Nosferacolu
Whenever TV shows, movies, books, and so forth predict the future, they seem to assume either a continued advancement in technology, or a return to the Stone Age thanks to some dystopian disaster. But I wonder if there’s another possibility.
Some months ago, my kids were watching a show on Disney, and in this show some teenagers were in a record shop. By “record shop,” I mean quite literally a record shop. It sold vinyl records. I asked if the show was set in the seventies or eighties. My older children said no–it was set in present day. I was confused. Perhaps the producers, probably people of my generation, were being nostalgic for their teenage years, and used an environment that would have been familiar to them, but not to the teens in the show. Not so, according to my kids. It seems vinyl is making a come-back. They tell me there really are places that sell vinyl, and they’re quite popular with the kids. Regardless of how accurate this is (the comments are open if you want to confirm or deny), it got me thinking…
What if the future wasn’t either a Jetsons-like technological paradise, or a Hunger Games nightmare, but rather a conscious return to the “good old days”? Perhaps at some point in the future, technology will reach a tipping point. Maybe there will come a time when our culture gets sick from overdosing on digital and longs for the days of personal contact, music on vinyl, and writing letters. Facebook, Nooks, and iTunes will be shunned in favor of evenings spent visiting friends, or curled up in a chair with a paper book, or listening to 45s on the record player. The museum of the future might hold such relics as iPads and Kindles, reminders of a time when information was at our fingertips, but we forgot how to stop and smell the ink.
This isn’t a critique of our current culture. I have nothing against technology. It’s just an interesting spin on what the future may have in store. Food for a novel, perhaps?
I shared this with my wife, and she asked if I was turning into Nosferacolu–a mix between my name and Nosferatu. (I’m sure she meant Nostradamus, the famous prognosticator, and not Nosferatu the infamous vampire, but I’m not correcting the name to Nostradacolu because that doesn’t sound nearly as good.) But I’m not a prophet, or the son of a prophet, and this blog is not for profit (har har). Just throwing out an interesting thought.
What do you think?
Oh sure, you point out my stupidity on the internet and not to me in person! I mentioned this article to my quilt group and one person commented that we would go backwards because the technology is making a generation of folks who don’t know how things work and thus would not be able to improve on what we have now.
I didn’t correct you at the time–I only realized as I was writing the article, so it’s my stupidity too! 🙂
It’s true the more we rely on technology to do things, the less inclined we are to understand what the technology is actually doing, how it works, and how we would do the same thing if the technology wasn’t around. Which makes for a scary scenario if ever a time should come when that technology goes away. And certainly, if we don’t understand how something works, it’s hard for us to improve it. Maybe that thought will scare people into being less technologically reliant?
Ooo very interesting spin. I can see it to be honest. Look at fashion. You have a distinct fashion in the 20s, 40s, 60s, 80s and we get to the naughties and the… what are we calling this decade, the teens??? Anyhoo, people are bringing these fashions back. I’ve seen flapper dresses, 1950s dresses, and flares come back. We love bringing the past back into society, giving it a few modern tweaks but most people generally have a love for retro. I knew quite a few people who started using typewriters again. They were all on my writing course so that might have been a writer fashion thing.
Technology can irritate people and it’s easy to depend on them but we’re stuck when they actually stop working. Maybe a future government would be worried we’re using too much of it.
It is interesting how fashions keep coming back. Every decade it seems like we’re hankering for twenty years ago. There was a big 50’s revival in the 1970s–films like “Grease,” bands like Showaddywaddy in the UK. In the 1980s it was the 60s. In the 1990s it was the 70s. I think we’re still on the 80s kick we got into in the 2000s.
But more than just being nostalgic, perhaps there will come a time when we get scared of how dependent we are on technology, and re-appreciate the old ways. And I think it’s true to say, there’s something about music on vinyl that’s different to digital, just as there’s something about the feel of a book over a Kindle or iPad. I’ve not tried writing on a typewriter in over 20 years. That might be an interesting experience. 🙂
This is an interesting idea. I’ve seen and read futuristic stories that seem to throw back to earlier time periods. I think it’s realistic to think that this could happen, either because we’re trying to reclaim certain values and ideas or because some kind of event actually throws us back into relying on simpler things (apocalyptic or whatever). It wouldn’t be the first time that this kind of thing happened. Look at Romanticism as a response to the Industrial Revolution. My sci-fi WIP had certain ‘vintage’ elements in it that I actually hadn’t intentionally put in there. Jess pointed it out to me. 🙂
You’re right, Jaime–it wouldn’t be the first time there’s a response to technology that recalls an earlier age. It seems as if technology has been advancing at a breakneck speed over the past 20-30 years (compare how long it’s taken us to get from the digital watch to the iPad versus from horse-drawn carriages to motor vehicles), and our natural thought is that we’ll just keep going. I wonder if people thought the same way in the midst of the Industrial Revolution?
Good thought. 🙂
I love that idea of the future truly going retro. The book Incarceron sort of did that, but not in a good way. I think there is great room in the fiction world for this idea
Yes, especially when the reason for going retro is techno-burnout, and not because of a nuclear war, or an evil dictator, or some other catastrophe. Thanks for your thoughts, Margo! 🙂
Great topic! When I read your post, what came to mind is exactly what Jaime said about Romanticism being a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. This is a theme I worked into both of my WIPs actually. I think trends are leaning in a similar direction these days. There’s a huge emphasis on being environmentally conscious that mirrors the worship of nature found in Romantic literature and art. Companies market products that are “green” or have a certain Zen-like image that suggest a simpler cleaner way of life. The vintage records you mentioned are all being reused or recycled. While I wouldn’t say we’re reverting to an earlier era, I think we’ve become sort of eclectic, incorporating some of the more popular aspects of other eras into our lives now, all part of the vast amount of selection we have available to us. In terms of music and literature, I also think some people see themselves as purists because they enjoy the original form of things rather than the current form, like records or old books. I can relate on that one because I definitely prefer an actual physical book with pages (especially old pages) over ebooks. I could babble about this topic all day, but for what it’s worth that’s my two cents. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts, Erin. I too prefer the look, feel, and smell of books. And while I appreciate the portability of e-books, there’s nothing like a shelf of real books, or physically turning pages. And also cover art. While e-books still have “covers” so this isn’t completely lost, certainly in the music world, when albums shrunk to CDs, and now with downloads becoming more popular, the need to create wonderful album covers is no longer there. Which is sad.
I see what you’re saying about our eclectic society, mixing and matching techie with “purist” ideas of living. I wonder the extent to which the two can co-exist, or even draw from each other?