Much of what is in this thread sounds like scientists conducting an experiment on simple life forms, and trying to explain why those single-cell amoebas do what they do. But maybe those amoebas have a different kind of intelligence than what the scientists understand or care about.
In the early 70's, John Naisbitt wrote a popular book called Megatrends. I read it, but don't remember much of it except that he predicted a high-touch reaction to high tech. He described people whose interface with the world was intuitive, personal, and physical, who would use technology but hate it. I was skeptical, being a high-tech guy then and for the decades following. But I'm swinging the other way in my old age. I'm finding that I have to balance the technological with the sensory aesthetic. This is one (of several) reasons I still sustain interaction with physical media.
(I'm also perhaps wise enough to care more about music than about signal/noise ratio.)
But lots of people were and are there from the start. Technology is so ubiquitous that people think of it the same way they think of advertising--ultimately corrupt, but still subject to it and swayed by it. They use technology but hate it. People like that who grew up with it lack the sense of novelty that people my age have towards software-based technology, and it can't excite them as something wholly new. This happens even with three-dimensional technologies. People my age looked forward with unbridled anticipation and enthusiasm to getting their driver's license, because it meant freedom. Now, many 16-year-olds see cars as another opportunity to wait in line, which seems to them more like being trapped than freedom. Some of them are excited about technology that would take away the need for cars they have to drive, but I suspect a greater number are simply moving to where they don't have to use a car for daily life.
(I call them cliff-dwellers. If we look at the native-American cultures of the Southwest, we see a stark contrast between the original residents, who live in tightly clustered villages stacked on top of each other, and the incoming migrant people, who were Athabascan nomads. Yes, that was the better part of a millennium ago, but still the pueblo cultures live in mostly friendly but still uneasy proximity with the Navajo people. Count me with the Navajos--no cliff dweller am I.)
Those who need the physical world love the sheer authenticity of vinyl records, tapes, and, eventually, though probably to a lesser extent, CDs. Vinyl records, unlike tapes, are durable (on the scale of a lifetime) with even modest care, and the technology required to play them seems (at least) possible to make even in a home workshop. And even if it's flawed, it's still more than good enough to listen to music without distraction.
Lest we proud technologists think of these people as mere liberal arts majors in college ("liberal arts major" = amoeba--see above), I would include more than a few engineers in this mix (myself included). Engineers who loved to design three-dimensional things are losing the long war with software, and they know it. Hence, they latch onto hobbies that still depend on beautifully made machines that express genius of design as well as high craft. It's not enough that it looks technical or manufactured, in the sense of steampunk style, it also has to work, and work well. These sorts of people end up enamored with tape decks, turntables, wristwatches, film photography (including print-making and displaying), classic cars, and so on.
So, vinyl record technology is benefitting from a confluence of (some of) the young for whom the wonders of software hold no sense of novelty or romance, the mechanically inclined who prefer the three-dimensional world to software, and those who need the high touch of the physical world as a reaction to the ubiquity and domination of technology.
Rick "how's that for a teenage philosophy essay?" Denney
In the early 70's, John Naisbitt wrote a popular book called Megatrends. I read it, but don't remember much of it except that he predicted a high-touch reaction to high tech. He described people whose interface with the world was intuitive, personal, and physical, who would use technology but hate it. I was skeptical, being a high-tech guy then and for the decades following. But I'm swinging the other way in my old age. I'm finding that I have to balance the technological with the sensory aesthetic. This is one (of several) reasons I still sustain interaction with physical media.
(I'm also perhaps wise enough to care more about music than about signal/noise ratio.)
But lots of people were and are there from the start. Technology is so ubiquitous that people think of it the same way they think of advertising--ultimately corrupt, but still subject to it and swayed by it. They use technology but hate it. People like that who grew up with it lack the sense of novelty that people my age have towards software-based technology, and it can't excite them as something wholly new. This happens even with three-dimensional technologies. People my age looked forward with unbridled anticipation and enthusiasm to getting their driver's license, because it meant freedom. Now, many 16-year-olds see cars as another opportunity to wait in line, which seems to them more like being trapped than freedom. Some of them are excited about technology that would take away the need for cars they have to drive, but I suspect a greater number are simply moving to where they don't have to use a car for daily life.
(I call them cliff-dwellers. If we look at the native-American cultures of the Southwest, we see a stark contrast between the original residents, who live in tightly clustered villages stacked on top of each other, and the incoming migrant people, who were Athabascan nomads. Yes, that was the better part of a millennium ago, but still the pueblo cultures live in mostly friendly but still uneasy proximity with the Navajo people. Count me with the Navajos--no cliff dweller am I.)
Those who need the physical world love the sheer authenticity of vinyl records, tapes, and, eventually, though probably to a lesser extent, CDs. Vinyl records, unlike tapes, are durable (on the scale of a lifetime) with even modest care, and the technology required to play them seems (at least) possible to make even in a home workshop. And even if it's flawed, it's still more than good enough to listen to music without distraction.
Lest we proud technologists think of these people as mere liberal arts majors in college ("liberal arts major" = amoeba--see above), I would include more than a few engineers in this mix (myself included). Engineers who loved to design three-dimensional things are losing the long war with software, and they know it. Hence, they latch onto hobbies that still depend on beautifully made machines that express genius of design as well as high craft. It's not enough that it looks technical or manufactured, in the sense of steampunk style, it also has to work, and work well. These sorts of people end up enamored with tape decks, turntables, wristwatches, film photography (including print-making and displaying), classic cars, and so on.
So, vinyl record technology is benefitting from a confluence of (some of) the young for whom the wonders of software hold no sense of novelty or romance, the mechanically inclined who prefer the three-dimensional world to software, and those who need the high touch of the physical world as a reaction to the ubiquity and domination of technology.
Rick "how's that for a teenage philosophy essay?" Denney
The Ebel Chronograph of which you speak was first offered in 1982, when the company owner (Pierre-Alain Blum, grandson of the founder) foresaw the return of fine mechanical watches and sought out any remaining old stock of the Zenith 3019PHC chronograph movement. This was the famed Zenith El Primero, which shares a claim with Seiko and a consortium led by Heuer to the first self-winding chronograph movement in 1969. (Zenith is an old company, but was purchased in 1971 by the coincidentally named Zenith Electronics Corporation, who sold it to an investor in Switzerland in 1978, but who also had halted mechanical watch production in 1976). Blum bought a few thousand old-stock movements that Zenith had squirreled away, finished them, and installed them in watches. The resulting Ebel Sport Classic Chronograph retailed for twice what the (manual-wind) Rolex Daytona of the day cost. Ebel was hugely successful in the 80's, being a high-quality producer that was also an effective marketer. Ebel's sales encouraged Zenith to restart production, which they did in 1986. My Ebel chronograph from that period dates from that first year new movement production. Rolex, needing an automatic-wind movement for their chronograph, then sought out Zenith to make movement to their spec. (It's a myth that Rolex only made their own movements. Rolex SA of Geneva didn't even own its movement manufacture until 2006, when it bought what had been the Aegler company of Biel/Bienne, who made their movements, though there was a lot of mutual shareholding and exclusivity.) The Zenith-powered Daytona came out in 1988, but the movement in the Ebel is better, retaining the 5-Hz high-beat design of the original El Primero (Rolex developed and started using their own excellent chronograph movement in 1999). In 1994, the last year Ebel ordered movements from Zenith, the steel Ebel Chronograph retailed for more than 50% higher than the steel Rolex Daytona, and did so quite successfully, though at lower production levels. Ebel's subsequent ownership troubles came later. After '94, regular Ebel chronographs used a Lemania base design that was also used by Breguet, Ulysse Nardin (who bought the IP from Ebel in 2012), and Omega.
if people weren't getting rich from it.
