Next Time Can Be Worse
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
This unpublished essay challenged the widespread assumption that progress is inevitable — that each generation will necessarily enjoy better circumstances than the last.
The Premise
Raskin observed that people tend to assume the future will be an improvement on the present. When something goes wrong — a failed policy, a flawed technology, a social setback — the common response is reassurance that things will be better next time. Raskin questioned this optimism, arguing that it can breed a dangerous complacency.
The Argument
Without deliberate effort, vigilance, and willingness to learn from mistakes, there is no guarantee that the next attempt at anything will improve on the previous one. Systems can degrade. Knowledge can be lost. Institutions can weaken. The belief that improvement is automatic can actually undermine the hard work necessary to achieve it, because it removes the urgency to act.
Historical Perspective
Raskin drew on examples from history, technology, and public life to illustrate how assumptions of inevitable progress have repeatedly been proven wrong. Civilizations have declined. Technologies have regressed. Hard-won rights have been rolled back. Each of these cases demonstrated that progress requires active maintenance, not passive expectation.
Relevance to Technology
The essay carried particular weight coming from someone who had watched the computing industry make choices that he believed degraded the quality of human-computer interaction. Raskin saw the evolution of desktop interfaces not as steady improvement but as a series of compromises that often prioritized marketing over usability.
Legacy
This remains one of Raskin’s most widely referenced unpublished works, resonating with readers who recognize the essay’s central warning in their own fields and times.
This page is part of the Jef Raskin Archive, preserving the unpublished works of the creator of the Macintosh project.