#13 - A case for fun tech

Tech can look like anything, so why why why is it so boring?

I don’t want sleek! I want fun shapes and satisfying clicks. I want whimsy to be on the market, to come out of the box. Yeah, sure, I can buy mechanical keyboard parts and get way too deep into what kind of switches and keycaps, I could learn to solder purely so that I could customize a board within an inch of its life, but I don’t think it’s that niche of a market. It’s just not easily available.

And why not? Misogyny! I’m not kidding. I think we demonize anything feminine to the point that we’ve lost so much opportunity for cute shit. Imagine if Nintendo had released a GameGirl in the 90s. (Sidenote: I actually wrote them a letter as part of a fourth-grade project and they responded that “there wasn’t a market for that”. Me! I was the market! Do you know how many AA batteries I burned through playing The Lion King game? That game was fucking hard! I eventually fell in love with Pokemon—because duh. Sentient sidekick animals that you could bond with? Sign me up! Why aren’t there Pokemon games where you run the nursery, or a rhyhorn ranch, or anything except fight the fucking things? Let me ride my Galarian Ponyta through the mushroom woods to gather ingredients for a witches potion or something GameFreak, I beg you.)

Anyway, I want fun tech to be everywhere. In the aisles of Best Buy I should be able to easily purchase a cute blue keyboard or a TV that has a bubble vibe around the screen. A mouse that comes with stupid cute custom cursor options. Alarm clocks covered in fuzz, humidifiers shaped like a cat head. Record players with sparkly turntables.

I’m tired of the seriousness. Tech is a major industry and it’s run by people with absolutely no style or taste. Sleek, all-silver tech to go in their all-white house modeled after Massie Block’s middle school bedroom. Why don’t I have a heart-shaped flip phone? Or seashell! I’m not picky, I just want colors and shapes again. It’s not like my phone has ever fit in my pocket anyway!

It’s great that Apple finally released some iMacs in color, but they are nowhere near as cool the iconic clamshell iBook and they never will be! Remember the first iPod mini colors? Best baby blue of all time. And like, I know we’ve had the iPhone color, and now we have the lavender ones, which are nice, but we have to have cases! Build me an indestructible phone (with a headphone jack) that looks like something out of Sailor Moon! We have the capabilities! The endless possibilities have been widdled down by the appeal of ~professionalism~ and I’m tired of it.

We used to imagine the future in bold patterns and plastic dresses and transparent orange zap pads. Let’s bring a little more of that retro-futurism back. Also, CD drives on laptops. And headphone jacks. (another side note: headphone cords are coming back in Gen Z as an aesthetic thing because it looks like you’re listening to music. Bluetooth takes away the style element.)

In the meantime, I did buy a mechanical keyboard. It lights up, it’s pink, makes really satisfying noises. Will I one day purchase a set of $70 keycaps from Etsy for it? Oh, you bet.

And so, in conclusion:

«parkour voice» Fun tech!