What's the deal with people liking old devices?
What's the deal with people liking old devices?
I find a lot more “soul” in older electronics. So many devices today are a minimalist thing with a touchscreen (or worse, thing controlled by your phone), probably designed to force you into a subscription. At least consumerism from a few decades ago operated by innovating to make you want to buy a new product, rather than designing it to be a trap.
Going back to the “soul” bit: I recently bought a Bang and Olufsen Beosystem 2500 (look it up) for my office. It’s a stereo from the very early 90s that cost thousands of dollars in its day. It sounds amazing, and has little touches that just make it cool. Like motorized glass doors that are motion activated, with warm accent lighting when the unit is on. The tape player didn’t work when I bought it, but I was able to replace the belt and now my childhood Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego soundtrack tape is playable again!
I just want consumer electronics to be fun and ethical again.
I want bright semi-transparent interchangable plastics and everything to use the same fastener (I’ll give them a pass on screw lengths, though if they were being bros they’d use different colours of locktite or paint pen on each length.
Society wont heal until semi-transparent colourful plastics are everywhere on consumer products again.