Digital Generation, Analog Retro Chic

securitas writes "The New York Times' Juliet Chung writes about the latest technology trend: the growing popularity of analog technology with a generation that has grown up digital. 'Yesterday's technology designs are becoming popular among those in their teens and 20's eager to usher back a time they experienced only barely, if at all.' An MIT graduate student interviewed for the article, Ali Rahimi, was tired of the 'impersonal, unthinking' nature of modern technology, so he hacked an old telephone handset together with his mobile phone with the rationale, 'The handset has been going through about a hundred years of evolution in design and ... have the perfect shape.' According to Brown University technology historian Steven Lubar, 'When the available technology converges at a certain performance threshold ... consumers begin to base their choices on nontechnical considerations'. Chung also includes a sidebar that lists some of the new retro analog devices and interpretations, ranging from radio PC case mods to ancient clunker cell phones. Any other cool or interesting retro analog devices or hacks out there?" I've personally enjoyed owning tube amps on and off - the sound warmth, whether it be psychological or real, is definitely different then solid state amps.

Comments

Imagine that...

[garcia]

it's really hard to believe that old trends are coming back! It's never ever been fashionable to wear/use items that existed before you could remember them.

No one wore bell bottoms before the late 1990s. No one wore sweat shirts cut strange so they would hang off one shoulder before 2004. No one wore Daisy Duke cutoffs before 2002!

Sadly, in this day and age everything that comes back into style isn't original. It's made by companies that are out looking to make a buck. So yeah, it's going to start out that trendsetters will make their own stuff for free but companies will pick up on it and resell "retro stuff" for the same amount as it costs to have something "modern".

Bah.

Re:analog is obsolete

[bsd4me]

It is also interesting how many digital problems turn out to be analog in nature: termination, noise, signal coupling, power, etc.

Re:it's true

[vrai]

People wear analogue watches because they look much nicer than tacky digitals. Wrist watches are essentially jewellery that is culturally acceptable for both men and women to wear. That fact that analogue displays are more readable at glance is merely a bonus.

"Post 9/11"???

[Dogtanian]

i strongly suspect this all goes back to the comfort things that people are seeking in our post 9-11 world.

I'm fed up of the phrase "post 9/11" being used to explain changes in fashion and taste. Frankly, it would be easy to 'explain' most trends in this way, and I believe it's impact in this area has been grossly overstated.

Fact is, digital watches have not been "cool" since sometime in the 1980s, and they are now coming back into fashion, this time as *retro*.

I don't accept that *this* is down to 9-11; it is more likely to be another retro trend. The early 80s were a *long* time ago now; too long ago to be passe' any more, so let's revive it, goes the reasoning.

Re:Watches? Just say no.

[mindstrm]

Try getting a simple watch and ditching the cellular phone.. you'll find that much more liberating.

Re:Who is preserving the trinkets of the 20th cent

[HeyLaughingBoy]

The PC components he placed inside that wooden case probably cost the same, but will be obsolete in a few years due to the speed at which we are updating technology these days. The radio however, was probably in use for well over 20+ years until a tube burned out and the previous owner could no longer get a replacement.

Don't confuse the two. Just because the PC won't run today's software, doesn't mean it ceased to function. For all the tasks it was doing before, it is still just fine and can continue to do them for 20+ years. The difference is that the external standards the radio was designed to deal with (frequencies, modulation method) didn't change while the ones for the PC (software, perhaps network connection) did.

There are computers decades old still chugging along just fine doing what they were originally designed for.

Re:analog is obsolete

[Komi]

Analog will always be around. Why? Because the world is analog.

Digital is popular because much of the design process is automated. This is why you can have 200 million transistors on a chip. It's cheaper and easier to create digital circuits. Naturally, it would be nice to put as much into digital as possible. But there's a limit.

• You have to create the digital infrastructure. You need to create the voltage levels from a power supply. Sometimes different digital blocks use different voltage levels. Also, you need to be able to control these levels to go into low power mode, or sleep mode. And finaly, digital circuits are delicate, so they need protected from power spikes.
• The environment is analog. So to bring in data, you need to measure it. Sensor applications (temperature, weight, impact, etc.) use analog circuitry. Also, these signals need converted to digital, so A2D converts are important. And if the chip wants to output back to analog (play some sound on those speakers), you need a D2A converter.
• Wireless transceivers need to get their signals up to and down from the carrier frequency. This is done with amplifiers, filters and mixers.

That last bullet is actually in the RF realm, but these blocks use analog circuit theory.

So, analog is definitely here to stay.

Komi