Nostalgia has all but been ruined by advances in modern technology. There was a time growing up when I was  convinced that there were things or details from my past that I’d never be able to find again. Things, products and items that would just go completely forgotten about as the years passed. Now even trivial minutiae can be looked up, searched for and found thanks to search engines. Great.

When I was a kid, if I wanted information I had to crack open either a dictionary, encyclopedia or an almanac of some sort. Either that or you called someone that seemed to store information in their brains. I was one of those people. I would get phone calls at all times of the day and people would ask me questions hoping I knew the answer. Oh, and the phone had a cord and it was attached to the wall. Point being was there wasn’t yet this place where information was stored that could be updated in real time like Wikipedia yet. It was all stored up here *points to head*.

There was a time when people used to ask other people if they remembered things then they would respond with the details they had from their own memories. There was no real place to go and get definitive information about random things from recent popular culture. When I was a kid, my big brother had a Tiger Electronic Football game for two players and a Wildfire electronic pinball game that took a gang of batteries. Now, I can find old TV commercials for it on YouTube from users that uploaded them, read about it on Wikipedia or even BUY one from several places online & have it shipped to me the next day. Well damb!

My father was a computer programmer, he knew several computer languages and he owned an Apple II and a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer. He also bought my brothers and I a VIC 20 which he soon returned for a Commodore 64 back in 1984. He also got us a subscription to a magazine made for VIC 20 and Commodore 64 users and those who programmed BASIC called “COMPUTE’S Gazette”. It was an obscure ass publication that we got regularly until about 1986. I found a stack of them when I went into my old storage a while back and I tossed them out thinking they’d never be seen again. Ever. Wrong.

I was talking to my big brother Dave on his birthday and we began talking about those magazines we had and testing our memories of them. The video game ads from old obscure 80’s computer and software companies. We began to discuss how small the community that read that magazine was but they were all computer geeks. We bet that you could find those almost 30 year old magazines online in some form.

Sure enough, a simple iPhone 4 Google search revealed that you could find that entire fringe magazines run online for download in PDF format. You can even play the old TI-99/4A, VIC 20 and Commodore 64 games on emulators or find footage of them on YouTube or Dailymotion. Most people 30 or under have little to no knowledge of these things existing but all it takes is one person to create either a site or a Wikipedia page and others will fill in the gaps with information.

No matter how obscure the show, toy, product or publication may seem it can probably be found in some form or another online nowadays. Companies looking to capitalize off of the nostalgia of Generation Xers have been more open to releasing products from this era due to the fact that interest has been raised in them because of the internet. The most obscure arcade game I played back in the 80’s can be found online in ROM form in under 15 minutes and played on an arcade emulator whereas you thought you’d never see it again, forget about owning and playing it!

I remember reading a series of expensive ass Robotech Art books that my brother’s artist and graf writing friends used to cop almost 25 years ago when I was a kid. The were collector’s items with a limited printing run that was sold to a small fanbase. The company that originally printed these books folded 20 years ago so you’d think the only way to acquire a copy of these books is via used book marketplaces or from dealers.

Back in 2000, I thought I’d have to search and find these books individually then pay an arm and a leg for physical copies of them. They’ve been online in RAR and ZIP files in both PDF and JPEG formats for years now. I ended up reading books I thought I’d never even see again in my living room on my TV using my own PS3 to zoom in and out on individual pages. It doesn’t stop there, however…

Whether it be obscure regional PSA’s, discontinued diet products, long canceled obscure TV shows, long forgotten Saturday morning cartoons or old ass toys commercials few can recall. If you can remember it, it’s all just one click away. This is all the more true to me as I was born in 1975 but I have memories going back to 1977 so I end up looking for things just to test my the accuracy of my memories. One last thing before I go…

As a kid I remember seeing certain movies on Pay TV and cable (cable the way we know it didn’t exist until the mid to late 80’s, before that there were several regional Pay TV providers like Star TV and Prevue) that I thought i imagined because few other people remembered them. Obscure movies like “The Mouse And His Child”, “Hugo The Hippo”, “Animalympics” or “Grendel Grendel Grendel” were thought to be things I imagined as a child before I found details about them online between 1996 and now then saw them for the first time since I was a small child just to discover that I remembered them quite well, even after more the 25 plus years.

Whether it be obscure animated films like “The Point” or some random independent comic book from the 80’s you can find damn near everything you thought would go completely forgotten from years ago. All it takes is one person to possess it or find it or another person who is searching for it. With the advent of messageboards, websites and online communities it’s built demand for obscure items. Every day another piece of the past that most may have forgotten will end up online.

There was a LaserDisc arcade game from 1983 that belonged to a company that’s been out of business for 25 years now. Due to so many Generation Xers that remember this game and many others like it you can find video of these games all over the internet. In some cases you can find playable ROMs for them so you don’t even need to find the old cabinet, you can play it in the comfort of your own home. As great as that is, it’s pretty unnatural.

In previous generations we weren’t able to access things from the past and simply upload them to an intangible information cloud. I can only imagine what the future by products of this occurrence will bring. I’m an uncle to a few children that only know of living in a world full of On Demand, Google and YouTube. We had to rely on our memories. They don’t really need to remember anything, they can just look it up anytime they feel like it or simply bring it up when it’s needed.

Nostalgia was achieved because we often longed for the past knowing there was no way to go back to the way things were. Part of that included losing information, details and minutiae about the past along with it. Then years later when we’re different people we ultimately realize that the reason things seemed so great was mainly because we were young and in a different place in our lives and our development. Since things from the past can now be recovered at the drop of a hat how will future generations handle it? Only time will tell. As for dredging up things we thought were lost forever from the past? All you have to do is a little digging…

One.