Moving Backward

I stumbled across a webpage which serves as an archive/tribute to GUI's of days gone by.

http://toastytech.com/guis/

One of the most interesting things to me was noticing how there were things you could do using Apple Lisa, Geos etc. that only now are re-emerging as "web applications". It made me think: Is computing two steps forward one step back? My question is why do we keep writing the same applications just on new platforms and technologies? I suppose it's largely to do with the fact that development is driven by business and capitalism is so inherently boring that the applications are going to be boring as well.

I want to develop applications that actually make life better not just easier. I am not really interested in making another email program, another spreadsheet, another graphing library, another news site, another movie site, another blog (oh wait). I have some ideas of what it is I want to make but those will unfold as times goes on.

One of things that has always drawn me towards lisp is the almost reverence or disdain people have for it. Sort of how I got into punk. Everyone hated it, it sounded awful, it was totally dissonant, reminded me of myself so I loved it. I feel the same way about lisp. But beyond the normal list of reasons (elegance being the primary one) people end up falling in love with lisp I have a different motive. I place my hope in this language (irrational, yes I know) that it will actually allow me to orchestrate, not write, applications in a way that reflects my childhood impressions of what programming would be like. Why?