Lateral Parenting with Withered Technology

"Any sufficiently deprecated technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Mar 06, 2025

Like any dad worth his salt, I have a storage box full of cables. Mine is large, plastic, transparent, and sits proudly atop the cupboard in my home office. Fastidiously organised and meticulously catalogued, it contains two dozen individually marked sandwich bags, compartmentalising the electronic floatsam and jetsam acquired through decades of geekery. Ease of access and speedy retrieval is essential: If I need an Optical TOSLINK cable, I need to be able to find it fast, and stave off whatever audio-related emergency is currently threatening my daughter’s life.

Whilst digging through the electronic archives this summer, I discovered an old iPod Shuffle that, after briefly sojourning inside its charging dock—stored in the same bag, thank you very much—was working perfectly. This marvel of miniaturisation—15 grams in weight, 1GB of storage, enough to store 250 songs, with 12 hours of battery life—was more than enough to power the occasional jog from my house to Heaton Park in my twenties.

After a short test ride, ensuring the music contained within was child friendly, I handed it over to my kids. They were delighted. Arthur C Clarke once wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” For my children, any sufficiently deprecated technology serves the same purpose. That this small, screenless metal rectangle could contain hundreds of songs—the majority of which sat around 120bpm, the ideal running tempo—blew their tiny little minds. It proved invaluable during last Summer’s road trip from Barcelona to Manchester. With only a shuffle function and a few hundred songs, they’d oscillate between delight and despair as they encountered tracks they would learn to love and hate. I was reminded of music long since filed away as part of a mental mixtape: Hot Chip’s “I Feel Better” would bring screams of joy when it shuffled into place, the same feeling I’ve felt on many a dancefloor; their excitement was palpable when they iPod arrived again at what they called “The Teenager Song” but you’ll be more familiar with as LCD Soundsystem’s “Sound of Silver.”

Listen: everything old is new again. Even audiophiles have caught on. The original PlayStation, the vanguard of gaming technology in 1995, has found new life as a sought-after CD player among hi-fi enthusiasts. They've discovered Sony’s happy accident: the PS1's audio components produce a warm, analog-like sound that expensive modern equipment struggles to replicate. Forums are filled with passionate debates about which model offers the purest expression—aficionados performing elaborate modifications to extract every last ounce of audio fidelity from this seemingly obsolete technology.

When I packed the Christmas decorations away at the start of the year, I was reminded of a big box that lies beneath: a cornucopia of retro gaming, a moustachioed goldmine of Nintendo goodies—a Super Nintendo, an N64, a Gamecube and a Wii. Hundreds of hours of collective joy—and that’s just 4-player Goldeneye. I’ve owned every major Nintendo console since the NES. The GameCube was the first one I imported: according to Wikipedia, it was released in Japan on September 14 2001 and in North America on November 18 2001. It wouldn’t be released in Europe until the following May. This box was once wrapped, under a tree, the Christmas after my 18th birthday. My first Christmas as an adult. Probably the last “big” Christmas present I’d ever ask my parents for. This Nintendo mausoleum, caked in dust, is Christmas past, present, and future all at once—gifts I’ve received; games I may play with my kids this year, regifting opportunities for down the line.

Gunpei Yokoi—creator of the Game Boy and Nintendo visionary—revolutionised gaming not by chasing bleeding-edge tech, but by embracing what he called "lateral thinking with withered technology." Yokoi believed innovation didn't require the newest chips or fastest processors; it came from using established, affordable parts in unexpected ways. His fingerprints are all over the Nintendo Switch—not the fastest, or most powerful console, but one that’s on track to becoming the best-selling ever. This feels like a fresh way to approach parenting—repurposing something once vital, one eye on the future with another on the past, as we push back against screens of shifting sizes, filled with worryingly deep wells of infinite content. While I constantly find myself negotiating screen time limits, there's a beauty in watching my kids discover the joy of a physical button that can make music magically appear in their ears, or the satisfying thunk of a game cartridge slotting into place.

That iPod Shuffle, once cutting-edge enough to clip onto my t-shirt and soundtrack my runs through the grey and wet streets of Manchester, now serves as a gateway for my kids into music discovery: liberated from algorithms, every click tracked and endless choice paralysis.

The limitations become the feature, not a bug; our histories transform into their futures. One generation's withered technology becomes another's magic.

Providing you’ve still got cables to make it all work.

3 things to read this week

“Playing With My Son” by Andy Baio on Waxy. A fatherhood hall of fame essay, which recently celebrated a decade on this earth. I haven’t had six months go by in that time without thinking about it. Baio, the man behind Kind of Bloop, the XOXO Festival, and all kinds of great things from when the internet used to be fun, decided to try an experiment with his son: what happens when a 21st-century kid plays through video game history in chronological order?
“Do Yondr Pouches Really Work?” by Juno DeMelo in Intelligencer. Yondr pouches—initially used to ensure gig-goers kept their phones in their pockets rather than holding them up and filming the entire concert in front of my fucking face—have now made it to US schools in an expensive attempt to shut the barn door after the digital horse has long bolted. Yondr has landed over $5 million from government contracts in 2024, and—who could have guessed where this one was going—the kids have easily figured out ways to hack them. “It took the kids about a month to realize they can hit it on the back of their shoe at the right speed and angle to open the pouch without breaking it—or just provide a fake phone.”
“The Kids Are Coming Up From Behind” by Drew Lustman in The Fence. A fatherhood essay about music, delivered via a “Losing My Edge” headline? TNF Catnip. DJ and producer FaultyDL writes about the transition to fatherhood, saying goodbye to one life whilst welcoming another, and the perennial “pram in the hallway” creative parent paradox I wrote about here. “At nine, I slip away to the studio, careful that she doesn’t see me go. I crack open the door to the sealed room, letting in some sunlight and fresh air. This is my window. If my muse hasn’t shown up yet, I’ll try again tomorrow. I could come back to the studio at night, but I’m too exhausted from chasing her. I check my email, and the offers and work are fewer now than they were a few years ago. A reminder that I have traded one life for another.”