Future Nostalgia

Speaker A: 00:00:00

s from, you know, perhaps the: 1990

Speaker B: 00:03:31

But there's a whole load of imperfections that people won't feel nostalgic about, though, as well, you know. But hold on, I just want to talk about some of the imperfections that we do.

Speaker C: 00:03:39

s, early: 2000

Speaker A: 00:04:35

Mmm. Dial-up modem sound. It's a nice sound, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it wouldn't have been, it was annoying at the time. At the time, it was awful. Yeah. And slow. And, you know, I mean, yeah. Nothing good about it, yeah. But good point. Yeah. Actually, just one thing that occurred to me, you know, from watching a film the other day, and we've kind of talked about this before, Nick, off podcast. I was watching the film, it turns out my wife hadn't seen it, which is The Commitments. Oh, yeah. Which was great for us because, you know, I used to live in Dublin, as had my wife. But I think it was made in the early, yeah, early 90s, about 92, 94, around that kind of time. And actually really immediately obvious. And it's, I think, part of the film identity itself is how bloody miserable everything looks. Right. It's scruffy and it's all falling apart and it's dirty and wet. And it's fantastic. I love it. Yeah. And it made me feel really nostalgic for the 70s, 80s, 90s, that kind of time. Because everything now often is a little bit too clean. Even people are a bit too clean. Their clothes are a bit too smart. Whereas if I remember in the early 90s when I was a student, I looked like a tramp, as did all my mates.

Speaker C: 00:05:43

I can't remember the last time I smelt body odour, you know, out on the street. Yeah, yeah. When I was growing up, not that we lived in a really sort of bum area, but, you know, you often found, you often came across people who didn't wash very frequently. So that dirty grittiness, which feels like an imperfection, I definitely feel nostalgic about that. But would I actually want to live there now? Probably not. I've got a theory about this whole nostalgia about imperfections business. Go on then. So I don't think you are nostalgic about the imperfection. I think the imperfection is the thing that you remember and you're nostalgic about the circumstance that you were remembering that thing in. I think you're right. But why would you lean towards the imperfection rather than the

Speaker A: 00:06:25

good stuff?

Speaker C: 00:06:25

I think the imperfections, by definition, the imperfection is like the exception. So your dial-up modem 99% of the time didn't make any noise and you were enjoying having a modem and enjoying doing things. And it was just that annoying five minutes of trying to connect that you remember because it was annoying. But you're actually being nostalgic about the wider experience that is less memorable.

Speaker A: 00:06:51

Nice. So a lot of memory is formed because of emotional experiences. So even if it's a negative one.

Speaker C: 00:06:59

So like the grainy VHS, when it loses tracking or whatever and it starts graining, you were enjoying the movie you were watching when you were a child and the thing that stood out is the graininess. But now, after 20, 30, 40 years, you're remembering this graininess is the thing that stood out because it interrupted you. But actually, you're remembering the discordant emotions of the good time that you were enjoying that movie when actually there's a grainy

Speaker A: 00:07:32

thing that stands out. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Are we ready? Well, I just thought I'd put in another couple of examples. So one I was thinking about, just looking across the range of media books now, I know, you know, books are I but particularly that sort of slightly smudgy printing, you know, that you sometimes see in old books where the ink has leached a little bit and that kind of, you know, the sort of look of old books where there's little kind of flecks of ink and the printing process isn't terribly perfect. And, you know, that's great. It's got real kind of you imagine what if you were a Harry Potter set design, you want to make a book, you'd have scribbles and little kind of, you know, exactly. You'd want it to look like that. So, yeah, but I think I mean, it just sort of so one thing I'm quite into is is a thing called hauntology, which is particularly associated with sort of the music of sort of public information films and things from the late 70s and early 80s, which at the time was sort of chilling and scary. And now it's very simple. Well, people have turned it into a kind of, you know, musical genre of kind of deliberately low res electronic music. I mean, you know, but it's very redolent of that era. And again, celebrating the limitations of the music, you know, equipment that existed at the time. So I think, you know, when you start looking for it, and I mean, that's to say nothing of things like, you know, the sort of like marble, marble is full of imperfections. And, you know, obviously, people want to recreate that, you know, people don't actually would rather have a flawed piece of marble with with texture in it than, you know. So, yeah, so I think I think it is sort of when you when you're alive to this, okay. Oh, yeah, this is actually us feeling attached to the imperfections of the medium. It does crop up everywhere. Yeah, brilliant. So I know, because what we do want to talk about is future imperfections, what we might be nostalgic for in the future. But first of all, Jordan, you were talking about actually, there are some imperfections, actually, we're quite happy that we're not don't feel

Speaker B: 00:09:49

nostalgic at all. There's just some things from the present day that I was thinking about, that I definitely won't feel nostalgic about. I think now, but things like remembering passwords, I don't think I'm ever going to feel nostalgic for, oh, I wish I, you know, had more passwords. Yeah. Or my phone battery dying very quickly, or running out of hard drive space, or different adapters and cables for different devices, instead of maybe just one master cable. Like, I think there's an Apple. Yeah. A lot of things like that, that are imperfections, but they're definitely not things that I think people will look back with fondness. Yeah, I've got a few similar ones. I'll throw mine in there

Speaker C: 00:10:36

while we're there. So virus ridden computers, web pages all looking the same, because they'll use the same framework. Patchy Wi Fi and having to share stupid complicated codes. Broadband that slows down in the evening, just when you want to use it. Yeah. And yeah, I have batteries that don't

Speaker A: 00:10:53

last all day. Yeah. The one I take issue with there is your websites all looking the same, because I think websites kind of look the same in the 90s as well. And yet people are fantastic. And they were crap. They were dreadful. And people now, there's a real sort of movement of people, you know, who are into that 90s web aesthetic with the site visit counters. Yeah. And the pop

Speaker C: 00:11:17

adverts. Like anything, there's a sort of power law of quality. And yes, you get the very well designed kind of bespoke and the ones you're thinking of probably are. But I'm thinking of like the every most product websites you go to, they've just got a generic website. Squarespace template. Yeah, a Squarespace like template. And it's just obviously, you don't even have to look at the code. It's the same website, just different images. That's our Squarespace sponsorship down the squad. Sorry Squarespace, there's a place for you in the comments. So far, it's certainly from those current examples, it's been very tech heavy, right? And

Speaker A: 00:11:55

w, a photograph of someone in: 1990

Speaker C: 00:13:36

I think there is a natural limit. I think music is a good point that we're probably really close to approaching, where actually, you know, the audio files will disagree with me. But the CD is probably not quite there. But the high sample rate, video, sound recording, you can't tell the difference between that and the analog signal or the being there, right? Now, it's possible to experiment because of the psychology of the context and everything else. But if you put somebody in a room, and there's a live orchestra outside, or maybe it's a sort of high quality recording, and all they can hear is the music, they won't be able to tell the difference. There is no difference. So we've got to the point where we've engineered out all the imperfections in that. But I think we've got a long way to go for computer graphics, because computer graphics are incredibly computationally expensive, and you need very big hardware to do it

Speaker A: 00:14:38

to such a high degree. So we think that might be one of the key areas of future. It can continue to be computer graphics, because we already feel like that, and that will still be

Speaker C: 00:14:49

the case. We've got a way to go, I think. Because the graphics you're seeing right now is fully immersive, you know, it's 360 degree, it's extremely high resolution. To get a VR equivalent that doesn't feel like you're wearing a big thing on your head, we're a ways off that yet. But once we've eliminated that, there probably isn't any room for nostalgia about it. In the same way that music, there isn't really any more room for developing nostalgia about current limitations, because there aren't any. Your ears and your brain can't notice the difference. It makes me feel bad for the people a couple hundred years

Speaker A: 00:15:31

between a piece of music from: 1500

Speaker C: 00:16:56

years time takes a: 1940

Speaker A: 00:17:23

I discovered a website last week, where you can now normally something that's done by hand, or has been for years, which is colourising photos. It's just got a kind of algorithm where you put in a black and white photo, hey, presto, it colours it. It's extraordinary. I mean, it's pretty good compared to paying an expert to do it, because it's free, and it's instant. What's it called? Do you know? I can't remember. I'll send you the link. But it's again, yeah, I think as Peter said, it's interesting the thought that we might actually just be able to upscale things. And who knows, even say, okay, I want to hear this piece of music, but I want to hear it like it would have sounded in Mozart's day.

Speaker C: 00:18:02

in this particular studio in: 1960

Speaker A: 00:18:10

Or taking a photo and turning it into a film, which at the moment, if you've seen infilling, where they'll take a picture, I think this is Dali or maybe Stable Diffusion or something does this, where you take a picture, and it will then just put plausible, all of the stuff around that picture. So if someone's standing in a room, it'll fill in a room that looks exactly like the room that's in the picture. And it's mind blowing. Now, I don't see it as unbelievable that you might be able to take a picture of, you know, the girl with a pearl earring, and suddenly turn it into a film of a girl with a pearl earring. That seems entirely plausible in the next 10 years. Interesting. Jordan, anything to add at this point?

Speaker B: 00:18:53

I think anything that we do now manually, that could become automated in the future, may be something we feel nostalgic about. So like the one that leaps to mind is writing text on either handwriting something or typing onto a keyboard with language models, AI language models and stuff. And having that taken away, I feel like that's something that people could feel nostalgic for. And I think AI, a lot of AI applications are going to have that similar thing where it's removing like the human element from a process that we do.

Speaker A: 00:19:33

Yeah, it's interesting. Have you seen the film Her? Yeah. I mean, have you seen that? Oh, it's staggering. Massively recommend it. I think it's Spike Jones. The main characters played by Joaquin Phoenix is set in the sort of near future. And his job is to write letters for people, like personalized letters. So if I wanted to write my mum a happy birthday letter, his job is to do that, you know, for other people, which is a very plausible kind of job that someone might want. It's not in the old days. It was like, oh, you hand wrote me a letter. Now it's like, oh, here's a letter that a human has written, you know, is the remarkable thing that a human wrote it. And not that it's written by hand or anything, but just that a human composed the words is plausible. I like that. That sounds interesting. Well, it sounds like we're already starting to drift towards our predictions, right? Are we happy to do that? Or is there anything we want to cover up first? Yeah, go on. I'm saddened, I suppose, but I can't help agreeing with Peter's sort of claim that music recording is essentially perfect and will not improve. But what I was thinking was about the John Cage piece, 4 minutes 33, which is essentially just silence. And so the idea is that a performer comes on stage and sits there for four minutes, 33 seconds in front of their chosen instrument. And believe it or not, you can get recordings of that piece of music. I've got one you can have, I can sell it to you. I've got the sheet music. Have you? Okay, brilliant. Which is quite an interesting document. But the whole point of it is to call attention to, is to take the content out of the medium and to call attention to the medium. So in a concert hall, for example, you're hearing coughs and splutters and a little creak and someone farting. And that's part of, that's the medium that you're experiencing. So now, if what Peter says is true, at some point the medium will be entirely empty. It almost won't exist. Once you take the content out, there will be no medium to enjoy.

Speaker C: 00:21:49

Well, I'm saying there'll be an opportunity to arbitrarily create your own medium.

Speaker A: 00:21:54

Right. But to do things like, oh, let me put some record scratches on that empty track. I know, how depressing, though.

Speaker C: 00:22:01

ouse in Sydney Opera House in: 1942

Speaker A: 00:22:16

So, yeah, that's it. That's my John Cage test is, can you, is it now impossible to perform four minutes, 33 seconds? If so, we've reached technological perfection. What I don't know is what the equivalent of that would be for other media. The sorts of things you were talking about there, the examples, is either wonderful or terrible or both.

Speaker C: 00:22:39

You know, being able to recreate that. I mean, I think the analogy is that sort of one of the tragedies of modern world is, you know, in our sort of privileged Western life is that everything is kind of on demand. Yeah. And it's easy to acquire. So you've gained a lot of convenience at the sort of the cost of other things we've previously talked on about in other things. There's something nice about everyone having to, if you wanted to watch something on telly in the 80s. Yeah. You had to watch it at the same time everybody else watched it.

Speaker A: 00:23:16

I think it's a lot of nostalgia for blockbusters, for example. Because, and again, if someone had said to us, what if you could watch every film you wanted to by pressing a button? You'd be like, yeah, that's amazing. But of course, now we look back and go, but it was really nice going down blockbusters with your dad and choosing a film. I thought you meant blockbusters, the quiz show. No, obviously that as well. But, you know, that you'd go down to the video shop and spend 10 minutes browsing the sci-fi section. Finding the one that you wanted isn't there. Yeah, all of that. And of course, you would have quite happily got rid of all that if you could. But now, of course, you know, we realised that there was something in it that we've lost. And also, I don't know if getting close to that, we talked about serendipity and algorithms as well, when it's Spotify and Netflix and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah. No, I think that definitely counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, let's make a couple of predictions. I want to kick off with some. Certainly one of these I've talked about before. Driving. I think we'll miss driving because driving is definitely an imperfection, the way that we drive, especially Nick drives, actually.

Speaker C: 00:24:21

I entirely agree. Just one stream. It's a stream of imperfection.

Speaker A: 00:24:25

Yeah, and I think even Peter might have mentioned before, hey, there might even be special places where you can go and get in this sort of hunk of metal and drive it around and stuff like that.

Speaker C: 00:24:33

Well, I think that's going to be necessary. You'll have separate lanes on the motorway where you're allowed to drive manually. Oh, really? You reckon? During the transition period. Oh, in the transition period. And then ultimately, if you're into cars and you're a bit of a petrol head, there'll be old airfields and old racetracks that are selling that as a service. You can bring your banger along and drive it around. Maybe you'll need a special license to have a combustion engine sort of thing.

Speaker A: 00:24:59

Yeah, that's a 100% plausible prediction, I think. I've got another one, and this is my only other one, which is the weather. So I would say certainly in the UK, we have quite mild weather. Now, for a moment, I'm going to argue that's an imperfection because there's something lovely about a hot day and there's something lovely about a very cold day with lots of snow, let's say. All right. And so therefore, the fact that certainly in the UK, it's always a bit meh somewhere in the middle for much of the year. I'm going to call that an imperfection for the moment. OK. And so therefore, I think, you know, in 10, 20, 30, 40, whatever. Yeah, we're going to miss that mildness. Do you remember when it wasn't hurricanes every June, every December? I mean, it doesn't snow as much anymore. Probably global warming. I'm not a climatologist, but that very much goes into the Coghill theory that actually, yeah, you definitely say snow was an inconvenience. But the Coghill theory that, you know, it's associated with the pleasant things you were doing. And it's nostalgia for that, because I don't think snow by itself is a bit of a pain in the arse. But you can have such a lot of fun with it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My kids, I think my son has seen snow once when he was little. Hasn't snowed for ages. Yeah, yeah. So those are my couple.

Speaker B: 00:26:18

What else, Jordan? I've got a few. Shopping or buying things in person. Yep. Making things, like making crafts and stuff, because I think when you can 3D print stuff and just automate that, I think people will probably miss just, you know, building and creating. Obscure one, but uploading photos to social media. I think just people, I think that's something that people do a lot now. But I think with the metaverse or like VR and stuff, maybe it won't be a thing at all. It'll just, you know, you won't need to upload images. It won't be a conscious thing.

Speaker C: 00:27:04

It'll just be a sort of, you'll think it, it'll happen.

Speaker B: 00:27:07

And people might miss that, like, waiting period. It's a similar thing. We were having a discussion in the office the other day about like downloading things, like downloading software and wait, wait. I guess that act of waiting for something to be put onto your computer or onto your smartphone instead of just instantly being there.

Speaker C: 00:27:22

I had sort of waiting for that. Yeah, downloads is something. Yeah, but yeah, I've, you know, I've got fond memories, but they're not fond. They're annoying memories of trying to download like a two megabyte file on a dial up and it would take an hour or two. Oh, I mean, that's. And it would crap out halfway through. But that, that, that. We had special programs to manage that. So they would pick up the download halfway through when it crashed. It just like that. But that's. But then again, I'm not reminiscing about that because that was a pain. I'm reminiscing about being into computers as a kid and doing fun things with my mates. That was.

Speaker A: 00:27:56

Well, my, my, my equivalent of that was waiting for the tape to finish loading on my 8-bit Atari. Yeah, that sort of thing. Hold on. We're going the wrong way with our nostalgia. So we want future nostalgia. Yeah. Anything more, Jordan?

Speaker B: 00:28:13

A weird one I had was like lining up, queuing up for airport security. Like those more like ritualized or ceremonial things that we do now that may become obsolete in the future. Really? How? Well, I just think maybe with the speed of like, like air travel, aviation. But yeah, go on. I just think that maybe, you know, we won't, we won't have a need to or just, you know, if you look at like how there's body scanners and stuff and that, you know, you have an e-passport at the gate. You don't need to like that whole idea of queuing up and waiting to scan your bag through the x-ray machine. Who knows if.

Speaker A: 00:28:49

I just somehow think it's going to get worse. But if Elon's plan comes to fruition for Hyperloops everywhere, you know, even just traveling will be on demand. Oh, do you want to go to LA for dinner? And off we'll go. And, you know, 30 minutes later, we'll be there. Yeah. Hey, do you remember getting the tube to Beijing?

Speaker C: 00:29:05

You know. Interesting. Peter? I think there's a few sort of domestic things. Like it's very, it's early days of like robot, domestic robots that you can hoover and things, but they're not very good. But I think that will become widespread. So things like hoovering and cleaning the loo, unpleasant and boring things to do now. But you'll kind of think, oh, yeah, that gave there was a small job that gave me time to think about stuff. I don't do that anymore.

Speaker A: 00:29:35

I'm not going to get nostalgic about those because I don't do them. But also, I think there's a future, future nostalgia there because I think soonish there will be some advances in technology, which means we will get that early technology. And then beyond that, people will be able to be nostalgic about the early technology.

Speaker C: 00:29:55

Yeah, they'll be nostalgic about their little crap robot hoover when they've got a house that sort of cleans itself. Yeah. Hello, I'm Rex. Will you be my friend? And maybe also, but maybe we'll be nostalgic about forming nostalgias because there's nothing to be nostalgic about anymore.

Speaker A: 00:30:13

fun. Retro sort of, you know,: 2010

Speaker C: 00:31:44

CGI that's made to look really, really well like models.

Speaker A: 00:31:47

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like made it look like stop motion animation. But yeah, it's like the famously terrible CGI in that Mummy, the Mummy 2, I think, with the Scorpion King. It's a really famous scene that everyone points to as an example of the worst CGI ever. And I think people will want to do that intentionally for all kinds of effects. Because that makes me think of the Quentin Tarantino film, which all his films famously hark back to previous films. But the one I'm thinking about, and I'm sure the example in Kill Bill, but I'm thinking about. Death Proof. I'm thinking about Pulp Fiction, where the boxer, what's his name? Anyway, Bruce Willis. Butch, there you go. He jumps into a car with someone, Lobos, the taxi driver. And as the car's going along, the back and the scene in the car at the back is so obviously film or whatever. It's not real. And I think that's what he's doing there. It's a similar sort of thing, I think. Yeah, yeah, he's full. I mean, like the missing reel in Death Proof, I think it is. And well, it's just a thing where it goes missing reel. Oh, really? I think they've got to have all the kind of film scratches and things that he puts on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: 00:33:00

He's been harking back to that, those sort of shaky cam back of car scenes.

Speaker A: 00:33:05

Yeah, well, would that we had a new Tarantino, but maybe they're out there. If so, you know, please step forward. But that's what we need is a new Tarantino to come and do the equivalent of that, but with crappy CGI. Quite exactly. We need to wrap up. Before we do, one final thing. I just thought in the future, when we've all got amazing magic diet pills, we'll miss people being fat. Yeah, because this is spun off in a different direction. Because famously, now, if you look at photos from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, you know, whenever people are a lot thinner than they are now. And so therefore, there's an element of everyone looks... And they didn't have the Instagram filters to do that. Right, exactly. But in the future, we can all take magic pills and just have perfect bodies. And we'll go, hey, do you remember when, wasn't it nice when everyone was a bit fat and squishy? And so yeah, that's my other one. All right, we need to stop there. I miss wheezing upstairs. Okay, that was fun. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Jordan Fermanis, Nick Hare, and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.