Re: Compact Discs / Is Obsolete Technology Obsolete?

palm93 wrote about "Compact Discs" and the tactile sensation of handling physical media as opposed to infinite playlists a click away.

blu.256 wrote about how "Obsolete" technology can be perfectly functional and serve a purpose.

Both of these posts got me thinking about a project I saw some time ago somewhere on the web. A maker had built a music player with an RFID reader. They had bought a whole bunch of typical, cheap, white RFID key cards and a laser printer. With the printer they could print out album art on the cards. The music player would have all these albums saved, and start whichever one whose corresponding key card was read.

It was said that this gave back some of the tactile feel of choosing a CD to play. The player didn't need a display, for example. A few old fashioned buttons were perfectly enough.

This sounded like a great project, but it falls short of the actual thing. If I make this thing I can't send you a key card so you can listen to it. The music is not on the key card. It also requires custom tinkering and parts. Programming, and maybe even soldering. An old CD, DVD or cassette tape has something else.

But you know what they sadly don't have? Somewhere to play them. I haven't had a cassette or CD player in years. The only thing I have that could theoretically play CDs or DVDs is our old PS3, but I think that specific laser head is shot or something. It refuses to play anything but bluray or PS3 games. No matter why it's broken, the point is still that these mediums feel obsolete to me. Not because they don't inherently work, but because I can't use them.

And let's face it; one rather big reason the hard disk drives, memory cards, and later the cloud won out is because these things would break. All the time. How many CDs have I lost to scrapes and scratches? How many DVDs? Some of them just die from old age. And the manufacturing quality is all over the place. I had a bunch of DVDs come out of an airplane trip full of bubbles on the surface. Totally unreadable, of course.

But that offline, tactile, concrete feeling of media is something I miss. The game cassette in my old Game Boy, Nintendo 64, or Sega. That durability and heft. The art on it. Pushing it into its socket, or pulling it out. It's a special kind of nostalgia. Almost more for the medium than the games themselves.

There's nothing to share with friends anymore. I can't lend someone an album. Sure, I can crack a stream of it and send it over, but that's illegal. Sending a Spotify link is definitely not the same thing, and last time I tried clicking one it wanted me to log in before I could listen. And not even that works, because on my free account I can't actually choose a specific song to listen to, only shuffled playlists.

I don't know where I wanted to go with this or where I ended up. I guess I just feel that everything around computers is becoming increasingly abstract and sort of detached from what I want it to mean to be human together.

-- CC0 ew0k, 2021-10-28