The horror-comedy series "Widow’s Bay" highlights life without reliable Wi-Fi or cell service, using landlines and walkie-talkies to evoke creepy isolation and avoid depicting smartphones onscreen. This reflects a broader nostalgia for pre-internet simplicity, where plans were fixed, knowledge was limited to what one could retain, and discovering music required patience and effort. Kera Bolonik’s essay on mix tapes emphasizes their tactile, time-intensive creation—manipulating pause and record buttons on hi-fi systems—as a contrast to instant Spotify playlists.

Jonathan Lethem describes the frustration of hearing a song in the Shazam-less past, unable to identify it instantly, as illustrated by the author’s misidentification of Edwyn Collins’ "A Girl Like You" as a new David Bowie track in 1995. While modern retro-tech like dumbphones and Bluetooth cassette players attempt to recapture this magic, the author finds deeper satisfaction in analog tools that demand no charging or updates: a wristwatch, a digital alarm clock, and pad and paper. As Bolonik concludes, mix tapes are not just relics but portals that reanimate specific moments in time, perhaps even more vividly than old photos.