Re: Nostalgia? Probably.
I have no nostalgia beyond the received or imagined, as I was born just before the Wall came down so my childhood was more Gameboys and Nintendo 64s. However, from the environmental perspective, repair is always better than buying new. Old equipment, as others have mentioned on this thread, assumed repair would be in order at some point.
Valves are fascinating to me because of their existence on the cusp of understanding - the cathode, anode and grid can all be seen, and the electrons imagined, which can't be said for an NPN! I think this makes circuits including them more impressive and mind-blowing than the simply hand-waving black box magic of a touchscreen.
There is also the humanity of a case with some kind of human touch (in the older wooden objects designed to be a stalwart part of the home furnishings) and in professional gear, the solidity of construction and the absence of plastic. New metal or wood pieces can be produced, and like the Japanese practice of Kintsugi (in which broken pottery is repaired with glue containing gold so the repair is visible and beautiful) all actions add to the history and archaeology of the object. Perhaps someone in 50 years will come across my old radio and think of what I might have listened to, as I do to those before me.
There is a custodianship that is missing in much of modernity. Buildings are razed and demolished instead of re-used and adapted; clothes are discarded causing huge problems for traditional high-quality textile makers; skills are devalued as robots are viewed as saviours, and humans are made stupid by our reliance on them. Richard Sennett's 'Homo Faber' trilogy explores these themes. He argues that we are human through our making capability, not our intelligence. 'The Craftsman' should be required reading.
Case in point: I have had some windows made for a project that involve two panes of glass mounted on wool felt, secured with battens. The wool absorbs any condensation and any repairs can be carried out with simple tools on site, the only expense being a pane of glass. By contrast a double-glazed unit is usually imported from Austria, is energy-intensive in its production as noble gases have to be concentrated to fill the cavity and will leak and become compromised. Its only fate can be landfill because of the chemical bonding agents used. The former were inspired by my experiences behind this kind of glazing in -30C winters in Sweden. They work excellently, but it is hard for a company predicated on the new to make money from them like double-glazed units, despite being basically simple and sustainable.
Well that became a thesis. This morning I'm working on repairing some C18th joinery, and I think I'm the first to see it since the joiner put it in all those years ago. One feels close to the past at these moments.
|