Back in the glorious tech golden age of the nineties and noughties, you couldn't move for cheap tech (or, as I often called it then "cheap techy tat"). Themed MP3 players, custom memory sticks, awful airline earbuds, tacky accessories you'd stick to your iPod; all of these lined the walls of supermarkets, post offices, corner stores. Not so much, any more.
It feels like cheap tech is much harder to find now; our heightening tech expectations (techspectations?) combined with the advent of Temu and AliExpress has taught us the dangers of e-waste. But has all this concern for landfill taken away a special kind of novelty that the best cheap earbuds don't replace?
