# Nostalgia?

## The question

Is Cyberpunk, the 80s, older tech, the web of the humble beginning some sort of nostalgia to me?
Well, I can't say that there is not nostalgia. It was a long time ago, so that invites nostalgia.
And if I discard it, it feels like I am in denial.

That said...

## The ugly

The period from my birth to 18 when I left home is by far the worst of my life.
If I think about this period of my life, about reliving it, I want to puke.

No, I don't really have pink glasses.

Imagine you had a terrible job. Miserable.
Would you blame the office chair?
Probably not.

But would you seriously say:
"The job was awful, but the chair? Dude, the chair was amazing."
I'd say you would not say that.

Well I do regarding this period. The tech was amazing!

## The bad

One thing is that I can criticize the period.

Have you ever had to physically move to your TV, turn buttons like it's an FM radio to switch channel, and when you sit down, there are commercials?
Well that's how we started. And I vividly remember thinking as a kid : that's sooo boring!

More seriously and in retrospect, for a problem I did not have :
Tech was obscure. Especially the transition early 90s to PCs.
I loved it but people were running away. My brother never really got into it.
To play a game, you had to know what "Sound Blaster compatible" means to have sound. And know the IRQ of it.
You had to understand fast why putting a mouse driver inside the 640kB was a bad idea.
And I had a mediocre sound because I only had a compatible, because it was cheaper.

It was tech for the nerds. Using Linux before internet at home was so hard.
You'd install something and have no idea how to launch it.

We did not even have internet. Then slow.

## The good

I will write why I like this era. But there is something I believe is not nostalgia.

If you look at a temple in Japan, a Church, there is something physical.
There is door in a way or another. An inside and an outside.
In Japan it is called a "mon". A 門 : this kanji represents a door.
When you enter the place, the sound, the smell, something change.
You perhaps have something to do, purify yourself with water.

When we see each others, we handshake, we salute, we kiss.
People we love, we can have hug, have more contact.

The tech we got was physical. When you get a walkman, you have to have it on you.
It has to matter to you. When you switch tape, there is sound, a slight violence in the ejection.
You clack the tape in. Press. New song.

Japanese people says 身体が覚えた, the body remembers. There is a muscle memory.
There a physical embodiement of the band switch.

Sound, touch, separation between inside and outside, intentionality... together they create what I call human affinity: technology that is mindful of how humans experience the world, not just how efficiently we accomplish a task.
※ Mecanical affinity is like when you code being mindful of the machine underneath.

But you'd say "the sound was bad!". And true. But we got the CD.
And then the minidisc. And the the ipod, it was different but very tactile, clicky.

Now you compare that to Spotify I do use and like. Frictionless. The goal is that you are not annoyed for hours.
Well, it's like sex. Some lubricant can help, but frictionless would be a bit boring. You need an inside and an outside. You need transitions. No, I won't stop! You need buttons!

It is User Interface optimization for client retention. Or even UX, User Experience. In fact UX is almost about removing friction, to keep user that want ease of use. Auto-play is excellent for that. I do! But is it minding how we, as human, perceive and feel the world? No. We want to touch, to decide, to choose. We need Freedom.

And that's a reason I have listened to music part of the day and I don't know what I listened to today.
It's Bruce Lee "Shapeless, formless... like water!" except that you are not a kung fu fighter.

Speaking of which.

## The Matrix.

You know what a genius hacker finding out that he lives in a simulated world policed by AI does?

Well, it's holywood, baby :
He learns Kung-Fu and kick the AI's ass.