We live in a digital world. But analog is making a comeback. Some of us sense it. Some of us feel it, but as Michiko Kakutani explains in his review of David Sax’s book, The Revenge of Analog, there are compelling reasons for this. He begins by saying, as Stephen King once wrote, “Sooner or later, everything old is new again,”
Here’s part of what’s in this killer-good review:
“In his captivating new book, “The Revenge of Analog,” the reporter David Sax provides an insightful and entertaining account of this phenomenon, creating a powerful counternarrative to the techno-utopian belief that we would live in an ever-improving, all-digital world. Mr. Sax argues that analog isn’t going anywhere, but is experiencing a bracing revival that is not just a case of nostalgia or hipster street cred, but something more complex.”
“Analog experiences can provide us with the kind of real-world pleasures and rewards digital ones cannot,” he writes, and “sometimes analog simply outperforms digital as the best solution.” Pen and paper can give writers and designers a direct means of sketching out their ideas without the complicating biases of software, while whiteboards can bring engineers “out from behind their screens” and entice them “to take risks and share ideas with others.”
