The View | Backwards to the future: yesterday’s technology making a comeback

If you are reading this on what I am told is called an app or some other kind of device it seems only fair to issue an immediate warning because what follows is quite likely to upset you.

So, apologies for upsetting more technologically advanced readers but there comes a time when those of us who have lagged behind in the hi-tech revolution can no longer be cowed into silence.

We may be so “yesterday” but, it turns out that yesterday is quite something of a niche market, and I am not talking about a market for nostalgia or so called vintage products but about products that were confidently consigned to the dustbin on grounds of a technology expiry date but have turned out to have qualities that are superior to the latest item with the letter “i” attached to it.

Last week newspapers got excited by figures from the Recording Association of America showing that streaming has, for the first time, become the biggest earner for the recorded music business. Way lower down in most of these reports was news that vinyl LP sales had surged 32 per cent to US$461 million last year. In percentage terms that’s a far bigger increase than the musical streaming industry achieved, although, admittedly about one fifth lower in terms of revenue.

However, the rebirth of vinyl produced far better earnings than the billions of free streams that are seeking to make money by attaching their offerings to advertising.

So, what is it about vinyl that stubbornly refuses to die? The answer is simple; no other recording device has yet succeeded in reproducing the quality and subtlety of vinyl. The only surprise is that it has taken quite so long for people to notice this.

It has proved more difficult to get figures for the upsurge in sales of another “redundant” product – the facsimile machine. Yet more and more faxes are being used by companies and individuals (and, significantly, governments) who have discovered that there is no more secure form of written communication than the old facsimile machines, which cannot be hacked or intercepted in the ways that emails and other computer-based communications can.