Old Technology Will Save The Future

By Robert Scucci
| Published 26 seconds ago

Tired of every single piece of media looking and sounding the same? Netflix lighting. Overprocessed basslines and drum beats on your favorite songs. That kind of stuff. Have you noticed that movies you rightfully thought looked crappy 15 years ago suddenly look amazing when compared to the slop that’s coming out today? It’s no coincidence. The problem we’re running into is that everybody is using the same new stuff, with the same presets, and getting the same results.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my new tech. I recently bought a new computer that allows me to work more efficiently. I have a smartphone like everybody else, and having a camera in my pocket whenever my kids do something funny is awesome. New technology is great because it offers convenience and lets you streamline daily tasks in ways that were previously unthinkable.

However, there’s one issue, and this is a big one: all of our photos look the same. Every new TV show looks the same. All of our music sounds the same. We’re gaining convenience but losing personality in the process, which is why I genuinely believe that leaning into older technology will eventually lead us to the creative renaissance we’ve all been waiting for.

Don’t Be A Vintage Snob

As a musician who mostly uses equipment that’s at least 20 years old, I’m technically using vintage gear. The case I’m making here isn’t meant to argue that vintage gear is better than modern gear. Most stages have gone silent, with everybody running amp modelers straight through front-of-house PA systems. It’s great. You can roll into a small venue without lugging in a ton of heavy equipment, dial in your tone, and let it rip. The mix is operated by iPads, and it’s super easy to lock into a room. What I’ve noticed, though, is that everybody is using the same kind of technology now, presets and all. Because of this, everybody is starting to sound the same.

I’m not talking about genre or stifled creativity by any measure here. Great songwriters and performers still exist in droves. They’re all just playing through the same, new stuff in most instances, and you can hear it.

So much so that when I lug out my beat-up speaker cabinet and the discontinued amplifier that powers it, combined with an instrument that has electronics inside of it that are made differently than instruments that are made today, I get compliments about my tone. Here’s the thing. My tone is nothing special or groundbreaking. In some contexts, it’s probably extremely basic. It’s just unique in a world that demands uniformity, and people forget how easy that is to achieve. I have no secret sauce here. I just combined the components I could afford, fiddled around with them for a bit to make them work well together, and got what I got.

My gear is vintage, but I’m not going to tell you that vintage equipment is better and modern equipment is worse. I still use modern plugins when I record at home for the sake of efficiency, but what I use in a live setting is considered remarkable, simply because it’s becoming less common.

Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

Lately, I’ve been looking for old camcorders. You know, the kind my parents had when I was in high school and my friends and I were trying to recreate our favorite bits from Jackass. Most of these devices, I’ve found, are extremely proprietary. Meaning you can’t just plug a decades-old Sony Handycam into your MacBook Pro and start editing. You’ll need a multitude of adapters and some patience to convert the footage so it works on a modern workstation. In some cases, you’ll even need to convert tape to digital just to watch the footage on a modern display.

But that’s where the magic happens.

That old equipment you used to plug into your TV via AV cables can now be edited using modern apps like CapCut and DaVinci Resolve. That grainy aesthetic you were looking for is real instead of created with preset filters. Congratulations. You put some work in, and now you have something unique compared to your peers.

The reason The Hateful Eight looks so amazing is because Quentin Tarantino sought out vintage Ultra Panavision 70 lenses, which are exceedingly rare today. Because of the extra effort put into the production, which required extensive workarounds, like adapting to extreme weather and harsh lighting conditions, the 2015 film looks like a classic roadshow from the 60s.

Out With The New, In With The Old

We live in a time where technology changes faster than we can keep up with it. It’s exciting, sure, but it’s also incredibly easy to fall into the preset trap that makes it impossible to stand out. Sitting here writing this, I’m beyond glad I have a word processor and a mechanical keyboard that allow me to work quickly and hit deadlines. But the ancient typewriter sitting in the other room opens up an entirely different creative headspace when I need to think about a project more deliberately.

My typewriter is louder than the final showdown in Dunkirk, and I can only bust it out when I know I’m not going to annoy the hell out of my family with it. When I intend to start blasting out words with machine-gun cadence and reckless abandon, I suddenly realize I have to be more careful. The thing doesn’t have a working backspace key. The keys sit at a steep incline, making it brutal on the wrists over extended periods of time. The hammers lock together if I type too fast. I’m forced to slow my roll and type with intention thanks to those limitations, and sometimes that’s all you need to find the perfect word for the page. Those words may never get published, but there’s something to be said about tinkering with old technology to create something new.

Maybe those typed pages get scanned, drawn on, rendered in Photoshop, and manipulated long after the ink dries. It may not be high art, but it’s allowed to exist on its own terms.

The moral of the story is that we need to tinker. We need to be curious and think past the presets. Modern tech isn’t going away, nor should it. But when you stop and think about how to use something with its own unique set of limitations, the world opens up. Even better, when you learn how to combine these things, the sky’s the limit.