Why Analog is Here For Life

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, Book Review

Photo by Vo Thuy Tien

Our future was supposed to be digital, filled to the brim with technology, and while that is true, analog has found a way to stick around.

With the rise of music streaming and Spotify, vinyl record sales soared for the first time in decades. The release of the Kindles and Kobos justified the argument of ebooks taking over print. Yet, print books, newspapers, and magazines didn’t fall away as expected. Film and instant photography not only made a comeback but allowed closing factories to reopen and passionate communities to thrive. Board game cafes opened on every corner alongside new brick-and-mortar stores where e-commerce was once supposed to take the lead.

Published in 2016, The Revenge of Analog would come to have a bizarre relevance only four years later. Society, as a whole, saw firsthand how isolating a world with purely digital technology could be. Yes, there were other factors at play, we had to stay indoors to protect our health. But suddenly, we longed to browse a bookstore and trail our fingertips along the spines, laugh over an overpriced warm beverage with friends in a Starbucks, and peruse the grocery store aisles for new and wacky chip flavours like the good ol’ days.

No matter how digitally savvy we become, nothing can replace the human-centred and tactile experience of analog.

Summary of The Revenge of Analog

A funny thing happened on the way to the digital utopia. We've begun to fall back in love with the very analog goods and ideas the tech gurus insisted that we no longer needed. Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life. Notebooks, records, and stationery have become cool again. Behold the Revenge of Analog.

Sax's work reveals a deep truth about how humans shop, interact, and even think. Blending psychology and observant wit with first-rate reportage, Sax shows the limited appeal of the purely digital life and the robust future of the real world outside it. (Amazon.ca)

Connected Learning

In another post, I spoke about the concept of fluency.

“Fluency comes from familiarity. Alternatively, disfluency comes from having to think too hard. Yet, people will endure disfluence if they expect a fluent ending. They’ll watch a complicated movie because, on one hand, disfluency requires higher attention and thus, engagement. And on the other, they hold onto the expectation that it will all make sense in the end.”

Whether my theory is correct or not I think there’s an interesting connection between this disfluency concept and the return of printed magazines and newspapers. In The Revenge of Analog Sax shares how reading a magazine from front to back, rather than picking through and choosing articles on a website, means you’re exposed to and reading things you normally wouldn’t.

In Hit Makers, Thompson wondered if there was a way to create “disfluent” newsfeeds to expose us to ideas different from our own. In other words, ideas we’re not already fluent with. A printed product may be the way to do just that.

Furthermore, I picked up this book (borrowed the ebook from the library) because Roland Allen referenced it in his book The Notebook which I also wrote a post on.

While The Notebook focuses on well…the notebook, The Revenge of Analog casts a wider view of why we’re so naturally drawn to analog experiences and products.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s about the experience. The full sensory experience: the softness of a leather cover, the scent of freshly cut paper, the smooth ink of a pen gliding over an ivory-coloured page. Even when you purchase a notebook in say, an Indigo. There’s music playing, and other customers bustling around, you can hear the clatter from the adjoining Starbucks and smell the hot coffee and sweets.

You can’t have that kind of experience scrolling on a glass screen and pressing a Buy Now button that doesn’t even have that satisfactory ‘click’ that once came from a mouse or physical keyboard. The only sensory experience you get in a purely digital medium is ripping open the plastic or cardboard packaging when it inevitably arrives on your doorstep.

There’s no immediacy in online shopping. You don’t get to buy something and bring it home right away. It’s convenient, and I am not about to say we should abandon digital technology. But, every so often, when we have the opportunity, I think it’s nice to go to a brick-and-mortar store, to play a vinyl record, or to read a paperback novel.

Why I Enjoy Analog

I enjoy digital technology. The ease of it. I wouldn’t have graduated college without its existence. But because my work means I spend the majority of my day glued to a screen, I purposefully take the time to go analog.

Even when I read this as an ebook, I had the Blue Shade feature turned on, on my tablet and my journal opened before me to take notes. My phone sits to the side, I’m not listening to any music. I only have my lamp light on and I’m snuggled under the covers in my bed. That’s the sensory experience I look forward to every night: a good book and soft lighting.

And there is something that both Roland Allen and David Sax describe, that tactility of analog. My brain works differently when I’m writing with a pen in my journal versus typing on a keyboard. There’s something about having the words I record–not on a screen–but on physical pages I can hold in my hands. There’s something about the limitation of a physical notebook containing only what I’ve written in it. I am limited by the number of lines and its pages. It does not contain the infinite information of my smartphone. It cannot be saved to the cloud. It may not exist as infinitely as a digital version. Eventually, the binding will fray, the pages will yellow, and the ink will fade, but it will have existed in my hands, pressed to my chest, or laid open on a table.

I think we crave analog for the same reason we crave physical touch: human connection. I think there’s a resemblance between flipping the pages of a paperback or sifting through a vinyl collection and wrapping your best friend in a bear hug. It requires a sort of slowing down, a deep breath, and an intimacy–that which a virtual world aims to erase because its goals are speed, convenience, and efficiency.

We have a plethora of information at our fingertips, but it means nothing if we cannot connect human to human.

Final Thoughts

I’ll leave you with my two favourite quotes from the book. The first is from the introduction.

“The choice we face isn’t between digital and analog. That simplistic duality is actually the language that digital has conditioned us to: a false binary choice between 1 and 0, black and white, Samsung and Apple. The real world isn’t black or white. It is not even grey. Reality is multicoloured, infinitely textured, and emotionally layered. It smells funky and tastes weird, and revels in human imperfection. The best ideas emerge from that complexity, which remains beyond the capability of digital technology to fully appreciate. The real world matters, now more than ever.”

The second is from Nicola Baldini of FILM Ferrania who Sax interviews for the revenge of the film chapter of the book.

“It’s just like art, I’m Michelangelo and I have the idea to do a sculpture of David. I have two choices: I can scan David’s body and print out the perfect proportions on a 3D printer, or I can start from a block of marble and chip away. The process is different and I have to be more creative with marble to achieve a result that becomes a masterpiece. When we sell film, I want to sell a supportive tool to obtain creation.”

Additional Reading

The books referenced in The Revenge of Analog.

• The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin

• Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

• The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

• Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill

• You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

• The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr

• Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

• Flickering Mind by Todd Oppenheimer

• What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly