Apparitions of Anemoia Link to heading

I sat forlorn this one eve reminiscing on the things I have done in the past week. More a time for self-reflection than anything else. I have been reticent towards my peers and decidedly guarded regarding how I perceive my interactions with others. For more recently, being withdrawn has opened an avenue towards being more introspective. Anyway, I digress. That evening I was listening to music playing softly over my laptop (spotify) with a cup of coffee in my hand. I stumbled upon a feeling that I quite haven’t been able to describle before nor being able to experience completely. It was a sense of overwhelming sadness for a time and place to which I never belonged.

My mind conjured images of bright coloured clothing, loose fitting pants, permed hair and shopping malls in their perverse capitalist glory. Teenagers listening to loud music on stereo boxes, chewing on gum and being a general nuisance. Analogue advertisements littering the view with pastel coloured shades encouraging patrons to try the latest brand of cigarettes with no mention of any harms, completely uncensored to young and old alike. Could always argue the potential harms of such a world without its guardrails. A world emerging from multiple economic and political crises, but having an entire future to look forward to.

The pertinent question to this would be, what draws someone to think of those times? Having never lived, experienced or even finding hard to believe the promise of such a time without the digital age. This is the feeling of Anemoia. A whiff of an aroma or a tune that engages the mind to a time it has never been in. Perhaps it’s the romanticisation of the time in pop media, or perhaps it’s the stark contrast to the ever-individualising society that we are a part of now. Because indeed, it wasn’t too far when I would enjoy riding my bicycle through my residential complex, becoming a nightmare to the elderly gentlemen and ladies. Is that too far from the childhood of the 80s? When doing something potentially mortally harmful was treated with a shrug by our parents and we joyously leapt at the opportunity to cause bodily harm to ourselves?

I feel that is the bridge, two generations being linked by the same careless optimism that is inspired by the promises of what the future holds. One living in the analogue age, the other transitioning into the digital. Being right on the cusp of that transformation is what creates the dichotomy of not feeling like belonging to either. As if the experiences you have lived are incomplete, half belonging to one age and the other belonging to another.

With rising reports that children today do not understand how a computer actually functions, while it has only been 20 years since the computer has revolutionised the consumer space, means we went from the fear of Y2K (people not understanding how computers work) to a generation growing up playing Roadrash on demo mode, to another generation which again thinks AI (LLMs) is going to finish humanity (people not understanding how computers work again).

This begs the question, has there been significant acceleration in technology; and as a corollary created a different society in those crucial 20 years that it causes a feeling of Anemoia? I have seen the demise of VHS, Tape, Casette, Laser Discs, Thumb drives to finally settling on the mythical cloud. That cloud has now not changed in the past 10 years (albeit just getting worse). So technology surely has seen that shift of a seismic increase and then a stuporous pause.

You might be wondering, why I bring technology into this discussion of a certain feeling, for it is the lens through which I see the world. Humanity’s obsession with expounding upon its capabilities through artificial means is a wonder not lost on me, for I too am prey to the imaginarium of tech magnates that dictate how the world functions.

This technology is reshaping the human condition, and it too is reshaping the human memory to reminisce fondly of times when it was just an electric dream.