Longing for a Time Before Smartphones
When it comes to technology, the answer to the future could come from the past.
Hanna Rosin, a host of the podcast How to Touch Grass, reflects on her own memories of a time before smartphones. She reminisces about long dinners with friends, standing in line without distractions, and reading books in a single sitting. She believes nostalgia, particularly among Gen Z, is working differently than it did for her generation.
Many young people yearn for a time when they weren't even alive, an era of iPods, CD players, and landline telephones. While some find it strange that people in their 20s are fixated on shows from their own youth, Rosin suggests that nostalgia for an unfamiliar past could help shape the future. The first episode of How to Touch Grass explores how people are renegotiating their relationships with technology and the impact of nostalgia on this process.
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