In the modern world we have the information highway at our fingertips, we can just about discover anything we like at any given moment, from our phones, laptops and our tablets. With such a tech heavy world then, it is a very interesting development too see so many people looking to go back to certain analog items from years gone by.
Me and my buddy Warren Van Dam were discussing this on my ‘yet-to-blow-up’ podcast, and these are the reasons why we believe that in some areas, things are going backwards.
To Fill The Nothingness
At the beginning of the most recent tech revolution which we have seen, the goal was to find ways in which to help us with tech, to take out the need for us to move or for us to have to put effort in. As this moved forward it became about owning less things, having less physical items. Whilst storing your information on a cloud may certainly be a preferred way than having boxes and boxes of documents, some people simply believe that tech has gone too far. Ultimately we have almost been rendered obsolete with this, we no longer need to see people, go out to buy things or even eat out, and people have had enough.
Retro is Cool
Despite the fact that every generation likes to build on what the generation before it did, there is always a certain romance and sweetness about looking back at how things once were. This is what creates those retro trends and it is certainly something which very quickly becomes cool. This coolness is what has promoted so many people to collect vinyl for example, or to begin using video players. The cooler retro gets, the more analog we become.
Better Quality
In many regards things made in the past were often made with much better quality than things we use now. Even thinking of things like children’s toys, these days they are mass produced with a keen eye on production and shipping costs, which results in poorer quality craftsmanship. This is the same across the board in terms of the products which we use, and people have become sick of buying up poor quality modern goods.
Simplicity
The tech wars being waged right now are about trying to create products which can do absolutely everything, which was once believed to be exactly what the consumer wanted. Over time however so many of us have recognized that in reality, we quite like things which are simple. This is a similar point to the one above about the quality, we’d rather have simple products which offered high quality and simple use. Sadly many companies still think that we want goods which have bells and whistles on them, and can speak 12 languages!
There is very much a pushback against the modernization of so many products, and this is why so many are looking back to the past, and taking things down more of an analog route.
