[pvg]

I suspect you might be extrapolating too far from the fact that you and your colleagues are, perhaps, exceptionally busy people.

If anything, the great speed of the industry's development has made it particularly concerned with its own history - things become history quickly, the principals are typically still around, etc. The ACM HOPL conference I mentioned started when high level languages had a total history of barely over 20 years. When McCarthy (who was surely also a very busy person) wrote his History of Lisp paper, Lisp was younger than Java is today. And as I said in a sibling comment, the interest extends far beyond industry participants - there are many popular accounts aimed at general audiences and many new ones are written at a seemingly increasing rate. There's a Computer History Museum which prides itself on its working exhibits right here in Silicon Valley. Industry history-related articles are hugely popular on HN - there's a couple of them on the front page right now.