For those of us born in the late 90s/early 2000s, there was a certain techno-optimism that permeated our childhood. The bright green fields of Windows XP was a liminal space. It was possibility, a bright vision of the future.
Bliss. Photo by Charles O'Rear.
Technology felt alive. Everything seemed meticulously crafted, full of little details that really showed that the people making these digital worlds cared. Every year there were huge strides. New form factors, new features, every new device seemed to push the bounds of what could be done. And there was so much colour. Technology took inspiration from the real world, with beveled edges and brushed metal textures and glassy buttons.
When I was around 11, Steve Jobs passed away. It's a bit embarrassing to look back on now (especially since Jobs was kind of a dick), but I was genuinely distraught when I saw the announcement on the front of the newspaper my father held. He was, to my young mind, the man behind that techno-optimism that grew, year upon year, throughout my youth.
Jobs' death marked a turning point for the tech industry. He was the last of that first wave of 'personal computing' CEOs still at the helm of their company; those ones who oversaw the transition from mainframe to desktop (and later laptop) computing. Apple were rarely the first, but they were always the best. We left the era of hardware and leapt headfirst into the internet era. Every week a new millionaire was minted. In the wake of 2008, cheap debt was plentiful, and was poured into internet infrastructure. Data centres and cloud computing buildouts made it easier than ever to launch and scale. But this ephemerality created problems. Company valuations soared, but increasingly appeared divorced from traditional notions of rational value, instead driven by hype and hope. In the frenzy to build moats and castles, there were crucial ontological questions that was ignored: what is a digital company? Where do they derive their value? And how do they fit into capitalism?
I think people did feel the market untethering from reality. The tech titans of yore were obviously creating stuff. There was genuine value in having faster, sleeker laptops and smartphones and software like Word and Excel. With companies like Meta (née Facebook) or X the Everything App (Twitter), this logic no longer holds. On its face, these platforms don't create anything. They offer some benefits to users, but not enough to justify their valuation. What they do offer is a huge audience to marketers. These companies are at the top of the pyramid scheme of modern capitalism, built on speculative value that itself is based on speculative value: ad spend.[1] The professionalisation of the field continued throughout the 2010s; MBAs replaced engineers and profit blatantly overruled product. Computers stopped feeling alive. The fun quirks were removed, designs were abstracted away from the real world (think the loss of glossy glass, brushed metal, or the subtle liquid effects from our UIs), and soon enough platforms began to undergo 'Enshittification.'
That's all to say that this nostalgia isn't misplaced. The joy of the early internet is gone, and with it, the techno-futurist hope that it carried. In its place, we have extractive, closed-in platforms that function more as marvels of financial engineering than genuine contributions to society. It's a tragedy, really, and I think I Love My Computer captures this sadness. Underneath the hyperactive synths and cutesy lyrics, there's a mourning of the world that could've been. It's difficult to talk about the internet in this fashion within art without it seeming trite, but Ninajirachi has managed to evoke the excitement of loading music onto your first iPod, or of being able to create songs on a school laptop's Garageband.
It's an important album, because, even though these techno-optimist dreams haven't panned out, we must remember that there was a time when technology brought hope. That change is possible. The recent popularity of 'vintage' gadgets (think Walkmans and Nokia Flip Phones and mp3 Players and Panasonic Point-and-Shoot cameras) is more than mere aesthetics; it's a conscious re-coupling of technology and the material world. Although digital and intense, the album feels very human. There are rough edges. It has a physicality, a harshness that evokes those older technologies. The lyrics, although heavily processed, are deeply personal and nostalgic.
As the large tech companies try (ever more desperately) to blur the line between reality and unreality with forays into the metaverse and artificial intelligence, we must see these for what they are: the blind contortions of desperation. Despite the silicon dreams of The Valley, where capitalism is at last freed from the worker,[2] technology is nothing without us.