experience decisions
• 9% existential exhaustion caused by notification badges
• 6% coffee

If you do the math, that’s well over 100%, but that’s sort of the point. This may get a little unhinged. You’ve been warned.

Looking backward to look forward.

— Keith Jones