Okay, okay, we know I’m one of the fogies, the folks who insist that the old days — whoops, ’scuse me, I mean the good old days — were better in many respects than the techno-crazed present. Anyone who’s been in my home has seen proof of my fogiedom — I use a VCR instead of Tivo, I have a 19” tube TV (two of them, in fact), I lovingly use chamois cloths on my collection of vinyl albums.
So it was with delight that I read in the New York Times magazine that even the IPhone generation is coming around to my way of thinking — and actually paying for the privilege of turning back the techno-clock.
Progress toward perfection has genuine skeptics, who insist on sticking with marginalized tools. The newer thing may seem less flawed or simply easier, such traditionalists insist, but it sacrifices warmth, soul, depth, personality, chance and the human touch. They must have a point, because practically every antiquated creative process ends up inspiring some kind of digital filter, effect or add-on designed explicitly to mimic its singular properties. The upshot is a form of progress toward perfecting flaws.
Examples abound. There’s a new digital camera that produces “a soft, out-of-focus feel that brings back the feeling of your old Super 8mm home movies.” IZotope Vinyl recording software lets users “create authentic ‘vinyl’ simulation,” right down to filters to suggest the amount of dust on a record and the degree of warping. There’s software that mimics handwriting — we’re not talking calligraphy here, we’re talking messy, smudgy scrawls.
And don’t think for a moment that these items are languishing. There’s an I-Phone app that turns pics snapped with the smartphone into dead ringers for ones “taken with an unreliable plastic camera.” According to the Times piece, this month it was the 17th-most-popular paid app in the iTunes store.
The craving for simpler times, in the form of older products, is no new thing, of course. Antiques have always been coveted. And remember, as kids, how we used to try to scuff our new sneakers so they looked lived in — and how, as young adults, we preferred pre-washed faded jeans?
But the difference is, we thought old things were better — that hand-made antique furniture, for example, was better made than modern assembly-line items. The current nostalgia craze seems aimed at the fact that the technologies of the past were charmingly flawed. And the psychological reasoning the Times writer offers seems to ring true:
The unifying theme is the link between the flawed and the interesting. A boringly perfect digital picture of a flower makes no impression. But an equally boring one marred by (digitally recreated) light leaks, exposure mistakes and focus inconsistencies presses the aesthetic button that suggests deeper meaning. Specifically, the image looks like one from a time before taking a thousand pictures in a weekend was routine. It taps into a language that predates digital abundance in order to layer on implied significance where, as often as not, none exists.
All that may be well and good. Personally, I’m just delighted to discover that instead of being a luddite, I’m actually on the cutting edge. Be impressed, all you IPhone owners! Unless you use the right apps to disguise your modernity, I have been officially declared cooler than you!
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