Article: Why is vinyl making a comeback?

It’s not just nostalgia… 

 

"But the conventional wisdom is too simplistic, as it so often is. Across the board, consumers who weren’t even around when these technologies first lost their prominence are driving their resurgence. How can a 15-year-old be nostalgic for a turntable, when her parents never owned one in the first place? How can you accuse a 25-year-old computer programmer of being lost in the past, simply because he collects hip-hop 45s in his spare time?

If nostalgia more broadly understood plays a role, though, that’s a bad thing only if you believe that progress ought to move in a linear direction.

"How can a 15-year-old be nostalgic for a turntable, when her parents never owned one in the first place?"

In today’s rapidly innovative, digitally driven economy, reverence for the old stands in opposition to the Utopian futurism at the heart of Silicon Valley. The past is relevant only in terms of how quickly you speed away from it, and as long as Moore’s Law holds steady — doubling the speed of processors and halving their cost every 18 months — the only hardware and software that truly matters is the next version. No one pines for Windows 2.0, or the iPhone 4; progress is a one-way street, and anyone who dares to reverse course is a Luddite."

(Via Why is vinyl making a comeback? ‘Nostalgia’ doesn’t quite cut it - LA Times.)