As a web development world we seem to be running in circles. We have kick-ass technology but we use it in ways that remind me a lot of the DHTML days of 2000 when IE6 was the first to give us filters to play with.
By taking a more pragmatic approach to development and concentrating on the basics first we can build wonderful solutions and be creative about it.
If we concentrate on discarding the past rather than learning from it we are likely to repeat mistakes instead.