What is this, some kinda alley for artists?

I went to the MIT Flea Market today! It's a monthly event where people sell off their weird old tech that's too interesting to throw away but too useless to keep. It's a fascinating place and I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the Boston area.

Some highlights!

A Wii - The Wii was my first real console and I've kinda wanted one, mostly for the nostalgia factor, for a while now. This started at $60, but the price dropped to $45 while I was there and I had to go for it. Also it has a Garfield post it note on it.

A tiny fucking gamepad - I saw this and heard @cathoderaydude's voice echoing in the back of my head... "Hey bro, here's your controller". I had to get it.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. Or, it does, but it doesn't communicate using any actual USB protocols like the connector would suggest. My best guess is it went to some famiclone and they're just using the USB plug as a connector. Strangely, it has slots for 3 AAA batteries in the back, and a power switch - did this power the famiclone? I'm tempted to rip out the battery compartment and turn this into a functioning XInput controller as a bit.

Robotnik Toys - I didn't buy one of these. This decision will haunt me until I die.

Streetpass Guy - I didn't buy anything from this person, unfortunately, but I was so enamored by the streetpass sign I had to take a picture.

I've touched on this before, but something deeply important to me about art and, things in general, is the presence of a human touch. Flaws and design choices made about something not to necessarily improve it as a work, but that highlight the fact that this thing passed through human hands at some point. Someone, in some cases more literally than others, touched it.

With the scale of global manufacturing nowadays, a lot of things feel very impersonal. An iPhone is a machine that gets churned out en mass by the hundreds, they're all the same, and that's that. But the very little I've looked into the world of manufacturing and how these sorts of things get made is immensely humbling when you realize the sheer scale of operations needed to make literally anything we own nowadays.

And it's not just nice things. Something I was thinking about the other day is how much work goes into making cheap e-waste. Like... I dunno, a cheap USB power bank, let's say. Someone - even if it's a rebranded white label product - had to sit down and design the thing, have it broken into manufactureable parts, create toolpaths for cnc machines and tools for injection molds, have an assembly line to put all the components together, package it, ship it- All to arrive in a store somewhere and be deemed junk.

I'm not trying to say just because someone put the bare minimum effort into something, that suddenly makes it worth anything - that power bank could be the worst product ever. But the point is, from the bottom of the barrel garbage to the top of the line enterprise products, people touched these things. I feel like that's important to acknowledge. There's something humbling about it.