Memory
Nostalgia is not what it used to be, and it is measurable
The word once described an illness. Its journey to a marketing category is short, documented and slightly alarming.
Lucienne Barr
Contributing writer, What People Miss
Lucienne writes about objects, obsolescence and the design decisions that outlive their products.
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15 articles
Objects
Carbon paper and the copy that had to be decided in advance
Before copying was cheap, a duplicate existed only if someone chose to make it at the moment of writing. That changed what…
Objects
Rooftop aerials and the visible shape of a broadcast map
Every roof carried a metal arrow pointing at a transmitter. You could read a region's television geography by looking up.
Objects
The mixtape was a gift made out of somebody's afternoon
A compilation cassette cost the length of the music to make. That real-time expense was the whole message.
Objects
The cheque book and the days when money was in transit
A cheque took days to clear, and that delay was doing real work. Instant payment removed the buffer along with the wait.
Objects
When every table had an ashtray
Smoking was so ordinary that buildings, furniture and aircraft were designed around it. The reversal happened fast enough to watch.
Objects
The address book and the friendships you had to copy out by hand
Every few years you transcribed your contacts into a new book, and that transcription was an audit of who was still in your life.
Objects
The encyclopaedia on the shelf and the edition that stayed wrong
A household bought a fixed version of everything known, and it aged in the room. Continuous editing fixed that and created a…
Memory
Flashbulb memories and the certainty that is usually wrong
Vivid memories of where you were during a major event feel exact and are frequently inaccurate, which is one of the…
Objects
Overhead projectors and the lesson that was written while you watched
For most of the last century a teacher could think aloud in ink on a lit sheet of acetate. The slide deck that replaced it arrives…
Objects
The paper receipt and the proof you kept in a drawer
A till slip was a private, unlinked record of a purchase that existed only where you put it. What replaced it is neither private…
Objects
The bookmark and the objects that held your place for you
Reading used to leave physical traces: a marker, a spine crease, a folded corner. Those traces were a record of attention that…
Memory
The album was an argument about which pictures counted
Assembling photographs into a book meant selecting, ordering and discarding. Nothing in a phone requires anybody to make those…
Memory
Names written inside books and the ownership that left a trace
Books used to carry evidence of who had held them. That evidence made objects traceable in a way that files and licences are not.
Memory
When a town's record was a newspaper nobody kept
Local reporting was the only systematic account of ordinary places. Where it thinned, the record of those places thinned with it.