Everything old is new again

Do you remember that moment when your mother mentioned she happened to have kept those vertiginous 70s wedges in the loft, and yeah, if you liked them you could have them? And then they went on to become the most coveted item in your wardrobe, and the day the strap finally broke was the worstdayinyourentirelife? Well, let’s hope you’ve kept that old paper diary in the loft, as well as some AA batteries.

Old tech is now new tech. In the past couple of days, we’ve seen a trend for cameras dumping the rechargeable lithium ion batteries, with the proprietary chargers and cables, in favour of good ‘ol AAs (two totally counts as a trend, alright?). And there’s diary.com, where users are encouraged to write a blog, but *gasp* to keep it private.

Polaroid dumped their much loved Instamatic camera not so long ago, presumably because digital photography had killed the need for instant prints. But lo! Didn’t they go and launch a digital camera with an onboard photo printer at CES this year?

Could it be that we’ve explored the very limits of technology, packed in as much power as we can, ramped up the megapixels, and made the whole experience more real than real life, and now we’re… bored? Scared? Broke?

It would certainly explain that whilst there are laptops out there with more power than your average corporate server, it’s the netbooks that really stole the limelight in 2008. It seems it might be time to dig out that Commodore 64 and reclaim that very first Nokia.

Viva la retro.