Retro tech nostalgia
Revisiting the gadgets that define our youth
You would think that technology has gotten faster, smaller, and just plain better over the years and in plenty of ways it has. But there are still plenty of frustrating gizmos that needlessly complicate our day-to-day lives.
Maybe I’ve been thinking about this more as I look at some of the gadgets my five-year old daughter has been starting to interact with. Or maybe my retro tech nostalgia has been heightened after writing about how Green Day's Dookie album has been Demastered on a host of ancient relics from my technological youth.
Looking at things like HitClips, Gameboy cartridges and MiniDiscs made me long for the days of tangible plastic do-dads that weren't perfect but felt damn near indestructible. These days it seems like everything is a flat slab of metal and glass. Can we get more well-designed products that incorporate rounded plastic and tangible buttons?
OK, I'll stop my old man daydream of what it was like in the good ol' days of 80s, 90s, and early 2000s tech. But the point here is that I think it's worth reexamining some of these things. Sure, there are plenty of people paying homage to popular things like the Gameboy, but not enough people recall fond memories of playing crude games on a Cybiko or listening to FLAC files on a Rio Karma. Yes, I owned both of those devices and they really shaped my appreciation of technology during a formidable time in my life.
And while I've done the one-off ode to gadgets like TiVo, I think it makes sense for me to build a more structured approach to the appreciation of technology of yesteryear. What exactly does that look like? I'm not entirely sure to be honest.
Maybe it's a monthly series of throwback tech pieces where I mix nostalgia with unbiased reviews and a sprinkle of humor. Or maybe some of these classic devices are worth hunting down (or searching my parents' basement) in order to shoot some hands-on video segments. Or maybe I could skip the hassle of obtaining the products and just wax poetically on how I remember the gear.
It could be a sort of fireside chat podcast where my memories may be only close approximations of how the past actually played out. I highly doubt too many people want to hear about the specs of technology that is over 20 years old, but you may be entertained hearing me share my recollection of how it created fond memories for me at the time. And hell, I'm sure plenty of you have some shared experiences that are similar to mine and wouldn't mind sharing them.
So I'm still iterating on this idea as you can tell. But I think it's safe to say that there will be some tech nostalgia injected into this writing in the near future. And I think it will act as a way for me to share a bit more humor and bit of my personality that can't always come through when attempting to sound more serious about modern topics.
Yes, I genuinely care about modern advancements that are making the world a better place to live. But maybe I also want to talk about crappy old video games or mp3 players that could only hold a handful of songs and how those products shaped me into the digital citizen that I am today.
Maybe not all of these will be hits. Maybe some of the products will be a bit too niche for many people to appreciate. It could be one of those "you had to be there" tech moments that only appeal to the other nerds who begged their parents to buy them overpriced and underdelivering gadgets twenty-five to thirty-five years ago. But that's ok! This is the Internet and we're allowed to get as nerdy as we want to.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for some more retro tech nostalgia coming soon!
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