THE ADVENT OF JANUARY induces us to make many forward-looking declarations. Many of mine involve my relationship to gadgets, like the oath I’ve taken to stop sleeping next to my phone, which serves as an all-too-tempting portal to YouTube. The difficulty of actually doing this has made me long for a time when technology was less omnipresent, less powerful, just…less.
Here, writers of different generations pen obituaries to that bygone era, stories about the tech they miss the most. A lawyer mourns typing on his BlackBerry Bold. An auction observer recalls how his iPod Classic made him interact with music. And a doctor reminisces about speaking her notes into a Dictaphone instead of pecking them into an electronic chart while her patient waits. For each, we’ve highlighted current gear or software that might help anyone feeling a similar loss recapture—or even improve on—the magic. —Daniel Varghese
