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I'm taking a consumer culture class this semester, and in the last month, I've been thinking a lot more about my desire for old things. This afternoon, I ran into a YouTube video on the subject from another person my age.

The ideas in there aren't new to me, it was an echo of what I already felt. What was notably absent in the video and the comments, though, was a perspective looking forward. Young people use old things because they are tactile, simple to use/fix/understand, and "permanent" (own vs subscribe). Streaming is temporary, vinyl is forever. Wonderful. The outcome of this is that old things become valuable to my generation, cheap knock-off reproductions are made to capture a strange nostalgia for times we've never experienced, and we use up the supply of old things.

If I've learned anything from Louis Rossmann it's that technology is not the enemy, but rather it's the conditions that new technology is produced under. Keeping with audio formats, the video compares vinyl with streaming. What about MP3, FLACK, M4A, etc? These formats provide the ownership of vinyl with the portability of steaming. What's the difference between MP3s and streaming? A streaming service doesn't get your money, a creator does.

With that in mind, another relevant example to me in particular is the old vs new car debate. The video correctly identifies that old cars were easy to service, repair, and modify with support from the manufacturer compared to today's black boxes that can only be serviced by the dealer in many cases. Is this because adding computers into cars is inherently anti-user and anti-repair? No! It's the proprietary tools that the manufacturer won't allow for sale at a reasonable price and locked down firmware that needs to be reverse-engineered that is at fault. Not to mention the forced expectation from auto manufacturers to have year-over-year feature additions to the point that product planners "need to add something" or else the vehicle won't stand up to scrutiny in a comparison test.

But is that really true? I think not. Especially with the aging of my generation, I think there will be greater demand for modern products with old-school design philosophy. Less is more, KISS, etc. And of course, there will be no help from the US government in this endeavor. We've already started the process of mandating driver monitors that can call the police on the vehicle's occupants, and laws that incentivize large SUVs are already with us that put more and more 2-ton-plus machines on the road each day. So unless there is a significant change in the law, startups creating cars that meet my generation's desires but with modern tech are doomed to stay niche. But I think an attempt needs to be made.

There's a lot of misunderstanding with the push to electrified vehicles. It's exactly the same situation that's been discussed above. Electric cars are new and therefore produced under the new, anti-consumer system along with other modern gas cars. The difference is that you can look back on a 30-year-old gas car and say, "Look, it's gas powered, still usable on the road, and respects the user. Show me an electric car that does that." Not wrong but misguided. We need startups to create EVs people can scrutinize and come to the conclusion that it's a car from 2040 that's built in 1960. Futuristic, robust, serviceable, modifiable, enjoyable.

Old products shouldn't be new, old ideas should.

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