As I hurtle towards middle age and the inevitable, inexorable and brutal change in outlook such a life achievement brings, I find myself retracing my existential roots and celebrating them. And, frankly, I can't imagine a better time to become a teenager and then an adult, than the glorious 1980's. But I guess I'm biased.
Aside from big hair, leg-warmers and a hundred and one other examples of eighties fashion aberrations, my teenage years recall the last era of elegantly style, before ripped jeans showed up on the scene. I'm talking about a fashion sense most accurately rendered in movies like Grosse Point Blank, Donnie Darko and Pretty In Pink; not too excessively garish 1980's fashion, just understated - Cold War 'noir' - classically sophisticated. Elegant cool.
The music of the moment is also critical in locking onto the mood of the time; Psychedelic Furs, INXS, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode. During the nineties, a degree of distaste for such aural pleasures understandably developed as the social contexts shifted together with attitudes and tastes. But now, 15-20 years later, a degree of distance has allowed a refreshed context to be re-applied and a resulting renewed appreciation is beginning to flourish for what was, for many, a real social renaissance period.
Today the word 'retro' seems to be increasingly used as code for the 1980's and the embryonic electronic phenomenon the decade heralded. The Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. The CBM-64 and the Sinclair ZX-81. Back To The Future and De Loreans. Pac-man. Digital wristwatches with musical alarms, (I proudly wore one such example; a Zeon Rock Album watch that bleeped simple renditions of five Beatles hits as time alarms), the ancestral precursors to today's mobile ring tones.
I am a retired gamer. The most significant pull for me as a child, teenager and twenty-something was videogames. But I've more or less given up on them in recent years, jaded and detached by much of the recent contemporary tat that passes itself off as entertainment to a fresh generation that doesn't know any better. But lately I've found salvation in the burgeoning Retro movement, games magazines have recently switched onto this with regular and significant retro features and there's even now a complete magazine devoted to the area. These allow me to bask in my youth again and relive those heady days all over again.
A couple of weeks back I visited a small computing museum in the University of Bath in Swindon, where I met up with fellow #joiito regular and, like me, a follower of 80's technological fashion, John Rochester.
It was a total blast manhandling Atari VCS consoles, an Oric-1 and I even managed a quick play of Minestorm on the uniquely classic Vectrex.
But I wonder what the technological revolution will make of its old self as it progressively continues to review its historical origins. The 80's is where it all more or less took off, and the products and marvels of that decade are now being treated with a degree of reverence and respect. The brands, inventors, industry leaders and demigods of the time are now increasingly being viewed through saintly spectacles.
I wonder what we'll be saying, what the view of the digital historians will be on the dotcom boom, Google and blogging, twenty years down the line from now.
Aside from big hair, leg-warmers and a hundred and one other examples of eighties fashion aberrations, my teenage years recall the last era of elegantly style, before ripped jeans showed up on the scene. I'm talking about a fashion sense most accurately rendered in movies like Grosse Point Blank, Donnie Darko and Pretty In Pink; not too excessively garish 1980's fashion, just understated - Cold War 'noir' - classically sophisticated. Elegant cool.
The music of the moment is also critical in locking onto the mood of the time; Psychedelic Furs, INXS, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode. During the nineties, a degree of distaste for such aural pleasures understandably developed as the social contexts shifted together with attitudes and tastes. But now, 15-20 years later, a degree of distance has allowed a refreshed context to be re-applied and a resulting renewed appreciation is beginning to flourish for what was, for many, a real social renaissance period.
Today the word 'retro' seems to be increasingly used as code for the 1980's and the embryonic electronic phenomenon the decade heralded. The Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. The CBM-64 and the Sinclair ZX-81. Back To The Future and De Loreans. Pac-man. Digital wristwatches with musical alarms, (I proudly wore one such example; a Zeon Rock Album watch that bleeped simple renditions of five Beatles hits as time alarms), the ancestral precursors to today's mobile ring tones.
I am a retired gamer. The most significant pull for me as a child, teenager and twenty-something was videogames. But I've more or less given up on them in recent years, jaded and detached by much of the recent contemporary tat that passes itself off as entertainment to a fresh generation that doesn't know any better. But lately I've found salvation in the burgeoning Retro movement, games magazines have recently switched onto this with regular and significant retro features and there's even now a complete magazine devoted to the area. These allow me to bask in my youth again and relive those heady days all over again.
A couple of weeks back I visited a small computing museum in the University of Bath in Swindon, where I met up with fellow #joiito regular and, like me, a follower of 80's technological fashion, John Rochester.
It was a total blast manhandling Atari VCS consoles, an Oric-1 and I even managed a quick play of Minestorm on the uniquely classic Vectrex.
But I wonder what the technological revolution will make of its old self as it progressively continues to review its historical origins. The 80's is where it all more or less took off, and the products and marvels of that decade are now being treated with a degree of reverence and respect. The brands, inventors, industry leaders and demigods of the time are now increasingly being viewed through saintly spectacles.
I wonder what we'll be saying, what the view of the digital historians will be on the dotcom boom, Google and blogging, twenty years down the line from now.