Good Reader,
I bought a new (old) Sony Walkman this week. The chunky yellow unit had a broken hinge and I was able to haggle down the price 1/3 — I was also able to repair the hinge at home and it’s now good as new. The radio tuner needs a replacement knob so for the time being it’s tuned perpetually to static, but I don’t mind. I’m more interested in listening to the Stranger Things soundtrack and old Bruce Springsteen tapes.
Why would someone do this when they have access to millions of songs on a glass slab and can have them anywhere on-demand? Why, as Sophie Haigney asks in the Vox article below, “bring back something like the Walkman that’s generally assumed to be worse than its technological descendants?” She suggests the popularity surge retro tech is experiencing is, at least in part, thanks to software and devices which are “increasingly anti-thing.” I think she’s pulling on an important thread.
Physical tools have been relentlessly digitized and flattened, reduced to smartphone apps which are all more similar to every other app than any is different. This surely has something to do with the configuration of the attention economy as it now is. It would also explain why the biggest winners in Big Tech are the platforms, not the apps themselves.
Back to my Walkman, though. I enjoy it because it is undeniably a thing. My chunky yellow Walkman has buttons and dials. It lets me participate in its function—I fixed it! The iPhone is an impressive feat of engineering, but I can’t repair one with pliers and some spare wire. The more tactile nature of older technology, its friction, is its most attractive quality. The friction I speak of is physical, not the UX boogeyman software developers ruthlessness eliminate to guide users toward desired outcomes. This tactility is part of the reason running my finger along the titles of my few remaining DVDs is a more pleasing way to choose a movie than browsing my Netflix queue. My collection can’t compete with the streaming library, but that’s not really at issue here.
My collection, like the Walkman itself, is constrained. In place of millions of potential choices, there are dozens. I love a small handful of Bruce Springsteen songs, most of which are his biggest hits—the ones that appear at the top of his Spotify page—but listening to The River on tape means it’s easier (i.e. I’m forced) to listen to all the tracks. This is friction, of course. It’s time-consuming to rewind and fast-forward to specific tracks, but in this case, as in many others, constraints are good. I can’t tell you who my favourite band/artists are anymore; I stopped having them after I stopped using an iPod. I have some go-to playlists, but not albums; genres, but few artists. My curated taste has been replaced by “moods” and background sounds—I don’t listen to music nearly as often despite streaming songs constantly.
Music experienced in this way is often just a means of banishing silence. As I write this, “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode plays on Spotify. I can’t name the titles of any other Depeche Mode tracks, although I’ve certainly heard many in synth-heavy playlists. Perhaps I’ll pick up a well-used tape and enjoy the paradoxical silence that settles on tasks performed with tools, not infinity devices.
-Matt
📼 The enduring allure of retro tech - Vox
The physical objects themselves are also unique; they deviate from the monotony of the sleek aesthetic that’s come to dominate the world. “I think a lot of people are maybe bored with the sameness of everything,” Marks, of Collectors’ Weekly, said. “The culture’s becoming more monochromatic in some respects.”
👩💻 Life under the algorithm - New Republic
…employers now “demand a workforce that can think, talk, feel, and pick stuff up like humans—but with as few needs outside of work as robots. They insist their workers amputate the messy human bits of themselves—family, hunger, thirst, emotions, the need to make rent, sickness, fatigue, boredom, depression, traffic.”
📱 Tech Has Drained the Reality Out of Our Real Lives - OneZero
What happens when our screens in our hands become sharper than the stars in the sky?
But the inescapable shoddiness of our amateur photographs served an important purpose, beyond the obvious one of discouraging narcissism, and it was this: Through its very mediocrity, each image told us that the real world was better than the one it depicted.
🤳🏼 Instagram is broken. It also broke us. - Vox
Instagram has created a universe where even the most intentionally authentic posts look fake…
Can you be “real” on a platform built to help you sell yourself so it can sell things?
Speaking of retro technology and Walkmans, there’s a new episode of my Stranger Things podcast available for readers who are interested:
I am entirely too happy to have this around the house. Some might accuse of reaching peak millennial but as I hope I’ve made clear above, there’s more going on than simply reaching for nostalgic pacifiers.
☝️ If you’d like to talk about any of the ideas in this issue, feel free to hit “Reply” and let me know what you think. You can also start conversations on any issue of Good Words.