Viewing aspects of life over a period of time can get pretty interesting. I'd like to take two examples.

Office printing.
Before computers all letters and office output was either typed or handwritten. Nowadays, I can type faster than I can write (and it's a lot more legible too). But let's look at the typing aspect here.

First, we had those manual typewriters with the ribbon inking system. Quite readable but unavoidably a little fuzzy. And if you made a mistake on a page - start again. Then along came electric typewriters and plastic one-time tape. With auto-correct!! And then that ultimate status symbol, the golf ball typewriter. Now, not only did the document look like you had sent it to the best printer in the land, but you could change the font simply by changing the golf ball head. Still took a skilled operator, but there was more tolerance for "operator error".

Then came the computer, and with it the dot matrix printer. Dot matrix printing was the new status symbol that you were a business of substance! so we all scrambled to reduce the quality of our finished document by using dot matrix printers.

And suddenly there were ink jet printers, then laser printers, and the race was on again to return to that immaculate printed document finish. A full fashion circle.

Telephone ring tones.
It used to be that your telephone signaled someone was trying to get hold of you by ringing a bell buried somewhere in its bowels.

Then along came the electronic era, and with it that rather hard to ignore cricket ring tone.

The arrival of cell phones initially saw a variance on the cricket ring tone theme, but then started stepping out in every direction. It could be music, a voice urging you to answer the phone, an obscenity from your favourite rap artist, a dog barking, anything.

So guess where we are now?

A cell phone that plays a track that sounds just like....

Wait for it.....

A ringing bell. Go figure.

Fashion definitely seems to go round in circles. Can you think of other examples where fashion has come full circle?