12 years, 9 months ago

Putting a price on computer nostalgia

Putting a price on computer nostalgia Keep hold of your old computers, iPods and video games - they may be worth more than you think, say Tom Chatfield. Ask one of a certain age about the changing nature of computing, and it won’t be long before they’re reminiscing about the look, feel, sense and weight of a beloved old BBC Micro Model B, Sinclair ZX81, Macintosh 128K, - or perhaps how they used to creep into the smoky semi-darkness of a local arcade to feed small change into Donkey Kong and Galaga. Come the 22nd-century, however, Bill Gates’s very own mass-manufactured office desktop computer may be pipping Apple 1s at the auction house – while Steve Jobs’s personal first-edition iPod could become literally priceless. While celebrity ownership offers a new kind of aura to mass-manufactured devices, however, it’s likely to remain less interesting to most of us that the purely personal: those devices that each of us have lived with, gathering dust in a draw, still bearing the knocks and thumb-smudges of involvement in almost every aspect of modern living. Only a few of today’s digital devices will ever become collectors’ items; and most of those are likely to end up locked away from the world, alongside art, antiques and first editions.

BBC
Computer Our Lives

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