We should preserve old machines, especially the technological dinosaurs that show us the origins of familier technologies, not just audio relics like synths, samplers, tape recorders etc but all machines, they are precious because they tell us as much about the times in which they were designed as any archaeological artifact could – these ideas structure our value system and thus our social system.
It will never be economically viable to make many of them to the same standards again, audio equipment is such a good example of the predominate thinking of the time and whilst their value is appreciated there will always be people interested in them.
We need people around who know how to fix things, repair cultures propogate creative thinking, they are based on a positive attitude of ‘getting things going’, improvising, in an economic regime that promotes the idea of buying new all the time, repair culture is viewed as being subversive, it is under threat of extinction.
The whole social economic family of people whose livelihood depends on maintaining these technologies is being eroded by a disposable culture of total reliance on new product, the tributary of incidence might run dry, an end to the recycling of knowledge and the renewablable cultural economy, the kind of electronic wizardry that inspires the most profound inovation, all these old synths rely on the volt alchemists of mystery to maintain their function.
