Retro Style

I cannot explain my affection for gadgets of the past and retro styled artworks. My preferences are, unsurprisingly, towards a few specific attributes, such as analogue/mechanical systems.

My lifespan is split roughly in half by the transition into the information age (which varies by the time the area was introduced with new information technology). Mechanical, chemical, magnetic, optical and digital devices all had their places in my memory.

I have childhood photos in film and videos in Video8. I recorded cassettes and VHS, used floppy disks and burned CD-R. I did homework without Wikipedia, and shot video with MiniDV for a group project. I took photos with 135 film and Polaroid 600. I had a pager, then a Nokia 3310.

But I also grew up with the World Wide Web, with the 56k dial-up sound sequence still engraved in my brain. I surfed the Internet with GPRS, and saw the rise of smartphones in real time. My teenage background music is almost exclusively produced on only computers, and downloaded from streaming sites or over P2P networks. All of my important things are in bytes.

So I do not have the nostalgia that older generations do when shooting film or listening to vinyl records. But does this make my affection totally hipster, and I am no different than the pseudo-science believing crowd in the hi-fi pursuing community, which I despite?

I do not have the energy for ideological flame wars anymore, and I have retreated into the mental comfort zone of liking whatever I come to like and stop the endless self-inspection. It is funny, that the younger I would probably hate me so much for this compromised mindset.