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Diffstat (limited to 'eight-track-gorilla.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | eight-track-gorilla.txt | 37 |
1 files changed, 33 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/eight-track-gorilla.txt b/eight-track-gorilla.txt index 572a913..be09c97 100644 --- a/eight-track-gorilla.txt +++ b/eight-track-gorilla.txt @@ -4,13 +4,42 @@ Right now there's a bidding war on ebay for an old Oldsmobile 8 track I pulled o Seriously, I sold an antiquated music player that takes a format no one has manufactured in over four decades for $86. -Just for context, the stereo I'm putting in the bus plays everything from MP3 to whatever you want to plugin in the line-in and cost me $45. +In purely practical terms the current value of the 8 track is bewildering. Eight track cassettes are unwieldy, easily damaged, didn't sound very good even when they were brand new and were never produced in the quantities that vinyl or the cassette tapes that replaced them. There were something of black swan when it comes to music storage formats. -Why? +Consider that the brand new, reasonably hight end car stereo that will replace that eight track costs a mere $45 on Amazon. It will play every digital music format you've ever heard of and dozens more you haven't. It's a knock off a fancier name-brand model most likely made by the same workers in the same factory. Capitalism. + +It's also a complete piece of crap, made of cheap plastic and designed to be chucked in a rubbish bin the minute it starts to malfunction. In fact the advent of the car stereo wiring "harness", which eliminates any need to understand soldering and reduces the installation process to clicking little plastic pieces into place, was designed to facilitated just this kind disposability. Consumer capitalism. + +The 8-track player on the other hand is a purely mechanical device. Whoever installs it will be soldering it in (or perhaps just twisting and taping some wires, but either way there will most definitely not be any snapping of plastic. It can, if it does turn out to not be working, be repaired by just about anyone with the patience to sit down, take it apart and figure out how it works. + +What's more, there is a kind of satisfaction in taking something apart, wrapping your head around how it works and then putting it back together better than it was before. No matter what the things is -- clocks, wood burning stoves, vehicles, radios, tk tk -- I garentee there are people out there devoting their free time and energy to fixing these things. + +Sure, at this point you might have to fabricate some parts if they turn out the be broken, but with 3D printers that's well within the realm of possibility. Forget even 3D printers, even if you have to turn to a good old fashioned metal lathe or something, well, they're still around. + +Anyone with the free time and patience to study it can fix a mechanical device. + + + +At perhaps the simplest level the act of remembering is the act of reconstructing the past in the present. + +Repairing things from the past is an act of memory, but it's an act of memory outside of oneself. + +The person with the 8-track is recreating a collective memory of the sort I'm not sure we have a word to describe.We can describe it economically -- it looks strange to us, even me who has the thing, but it's there, this is a thing of value to some, for whatever inarticulable reason. + +That sounds dismissive, but it's not meant to be. I don't know precisely how to articulate it, and in the case of the 8 track I don't really understand it -- + +-- but I understand what it's like. I have no memory of 1969 Dodge Travcos[^3], but in recreating one I'm doing something more than just making a home for my family. + + + + + + +Digital devices actively discourage this with threats of voiding your warranty, or, in the case of Apple and other, making it deliberately difficult to disassemble thanks to bizarre screws and fasteners that require expensive, specialized tools. + +Pre-digital things tend to be the opposite, often encouraging you to descstruct them by providing detaild schematic (early Apple computers did this as well). -Because the $45 stereo I bought is complete piece of crap, made of cheap plastic and designed to be chucked in a rubbish bin the minute it starts to malfunction. The 8-track player on the other hand is purely mechanical and can be repaired by just about anyone with the patience to sit down, take it apart and figure out how it works. -Sure, at this point you might have to fabricate some parts if they turn out the be broken, but with 3D printers that's well within the realm of possibility. Forget even 3D printers, even if you have to turn to a good old fashioned metal lathe or something, well, they're still around. The point is, just about anyone can fix purely mechanical devices. Almost no one can fix digital devices. This means that the value over time of digital devices is necessarily always falling unless you maintain your device in near mint condition. Mechanical devices on the other hand are purely market driven -- if something proved over time to be a reliable, useful device there's probably a market out there for it. Even if it's an antiquated 8-track player. |