Nostalgia for nostalgia...

The Mrs comes out of the bathroom and says what's missing is the yearning for nostalgia. Nostalgia for nostalgia. She then says that being nostalgic is lost due to the availability of everything. This availability renders everything timeless. Everything is now. Then I add you mean the fleeting, ephemeral and the yearning for what's lost can't be experienced because it is not lost. It has probably been found by someone else so you don't even get to enjoy the experience of finding it yourself.

Emma then adds a case in point would be a show she vaguely recalls from school called the Dark Towers. This was some kind of spooky television for schools show (Emma attended primary school in North Wales). Emma knows the theme tune sort of. She is also aware that she can go onto the Internet and probably find it. A few years previously these events would usually unfold: The phone calls to her sister where she would sing the theme tune and her sister would go 'yeah I think I recall that.' Then talking to other people she went to school with or her father to piece together this vague memory. Then what if someone had an old VHS of the Dark Towers programme? It would be exchanged watched and discussed. Or if nobody had it it would remain a little mystery. Now all that would be lost.

This parallels the death of the pub conversation. In the pre-Internet on your mobile phone days you could argue for hours about anything and it might not get resolved for a long time. A case in point was a conversation that took place perhaps 8 years ago. I was saying that isn't it weird that George Harrison wrote Taxman but didn't play the lead guitar part? In fact Paul McCartney plays the lead part! The mate I was with was saying no way it was either George or John playing that guitar break. I said I know for a fact that it was Paul! He would say nah that's bullshit! The conversation probably ensued like this for some time. It was a week or two later that I found a book on The Beatles at work (er...I worked for a book distributor at the time) with a page on the recording of Taxman. I was right. I photocopied the said page and either faxed it to him or showed him next time he was around at my place.

Now days someone will just pull out the mobile phone and solve any argument in an instant. This in turn halts the natural flow of conversation, you know, the fun part of drinking and talking crap at the pub. People younger than me are (ie. Generation Y and younger) perhaps more prone to this. I have noticed people looking up every second thing I've stated in a conversation at the pub.

What we are getting at is that perhaps a part of our social and emotional interaction in the world is being eroded by technology in ways that we've barely even noticed. Ending with these questions: What is the future of nostalgia? If everything is presently found and preserved how can we yearn for it? What is the purpose of nostalgia? Is nostalgia now redundant? If so what are the implications?

Are we now Post-Nostalgia*?