Just yesterday, I remembered my Nokia phone I had in college. It was from a series of phones called “xpress music” that were objectively worse in every way than the phone I currently have. There was an incredible desire to feel the click of a key at times. Incredibly loving products?
I’ve written about nostalgia in the past, and how our “experiencing selves” and “remembering selves” have very different perceptions of reality. If you’ve always had wrist pain as a result of pressing uncomfortable buttons while texting, remembering your old Nokia phone reminds you of how the phone had physical keys. It’s just that it feels good. And how simple it was then.
One reason this happens is that fading effect bias, This is psychology, and emotional memories associated with negative events fade more easily than those associated with positive events and outcomes. Let’s say you’ve had a nice two-week vacation, and while you’re there, you fall and hurt yourself, and you spend two days on vacation in pain. For those who experienced it, these two days must have been painful. But looking back on my vacation decades later, all my memories of my trip to Italy are happy. You may recall days spent in pain, but the actual memory of the pain itself fades, leaving only memories of happy times spent with your family.
Coming back to technology, I think another reason we love old technologies is because they are so closely tied to fond memories of the times they belonged to.the very definition nostalgia People generally have a yearning for the past, and thinking about the “old days” automatically leads to a yearning for technology.
We are not all equally susceptible to this technology-related nostalgia. Older people, and those who may be struggling to keep up with newer phones, are most likely longing for a time when all they have to do is hold the handset to their ear and dial to make a call. I have. number.
Sometimes it makes me want an old-fashioned typewriter, even though I know the fact that I’ve never used an old-fashioned typewriter and it was a lot more trouble than using a computer. It’s a kind of nostalgia Anemoia, a person feels longing for an era in which he has never lived. Given that much of our nostalgia is stories we tell ourselves about times gone by, it’s no surprise that just listening to the stories of people who lived through them can make us feel a desire for that era.
The next time someone eloquently states how much they love their old phone, you probably know to take what they say with a healthy pinch of salt.
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