unrecognizable girl switching on portable cassette recorder

The rise of mini-tech and dedicated devices

Retro-tech is trending at the moment. Despite the loss in media quality, old digital cameras, camcorder and tape-cassette recorders are being purchased and resold at ridiculous prices, sometimes regardless of the condition.

It’s a trend that is as ugly as some of the tech that people are using. In the background, collectors are crying as some of these devices are outselling some of their beautiful restored and preserved tech. To the experienced and cultured of us, the question is begged: why is this happening?

If you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember a past where there were many of these devices. There were telephones, cameras, digital calendars and phonebooks (remember those?), alarm clocks, music systems, calculators, handheld game consoles… well, what happened? They all merged into one device: The smartphone.

And smartphones are fantastic. You can bring your entire life, your office, photo albums, music station, entire cabinet of important documents wherever you go… but there’s definitely a charm that has been lost


In the customisation of your home

The personalisation of your life

Our choices have been stifled

And I think we know we need fresh air.

I believe that this will become an explosion of an industry in the near future, and I’m excited.

Here is some tech that is already leading the way:

The TP-7 by teenage engineering: a tape-recorder with a spinning scrub-attached turn wheel

Playdate by Panic: an interactive gaming console with a crank on the side

Are you excited about this future? Let me know in the comments what you would like to see come back modernised and beautiful, or read this post about VR and 3 futures we might end up in

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