I was intrigued when I came across this love letter

My relationship status with technology is complicated.

I adore my phone, but I also spend a disturbing amount of time trying to prise myself away from it. I don’t harbour similar strong feelings for my laptop.

So, I was intrigued when visited Radical Computing, the latest exhibition at Melbourne’s National Communication Museum. Yes. Melbourne has a National Communication Museum.

Curator Mel Huang Buntine describes Radical Computing as her love letter to the personal computer.

For her that story is personal. Her parents fled the Cambodian genocide and settled in Melbourne and a hand-me-down computer from her uncle became both a creative outlet and a connection to the world beyond her home.

The exhibition explores an idea I had never stopped to consider, owning your own computer was once radical.

As exhibitions go it is unconventional and edgy, there are computers to nerd over, art, music, rare machines and ideas everywhere.

I was hunting for an exhibition catalogue (I do collect them), when I discovered that instead of a traditional catalogue the curator had hand-coded a 2.8MB website to accompany the exhibition.

The site feels quaint. At first, I found it annoying and then, I don’t know, I started quite liking the experience.

It had soul? Maybe it made me nostalgic, which is odd because I never thought I could yearn for slow internet or the small heartbreak of an Error 404.

Huang Buntine created the site as an act of resistance against the internet’s growing appetite for energy. She also moonlights as a hot sauce wizard. And I thought I couldn’t love her more.

The museum also released 50 handmade mini-CDs and of course I bought one. My own small act of resistance.

There is one problem.

I no longer own anything that can play a CD.

So now I am trawling Facebook Marketplace on my phone, searching for obsolete technology so I can access my anti-modern-technology purchase.

Which feels weirdly right.