by Rich Washburn
Let’s get one thing straight. It’s Retrovate—not reprobate. Yeah, I know that guy too. This ain’t that. This isn’t a mission. This isn’t a rebellion. This is a nod—a respectful nod to the tech we loved, the form factors that made sense, and the reason why even today, in a world of cloud-streamed everything, we still find ourselves craving that click, that weight, that presence. Because somehow, the further we go into frictionless design and invisible systems, the more we start to miss the parts we used to touch. Here’s a funny bit of irony: My 15-year-old daughter wants a record player. Not because I told her to. Not because of some nostalgia trip. Because she gets it. She wants something physical. She wants to hold the music. Flip it. Place it. Hear it from a machine, not an app. She’s got more CD players than I do. She goes looking for CDs like I used to go looking for tapes at Tower Records. Meanwhile, I’ve got a single CD—an old burn disc that looks like vinyl—and I’m using it as a coaster. It’s literally furniture in my office now. Everything’s in the cloud. Everything lives in an app. And now the world tells us—don’t be on your phone so much. Which is funny, right? Because the phone killed all the other stuff. The flashlight. The camera. The map. The notepad. The Walkman. The Game Boy. We packed every tool we loved into one pocketable black mirror. And yeah, it’s powerful. But it’s also boring. Here’s where Retrovation comes in. What if we unbundled it? What if we took some of those tools back out of the phone, and rebuilt them as their own objects again—but beautiful, useful, modern, and just a little bit retro? That’s not nostalgia. That’s just good design thinking. And it’s already happening. There are dumb phones now. Literal “dumb phones.” Minimalist handsets that don’t do anything but call and text. No apps. No swipes. Just a pause button for your brain. Because there’s a market now—for quiet. A market for separation. A market for things that aren’t trying to do everything all at once. I had this Avaya desk phone. Thing looked like it time-traveled from the Clinton administration. I gutted it. Dropped in a Raspberry Pi. Loaded a softphone image from GoToConnect. Turned it into a functional, cloud-connected speakerphone that still looked like it belonged on a 90s walnut desk in a boardroom with a leather blotter. And when I wasn’t on a call? It just sat there—beautiful. Quiet. Composed. Not screaming for my attention. It was useful tech, wrapped in presence. That’s Retrovation. Look—I’m not asking anyone to haul out a beige tower PC or burn a mixtape. I’m saying this: Let’s bring the best of the old into the now. Let’s rebuild tools we want to hold. Let’s design gear that earns its place on the desk, not just by working—but by fitting. By having soul. Enriched Retrovation is what happens when I bring myself—fully—into that process. Not just to restore. Not to recreate. But to reimagine what happens when design, history, and function get twisted together with intent. It’s not ironic. It’s not cosplay. It’s not just about what things used to be. It’s about what they still could be, if we care enough to build them better. And yeah, maybe we’re all a little part Cro-Magnon. Maybe some of us still want to feel our tools. Maybe the sound of a cassette ejecting is still the best UI sound design ever made. That’s not regression. That’s retrovation. And the fact that it resonates with people who weren’t even alive when CDs were mainstream? That tells me this isn’t just a niche. This is a movement.