Subverting Technology -- Golden Era style

[Edward]

This thread certainly identifies my interest. I have never been interested in living in 1935, or 44, or whenever - for me, it's all about how do I retain the best of back then with the best of what we have now. Or, to put it another way, if I could selectively manipulate history between 1920ish and now, what would I do differently in order that we'd be living with today's technology and the style of yesterday. I have self identified as a dieselpunk for some time now, for this very reason. I often find I am frustrated by the lack of aesthetic appeal of many modern products. I'm a very strongly anti-Apple person, for lots of reasons - some to do with their technology and business model, some to do with distaste for their aesthetic and their marketing as a smug, life-style product rather than a tool. Whether we all label ourselves as sch or not, I'd be willng to bet there are actually a very high number of dieselpunks in and around the FL.

 

[DesertDan]

Dieselpunk is what originally led me to the FL. I don't live it, I just like it.

 

[John in Covina]

I have always wanted to make some sort of metal design art deco / flash gordon view screen frame to go around my flat screen TV when it was working. (Never buy Panasonic Plasma TV's.)

 

[vitanola]

Here's a guy who's come up with a way to turn old decomissioned payphones back into real payphones -- not novelty coin-banks with a phone in them, but actual pay telephones that collect the coins as when they were in original service. Time to get back at the break-up-the-Bell-System crowd by rebuilding it from scratch.

Gosh! Back in the early 1980's an acquaintance of mine was building controllers to fit inside three-slot pay stations. At that time, three slot payphones were a drug on the market, selling for about $25.00 each, as opposed to about $350 for the then current 1D2 instruments. I got my start in the COCOT business with these three-slot conversions. I soon found, however, that the conversions were reliable, but not ABSOLUTELY reliable, and with the coming of more advanced, microprocessor controlled instruments in 1985, and the opening up of a wider market for these instruments, I eventually retired the three-slit instruments, save in applicaitons where their "antique" design was a plus. I even operated a few with separate transmitter and receiver,

generally locations with old 'phone boths. One was even installed in the 1890's vintage domed-top booth which had graced Jake Wirths since the turn-of-the-century.

 

[vitanola]

Anything that has an "OZ4 Gaseous Rectifier Tube," I must admit, intimidates me not a little.

You mean almost any car radio made between 1939 and 1952?

 

[Wally_Hood]

Yep, they're lovely things. I worked at the radio station that had the last Model 15 in the state many years ago, and it was loud, clattery, noisy, smelled like Havoline, and was indestructible. When the UPI man came to take it away I tried desperately to get him to let me keep it, but it was destined for the scrap pile, to be replaced by a whizbang dot matrix printer that broke down twice a week. It only printed text, although sometimes the UPI operators would mess around with ASCII art when they had nothing better to do. All I ever print at home is text anyway, so it'd be just the thing.

At UCLA in the late 70s I had a short turn at the campus radio station and if I recall clearly there were still Teletype machines from which we culled news stories. We were supposed to re-write the story, versus the rip 'n' read approach. People from that frame of reference will recall Rippin' Reed, newscaster.

 

[Wally_Hood]

I have always wanted to make some sort of metal design art deco / flash gordon view screen frame to go around my flat screen TV when it was working. (Never buy Panasonic Plasma TV's.)

I have a Panasonic plasma and we're really happy with it: why the caution against them?

 

[Peregrine]

This thread is fascinating! I live in a house built in 1932, but I have to live in 2012 and so have a mix of eras in terms of gadgets, knick-knacks and technology. I loathe anything to do with Apple (except the Beatles) and will only move to an LCD telly when the last CRT one blows up. I don't feel the need to move to a new technology just because it's available, but have been forced down the road of DAB radio because that's where the Classic Rock stations live.

I am very much attracted to steampunk for much the same reasons as already posted; it looks great! As for the fashion, I'd say I'm probably a little long in the tooth to carry it off, but my other half would doubtless encourage me to have at least one "Sherlock meets Adam Ant" outfit in my wardrobe, should one in my size come to her attention!

Here's a link to an interesting website, vintage radios with DAb and iPod dock etcetera...

http://www.dabhandradio.com/page4.html

 

[Undertow]

Lizzie, tell me if I'm understanding you.

You're looking for examples of using modern technology against itself, more or less, as opposed to repurposing a vintage item, or mocking up a modern item to look vintage. This would include using vintage items for their intended purpose and piggybacking them on to modern technology (typewriter pages posted online, etc,). Correct?

Would this be like creating a database of pages from an old dictionary that people could flip through online, rather than using Google's instant definition search, or dictionary.com?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's exactly it. The cosmetic stuff is nice -- most modern tech is eye-woundingly ugly, and I applaud anybody who can find a way around that -- but I want to go deeper than that. I want to *subvert* modern technology, not just repackage it. Apple wants me to buy all kinds of gizmos to use with iTunes, and wants me to buy thousands of music files at 99 cents a pop. I use iTunes to run an AM radio station, which I listen to with 80 year old radios -- and the music I play on it comes from 78s I encoded myself. Apple has gotten not a penny out of me, and I've put their product to a use that spits in the eye of the whole purpose it was designed for. That's subversion. There was a brief discussion of this concept between Senator Jack and me years ago in the "Retro-Extremists" thread, and this idea sort of takes off on that.

I'd love to see someone put Webster's Second New International online, page by page, but copyright laws can be terribly inconvenient.

 

[Edward]

There has to be a common-sense element to it as well. Scanning a dictionary into a format where the text is non-searchable inconveniences the user, which seems a little pointless unless the sole purpose is to spite technological development. Subverting Apple's efforts to cajole and coerce the buyer into its closed corral, on the other hand, is rather a wonderful thing which takes back control and functionality for the user...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the dictionary thing would be more an exercise in chronological revolt than in trying to create a tool that Joe Websurf would actually use -- but something as simple as using the internet to buy an actual copy of Webster's Second might be a good example of basic subversion of the whole idea of the web.

In just the realm of "chronological revolt" for the sake of such there's a lot of things you could do. I've often toyed with the idea of shooting Yoo Toob videos off a monitor screen with my 8mm camera, so I can screen them on my Kodascope projector just to amaze and perplex the kids from work.

 

[John in Covina]

I have a Panasonic plasma and we're really happy with it: why the caution against them?

There are electronic parts that tended toward failing. One key is the red on light, when you turn the tv off the light may begin to blink if you have a problem the number of blinks indicates what part / module is failling. However with mine the power module failed but it didn't blink at all so no code to point to the problem. They replace the power mod and sx months later and out of warranty it failed again nlo blinks. When a part fails so rapidly it usually points to another problem making that componant fail. The shop has no clue as to why Panasonic had no clue either and it is cost prohibitive to replace power mods every 6 months. When i had my problem I looked on line and there were Numerous complaints as to Panasonic -plasma problems. One guy swears that they used low quality capacitors that pop under regular usage. It is a Viera model.

 

[David Conwill]

modern faxes.

"Modern" faxes. That's funny. The fax machine cannot finish its slow death soon enough for me.

I wouldn't mind printing e-mails on a teletype, though.

 

[Lily Powers]

Recently someone told me about "typecasting," which is apparently all the rage among collectors of vintage typewriters -- it's blogging, but instead of entering your words into some blogger-type software you write them out on a typewriter, scan the typed page, and post it as a photo.

This made me smile. I have a 1935 Royal typewriter that is in exquisite condition; it's been cleaned, oiled, has a new ribbon and works like a dream. It's bell always elicits an "awww" from somewhere. It's on a desk in my office, always with a piece of paper in it and people come in periodically and type a few lines, then someon else will add some more; overall, it's a few pages of hysterical, pieced-together stories and anonymous musings. It's our own little vintage blog, only not online,.

 

[Gingerella72]

Reminds me a bit of steampunk - dieselpunk?

While the fashion/convention going aspect of steampunk doesn't much appeal to me, what deeply fascinates me is the idea of "hacking" modern technology into victorian era designs, for example by mounting a computer inside an ornate brass and wood box with a keyboard mounted with vintage typewriter keys and a monitor framed in a picture frame. I love technology, but I hate the modern aesthetic that goes with it; everything hideously plastic and ugly. If I had my way, every item of modern technology in my home would be given the vintage retro treatment to appear as though it was made in the age of steam.

You mean something like this? http://www.oldtimecomputer.com/oldtimecomputer/home.html

I agree, vintage aesthetics are much more appealing to me. Love the technology, hate plastic. Unless they started making modern gadgets with Bakelite, that might be another story.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

Oh Lizzie, what would it take to get you to my house to rig up a radio system?

 

[J.W.]

Hey, I never thought about using another, more retro-font on the FL! Very neat idea!
Someone mentioned writing posts by hand, scanning them and then post them on the net. I like that idea, although you wouldn't be able search these posts, as they would be pictures. It would also mean that we needed a lot more paper again.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Oh Lizzie, what would it take to get you to my house to rig up a radio system?

It's very easy to do. What you need is one of these low-power AM transmitters. Just load Itunes on your desktop computer with the appropriate music/OTR programs/etc, set it to shuffle, and plug it into the transmitter. The whole setup is very simple to use, and covers about a quarter of a mile with the standard antenna (a three foot piece of wire.)

If you want to take it a step further, and are using a Mac, there's an application called "Daypart" that lets you switch automatically between playlists -- basically giving you the ability to run an actual automated radio station. I use this to run music in the morning, baseball games in the afternoon, and OTR programming at night. Once it's set up you don't need touch it again except to add new programming -- you can even set it up to run specific programs at specific times on specific days of the week.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I think the dictionary thing would be more an exercise in chronological revolt than in trying to create a tool that Joe Websurf would actually use -- but something as simple as using the internet to buy an actual copy of Webster's Second might be a good example of basic subversion of the whole idea of the web.

In just the realm of "chronological revolt" for the sake of such there's a lot of things you could do. I've often toyed with the idea of shooting Yoo Toob videos off a monitor screen with my 8mm camera, so I can screen them on my Kodascope projector just to amaze and perplex the kids from work.

Another idea would be to make a video utilising the German technique used in early television broadcasts in the '30s.

These programs were preserved by an interesting process -- the programs were actually filmed on conventional motion picture film, and then run thru a machine which developed the negative and ran it thru a video scanner, which reversed the polarity of the image for television transmission.