Comments on: Unravelling the cassette

By: Josh Hunt

Josh Hunt — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:06:06 +0000

I’d have thought this is about the pace of technological change. In more developed / western contexts, the pace of change has been relatively slow, allowing people to develop greater emotional attachment with developments (like said cassette). And I think we are a bit more cynical about the idea that newer must equate to better.
In most Asian countries (I’m not sure whether you could generalise quite as much as the poster – don’t the Japanese like retro technology – I’ve no idea) the pace has been much quicker, and is seen as a sign of progress. As the latest technology has become increasingly affordable, people are moving onto the next thing without building up the same attachment. Thus the cassette might have been seen as a (more brief) stepping stone to bigger and better things. To place greater value on old technology would seem like a backwards step with no related (emotional) benefit. And there is much more of a simple link that newer = better.

I’m not sure whether this is limited to technology. In lots of places, less value is placed on old stuff / heritage etc – particularly, I think, in less developed countries. It’s like in Portugal, new houses are much more desirable and therefore expensive than ’second-hand’ houses. Here it tends to be the other way around.

By: Jake Goretzki

Jake Goretzki — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:04:15 +0000

I don’t know much about the Asian situation, but I do think that format nostalgia is post-rationalised baloney.

It infuriates me when people ascribe mystical qualities to vinyl for instance – that it somehow sounds ‘warmer’ (as if you can’t get ‘warmer’ out of an mp3 by quickly jigging the graphic equaliser). Vinyl warped and scratched. Tapes got chewed up. Seaside holidays in England in the sixties and seventies meant greasy food, tar on your towels and suspicious foam in the rock pools. Local shops meant an hour plodding between grocer and baker and butcher – not a quick whistle through 10-iterms-or-less.

By: Suzie Comer

Suzie Comer — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:15:14 +0000

My first thoughts are that Asia is all about progress… the past, particularly in somewhere like China, just represent being backwards and often hard times. There is little nostalgia for the recent past and all they are looking to is the future. Why would people be interested in something from the past when the future is SO exciting?

By: Suvid Bajaj

Suvid Bajaj — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:37:20 +0000

Retro Technoloy seems to be a western phenomenon since the West has spent a considerable period without them. So a significant proportion of people there do not know about them. Hence if brought back they are novel and different. Therefore the fascination.

The Asian markets are just coming out from a period of daily interaction with these technologies. People can still remember their own use of such stuff not so long ago. Further, given large populations in Asia, diffusion of new technology is uneven so these retro technologies are still part of some people’s daily life especially in the lower socio ecnomic strata. So they represent all that is old and dusty – not novel and different.

By: larel

larel — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:49:53 +0000

The fascination of retro technology seems to be a peculiar western phenomenon which has no parallel in Asia.

Does anyone have a hypothesis about why this is so?

By: Harry

Harry — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:26:56 +0000

“the CD was rolled out in 1993″?
As far as i remeber, the first music CD to be commercially released was something by Abba. In 1981!