The last year that VHS tapes were more popular than DVDs was 2002. The last year that cassette tapes were more popular than CDs was 1992. The first year that more people had mobile phones than didn’t was 1999. It wasn’t until 2000 that more households had internet access than didn’t.

These shifts in technology marked huge steps forward in our consumption of media. For those who grew up with DVD menus or dial-up internet, our individual experiences represent a shared cultural identity.

But even these technological developments, these huge shifts in our lives, have been surpassed.

Do you remember having to pre-order a CD in a music store? What it was like to program a ringtone into your Nokia 3310? Finding a bonus, hidden feature on a DVD menu? Waiting for your parents to get off the phone so you could use MSN on dial-up?

Consider this: each of those technologies is now obsolete. And we probably never noticed the change.

Netflix has been streaming movies since 2007; the same year that digital music sales surpassed physical sales. Broadband has been the most popular option for household internet since 2005. It’s been over a decade since the first iPhone launched. MSN was shut down 6 years ago.

As technology makes itself increasingly central to everyday life, we are increasingly defining our temporal relationship to the world through it. No longer do we think about where we were when world-changing historical moments occurred, now we ask when we first joined Facebook. We don’t reminisce about great albums, just about whether or not we used LimeWire to download them.

Are we taking advances in technology for granted?

In the past few years, the older technology we thought we had left behind has begun to increase in popularity. 2013 was the first time in almost a decade that vinyl music sales represented any significant portion of music sales, and this has only increased in the years since.

2016 was the first year in 13 years that digital music sales fell as a proportion of total music sales, if only slightly. Even cassette tapes, forgotten and obsolete for several decades, are increasing in popularity.

In 2017, deep into the era of the smartphone, Nokia launched an updated 3310, which went on to sell out in most markets it was available in across the world.

Look at the Sony VX1000. Launched in 1995 and discontinued in 1999, the VX1000 has become an icon of street skateboarding culture, and is still used by filmmakers today. The technology itself still holds up surprisingly well for a 20 year old consumer level camcorder, producing a quality image. But is the technology itself deserving of the loyal following it has, or is it nostalgia for the era the camera represents the driver of people’s passion?

Is it nostalgia for the times that older technology represented that is driving the resurgence of interest in old technology? Or is it the technology itself that invites nostalgia?