Last month, the city of London, England they celebrated The London Design Festival. This festival honors innovative and creative achievement. Their was one phone at the festival that did particularly well and spoke to an ever increasing growing market.
That cell phone is called the MPO1. All it does it take and receive telephone calls and text messages. There are no apps. There are no cameras. There are no slick features. This isn’t back to the 1990s. This isn’t a phone for the poor and marginalized either; the MPO1 will cost you around $300. They’re just catering to a market sick and tired of 2010s technology and trying to keep up with it all. It’s technology for the anti-tech crowd. The company that makes MPO1, Punkt, runs with this trend. They also sell old school alarm clocks (the MPO1 doesn’t even have that), basic USB desktop chargers and cordless landline phones. Are you tired of iPods and playlists and downloading songs? Vinyls and record players are selling like hot cakes. One of the biggest selling vinyls seems to be Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, first released in 1973. ?Don’t like the complexity of today’s video games or gaming systems? Old school gaming systems like Atari and Nintendo are making a quiet comeback. You can even play old school video games like Pac-Man and Legend of Zelda on your smartphone. Tired of the Kindle/eBook craze? Independent bookstores are popping up all over America.
Some may say this trend is just a nostalgic trip. I think something deeper is going on. Some people are tired of having the latest technology forced down their throats. I don’t blame them. I pity people waiting in line all day and night for the latest iPhone, Android, or Xbox. Some people prefer the feel or a hardback or paperback book and the turn of a page. Some people even prefer writing letters or making a telephone call than emailing, texting, and using social media. Today’s technology is supposed to make life simpler. But obviously, it hasn’t for everyone. For example, thanks to today’s technology, many employees can’t even take a vacation without being forwarded work through their laptop or smartphone. Some experts even say this fast-pace technology is making us less empathetic towards our fellow human beings. Is the anti-tech crowd onto something?