Duncan Bell is past imperfect

Three interactions with retro-tech make it clear that the past ain’t what it used to be

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Usually in this column – and my day-to-day life – I cover a diverse range of topics. There’s moaning about modern technology and moaning about how tech things ain’t like they used to be. Well, this time out, I am completely ‘flipping the script’, as we say in the hip-hop community, to moan about old tech.

As anyone who’s ever been to a school reunion or watched the TV channel Dave will know, nothing destroys nostalgia quite so quickly as actually encountering the thing you are nostalgic about. This month I have had no fewer than three interactions with the kind of ‘classic’ tech that people like to coo about in bad online lists. And let me tell you, people: if that was the golden past, give me the Coronavirus-ridden present any day.

Actually, as a side note, that virus, although it’s been terrible for those affected, has also had some minor positive effects. Fears about travelling and congregating in large numbers in one place have put a temporary halt to two of my most disliked tech things: trade shows, and launches where a series of executive nerds in dad jeans read about a new phone off an autocue.