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Comment by deelowe | Hacker News Reader

I will be reminded of how completely out of touch I am with reality these days if this does well. That said, I somewhat jokingly predicted this trend previously. With the explosive growth of digital information and electronics, I think we'll see a renaissance of analog, mechanical, and otherwise "physical" things.

Perhaps sometimes people don't want everything to be electronic/digital? Example: digital photo frames.

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    That said, I somewhat jokingly predicted this trend previously. With the 
    explosive growth of digital information and electronics, I think we'll see a 
    renaissance of analog, mechanical, and otherwise "physical" things.

I've also mentioned this to people, however, not jokingly but in all seriousness. I think it might have something to do with engaging the senses. The more senses you can uniquely engage, the stronger your connection to something will be. Vinyl records, for example, are doing nothing but exploding. I have all of my music in digital format for listening on the go, at work, etc., but there's something special about pulling a record off the shelf and out of the sleeve, setting it on the turntable and dropping the needle on it. It's more work, but you're rewarded handsomely for that work.

Agreed. I sure do miss the pictures, artwork, liner notes and hidden track bonuses that came with my CD purchases.

At Hackday Paris in 2011 (48h hackathon), the winners among 49 teams were a group of three, who made listening to music a more haptic experience again. They called it NoiseBox, but they seem to have abandoned it: http://noisebox.herokuapp.com/. It was a cute hack and won, because it combined hardware, software and some magic.

I liked it very much, but then, why not just go straight to vinyl for the experience? See also: UK vinyl sales up 78 per cent in 2013: http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/69832

This is a lot like a project I have been working on: https://github.com/thomasrynne/swisher which uses cheap RFID readers and a raspberry pi. Does anyone know how this one works?

Re vinyl: It takes longer to choose a song, records can get scratched and take up more space. My intention was to try to make the best interface to play music. Now that the media is digital there are less restrictions on the physical interface but I think tangible items associated with each track/radio station is still good.

Awesome!

I currently use an RPi running xbmc to handle all my media playback.

For videos I have no concern about plonking down on the couch and having to "drive" through the menus to get something playing, since I'm going to sit there and watch it anyway.

For music.... it bugs me greatly. xbmc has a wonderful interface and I have album art set up for my music collection, but since I'm normally putting music on because I'm doing something else (cooking, cleaning, juggling, workout, etc) having to "drive" through menus annoys me so much.

A set up like this is exactly what I need. Thanks!

Lomo did pretty well for a while.

Instagram itself shows people want broken analogue style things.

Digital photoframes + instagram style filters might be popular?

We are using this as part of a physical escape-the-room game. Its a great prop, good price, and has a hidden puzzle whose meaning is in the images. Much more interesting than a screen with a slideshow, and enforces order which a bunch of printed photos wouldn't do.

Sure. And, reading my comment again, I can see how it might be seen as a little negative. To be clear, I think this is an excellent idea. I believe the pendulum has probably swung a bit too far in the "everything must be digital" direction and people are starting to crave analog alternatives again. To me, this sounds bizarre, being a child of the 80s and all, but I can see how this trend totally makes sense for most people.

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