Anduril’s Palmer Luckey believes the future of technology is in the past

You might think it’s strange to hear the founders of a virtual reality company and social media platform publicly complaining about how things were better in the days of dial-up. However, that’s what happened at CES on Wednesday, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian gave a joint lecture on the joys of “tech nostalgia.”

Lockey, who initially made his fortune in virtual reality and now runs defense contractor Anduril, and Ohanian seem to agree that things were better in the old days.

The problem, however, is that Luckey and Ohanian haven’t really criticized the technology itself (Lockey, during his remarks, said he supports AI and feels it changes workflow for the better); Instead, they were criticizing the aesthetics of technology. Old consumer technology products are superior to today’s products – and it is the styles of the past and the form factor that will determine the future of technology, they claimed.

“It’s not just about nostalgia for the old, it’s about the fact that it’s objectively better,” Ohanian said of some older products.

After giving a short sermon about how great a first-person shooter Quake: Arena was in 1999, Luckey similarly sang the praises of legacy media. “There was something there about the intention of building a music library — whether that was building full albums or making mixtapes,” Luckey said, adding that in the age of endless downloads, you’re obviously “losing something.”

Luckey also pointed to young people who feel nostalgic for periods of time that they do not remember or have any personal connection to. “Why do they think this is good? Not because they remember their childhood. Not because they go back to an earlier time. It’s because they realize it’s literally better, some of this old stuff.”

Some consumer trends seem to indicate that Lockie and Ohanian are on to something. Obviously nostalgia is big across the board these days (look at all those ’80s art pieces coming out of Hollywood), but nostalgic tech design is a particularly thriving field. Young people are overwhelmed and saturated with the Internet. As a result, many developed new interests in physical media – such as collecting cassette tapes and vinyl. Meanwhile, new, low-tech devices with older designs are also seeing an uptick in interest (just check out the Clicks Communicator phone that debuted at CES this year).

Given that consumer interests are trending in this direction, Luckey and Ohanian’s enthusiasm for old technology could also end up being a smart business strategy. This means that if Americans are feeling nostalgic, you might as well capitalize on it.

In fact, Lucky has already done that. The defense contractor, who wears a mullet from the 1980s, is launching a project in 2024 called the ModRetro Chromatic — a Game Boy-like device that retails for $199, allows for playing old cartridge classics from the 1990s, and is called one of the “best ever” of its kind.

On Wednesday, Ohanian brought one of the ModRetro units to the stage and proudly displayed it to the audience. Ohanian, who has spoken publicly about his love for gaming company Luckey, said he’s also interested in creating his own retro game.

There were plenty of lively moments during Wednesday’s talk, most of which were produced by Loki. At one point, he shared that he’d been coming to CES since he was 16 years old. Savvy CES fans will note: You’re supposed to be 18 to enter. “I used a fake ID,” Luckey told the CES audience on Wednesday, drawing plenty of laughter. “I pretended to work for a company that was exhibiting here,” the business mogul said.

Cute old games may be the future, but so is war, it seems. Since 2017, Luckey has largely focused on his defense startup Anduril. Earlier this year, on the heels of a Series G fundraising round, the company’s valuation swelled to $30.5 billion. Recently, the company collaborated with Meta on headphones for the US Army.

Anduril was not mentioned during Wednesday’s talk, but at the end of the conversation, Luckey briefly pivoted to a foreign policy discussion to make some characteristically wild claims. “I’ve been part of the problem for a long time, making all the things I make in China,” he said. “Geopolitically, the United States and China are going through a divorce; it’s a messy divorce — and if people think it’s going to end in reconciliation, they’re blind. It’s not,” he said.