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I suspect it's the same appeal as woodworking or hor rodding or living history reenactment.



Humans also love their tools. While tools get more advanced, they sometimes lose some charm or benefits of older tools.

For me, an interest in retro tech is seeing how people did things in the past and realizing we lost some "nice" experiences along the way.

Also, in a world where everything becomes obsolete at record speeds, something so obsolete feels stuck in time.


> Humans also love their tools. While tools get more advanced, they sometimes lose some charm or benefits of older tools.

This is true. In summer when I sit in the dark with the windows open (hot country and no AC and I don't want to attract bugs), my 4K computer monitor is totally incapable of dimming to a level that doesn't blind me. Even with white on black/dark mode and brightness set to 0. In fact, even during the day I work with brightness 0 on that thing, it seems all monitors are optimised for max brightness these days.

Meanwhile, my old VT520 terminal has an analog brightness dial which I can turn so low that I can barely make out the letters in a pitch-black room <3




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