Nostalgia for Analogue
By Oh Jung-hun
In 1970 when I was attending middle school, my father sometimes came back home holding a package of pork wrapped in an old newspaper. On opening it, I used to find its skin stained with blue and black ink. One was a mark of fresh rank and the other was a piece torn out of the newspaper.
Strangely, a small lump was invariably added beside a big one. Before asking what it meant, I was busy rushing toward the kitchen, informing my mother. In wintertime, my mother whose budget was tight had not fixed more than three kinds of side dishes on the table. Among them, ``kimchi-jjigae" (stew) mixed with pork was delicious enough to draw all the attention and taste of my family. If a few slices of soybean curd covered it, it left nothing to be desired.
Until I went to high school, I didn't recognize that the extra meat was a token of a close neighbor. Although a butcher surely managed to subsist with little income, he didn't hesitate. It didn't matter to the recipient whether it was large or small. Reflecting again what I have remembered so far, ``deom," a free addition, was a kernel of analogue times. It also was a way of communication for those who lived in that era. As I grew older, the preciousness of the extra meat was more reminiscent.
These days, I am confronted with a lot of different units, all precisely weighed and measured. Such yardsticks seem to drain our life psychologically. There is no longer the extra practice to boost the closeness of neighbors, though one-plus-one marketing strategy at the supermarket has long permeated into the minds of consumers. In fact, it comes from a plan designed to eliminate an impulsive purchase. It is a Digital Instinct, not completely allowing loss.
From time to time, I used to listen to an LP record. The sound of a few old-dated folk songs, accompanying hackney lyrics with a guitar melody was rather unclear because of dust. However, whenever I listen to them, I feel they are more attractive than sounds downloaded on computer. In fact, I resist computerized sound, due to its artificial recipe of music. On the other hand, the poor sound of late pop singers, such as Kim Kwang-suk or John Lennon, allured me into nostalgia for analogue times. Obviously, while I'm living in a digital era, I long for analogue times.
When I drink soju with a few young colleagues at a sushi restaurant, I often feel insulated from the flow of communication. Rather than differences of thought, periodically listening to the price of new car models, the space of a new apartment, and the interest rate of investment funds make it difficult for me to stay longer. Such topics were none of my concern. To my regret, whenever I am confronted by the reality forcing me to be brainwashed into digitalized contents, I want to escape it. However, it is a self-contradiction because I have already enjoyed several things, ranging from digital cameras to computers.
Just as we drink a cup of coffee everyday, so we turn on a computer without any particular reason. It is a routine way of life. I'm willing to strive to keep an analogue lifestyle, but become a dweller of digital utopia. While hating the digitalized way of life on the one hand, I yearn for it on the other. Why on Earth do I feel confused? Why am I so ambivalent? The majority of my peers cannot choose but to accept the digital-friendly environment ― surfing the Internet, sending E-mails, using cell phones, etc. Unfortunately, sailing across the ocean of knowledge and information, I often become shipwrecked. The volume of my thought seems to get skinny and its particles are jettisoned into a computer monitor. The utopia of standardization lying before us makes us become addicts, admiring accuracy, efficiency and rapidity.
Worse, it can make people so unhappy that some pupils consistently have stony faces whenever I meet them. They have lived many years under the inundation of information, using many digitalized tools from cell phones to MP3 players. Soon after waking up, they start to communicate with digitalized words. Rather than writing a letter, they get more accustomed to sending e-mails. They prefer computerized sounds. They get acquainted with numeral controls from touch to memorization. ``How much/ what number is it?" is on the tip of their tongue, instead of ``How are you?" If even an extra lump of pork should be replaced by an accurate count, how regrettable it has all become! It took a long time for me to understand the true meaning of an additional lump of pork. Likewise, young generations still have enough time to understand slowness, inconvenience and inaccuracy of analogue times. I hope they recognize that there is neither a soul nor an oasis in the digital desert.
The writer is a teacher at Somyoung Girls High School in Bucheon City, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at dicaprik@hanmail.net.