looking ahead in the rearview mirror

as an architect we studied stone buildings and how they were actually mocking wood structures. Then i thought that how is it that we ran out of ideas then to actually not develop details in stone indigenously and ape age old systems of buildings. but then we were silenced by the whole what will be has always been and how it is actually the same principle that construction follows and hence the similarity in design and detailing. plus there is a similarity in the structural behavior of stone and wood. but then hundreds of years later we started to mock stone buildings. and we got good at it. we aped the aped better than ever before. we made cement look like stone , slurry look like marble. we have even got to a point of making one type of stone look like another, cement look like wood, plastic look like glass concrete to look like wood. its like somehow we hate the original nature of things and are always looking to change them to ape something else entirely. Most that i have talked to have called it progress and how they are trying to better present materials to relive the glory of the items of the past. its not only true for architectural design. its also true for vehicles. you hear of people spending millions on old school bikes with new age electronically triggered engines.people customizing their new bentleys with old school suicide doors. our parliamentary buildings ape the traditional designs of years bygone. we have a hard time getting to the point of moving on and when we do we have already moved to a newer past that we are nostalgic about. this is the nature of man as i see it and this to me is the essence of all design. louis khan was right "what will be has always been" it doesn't meant that we have invented all that was worth inventing. it means that we always will look back and the the future to somehow be a commemorative of the future. we made alarm clocks to praise the lord. we made lamps of LEDs to make them look like oil burning ones. we make digital microphones to look like old school microphones. we have telephones to look like old time instruments. there has to be something that makes us want to live in the past all the time. and we get good at it. our stone work is impeccable, we have mastered moulded plastics, concrete as a fluid material, metal also contributes to our fascination with the past. but is this how deign progresses? retro for the future?