Nostalgia for a tactile world that never existed

While I have enjoyed much of what Bogost has to say about stopping to enjoy the physical experiences of the little things that happen to you every day1 it's easy to fall into an idealized memory of the past2, often a past that didn't really exist. Foreverism talks specifically about this, our societal tendency to look back to the ideal past and keep it in our current conversation as something we should be striving for today3. This ideal physical past when we all interacted with the machines around us instead of tapping screens had cars that didn't last as long and used more fuel. Tools were more dangerous4 and you may get right up in the feeling of a saw blade if you weren't very careful. We need to draw a line between things that were good and we should get back to in the past, and things that simply feel good through eyes cast backwards. One thing I have enjoyed is going back to collecting music. I don't need to put every CD I want to listen to into a player to listen to it, but I…