The Case for Clunky

Embracing physical media in the AI age.

By Nnema Épée-Bounya​​

Illustration by Isabelle Oh

Numerous times over the last few months, I’ve considered getting a flip phone. Some of the open tabs on my laptop include searches for a vinyl shelf, an article about the film camera Veroca uses in Walter Selles’ Ainda Estou Aqui, cheap DVD players, and the difference between Kodak Gold 200 and Ultra Max 400 film. My recent obsession with physical forms of media has been sparked by recent developments in art and technology. If the last decade and a half can be described as a push to have everything at our fingertips, including photos, locations, AI-generated summaries, then maybe I am a part of a growing counterculture of young people embracing the clunky, the elaborate—the physical. The last few years and months have seen AI and its myriad uses (some helpful, many not) redefine and maximize digital convenience at the expense of ethical and environmental implications. The push back against current technological trends—especially AI—was not simply born out of a bitter reluctance to adapt to an increasingly digitized world, rather, there is a palpable nostalgia in older forms of technology and physical media. Nothing quite captures the essence of a fond memory like a grainy film photograph or the fuzzy static that fills the room when you begin to spin your favorite record. I often find myself looking through old photos of my parents’ road trip across the states with their friends when they first moved here for college. There is a particular photo of my parents, looking straight into the lens as they lean towards each other in the front row of their first car, that always sticks out to me. In this picture, my parents are younger than I’ve ever known them; they seem like people I could see on Low Steps. Being able to hold these memories that don’t belong to me up close feels like crossing into another world and makes me hesitate to join the current culture surrounding technology—instead embracing the old.

On my desk sit three vinyls and a pile of DVDs I ordered from the Criterion Collection. The Criterion Collection is a film distribution company committed to distributing DVDs and Blu-Rays, as well as restoring and licensing films. The Criterion Collection’s mission connects high-quality physical media to the heart of the medium of film itself, as they believe that allowing people to purchase and view the films the way the director intended is crucial to respecting the films and their messages. My purchases from Criterion were slightly preemptive as I don’t have a DVD player. However, my impulsive purchase suddenly seemed extremely justified when I learned that Netflix plans on introducing AI ads based on whatever you are watching that will automatically play when the screen is paused. My Criterion edition of The Royal Tenenbaums, which includes deleted scenes and commentary from Wes Anderson and the cast, is incapable of adding environmentally wasteful updates like this one because I now own this movie—it is not in the hands of AI obsessed CEOs because it lives on my desk, forever frozen in time. This is how DVDs, vinyls, CDs, and Blu-Ray have become practical and smart investments for the AI-weary, birthing a counter-culture that prioritizes physical media. Nowadays, so much of our life is trapped on our devices, which can add unwelcome features at any time. The permanence, simplicity, and ownership physical media offers feels alien compared to the powerlessness of current technology.

Although many forms of physical media have become practically extinct within our generation, the concept of physical media is not completely foreign to us. Quietly tucked away in my basement are stacks of thick and dusty photo albums, chronicling one of my parents’ trips to Paris when they were teenagers, my fourth birthday party, my brother’s first steps, an uncle’s wedding, and so many other stories and memories. Photo albums of this kind are in so many basements, attics, garages. The ritual of occasionally pulling one out from its hiding place and wondering who that person is holding you as a baby is a sacred, yet endangered experience. Now, rather than heavy photo albums, we have a gluttonous amount of photos in our pocket at all times. I don’t need twenty pictures of the same view, or half an hour to capture the perfect selfie, but with our phones rendering the art of photography so unromantic and casual, it makes one question: why shouldn’t I have five identical pictures of my dinner? I often wonder how many memories will be gone forever when the “cloud” that I don’t quite understand inevitably implodes in the year, say 2060 (I’m being optimistic here). Of course, there are so many positives to having these memories easily accessible rather than in cobwebbed corners, but so many moments being in the hands of an entity capable of disappearing at any given moment unsettles me. Perhaps this is just my response to things I don’t understand: I retreat to the comfortable, the reliable, the familiar. But perhaps it is something deeper—a desire to hold and truly own my life.