Technological nostalgia

When a new technology replaces an old technology, there is a transition period during which people who remember the old technology may miss it. For example, I am sure that there were people during the time of the advent of talkies who missed the very different kind of expressive power of silent movies. But that generation is long gone.

I wonder what technologies of today will experience that temporary burst of nostalgia for a transitional generation. There might, for example, in our own lifetimes, be a group of people who will still remember when people drove cars as opposed to cars driving themselves. Later generations will wonder why anybody would ever want such a thing, and there would be no easy way to explain it to them.

One thought on “Technological nostalgia”

  1. When music on CDs supplanted Vinyl. Remember that? audiophiles went bananas defending vinyl.

    Page layout software: My son wrote a paper and it printed beautifully. But he used software to do all the layout. He just annotated his pullouts, sidebars, references, footnotes, charts, graphics but didn’t layout anything on a page. The software completely organized a beautiful presentation.

    Dark rooms vs Photoshop.

    I personally trained as a dental technician. I learned to sculpt dental prosthetics in wax, and by various means including lost wax casting, we created dental crowns, bridges, caps, etc. those technologies aren’t taught or used any longer.

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