According to David Sax author of the Revenge of the Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, analog, that is, the very tactile world of things outside the computer, is experiencing a bracing revival. All sorts of technologies routinely considered to be passé or quaint are being widely embraced, especially by millennials raised on digital.
He writes: “Analog gives us the joy of creating and possessing real, tangible things”, like the unique sound of vinyl records played on a turntable… big ideas, dreams and designs written in a paper notebook with just the right pen…magazines and books to open at random while enjoying the very different way their words and images hit us… instant polaroid-like film that develops in front of our very eyes and become tangible keepsakes.
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 gray. Reality is multicolored, infinitely textured, and emotionally layered.”
YES!
We love the richness of digital AND analog.
We think of the very close friends we’ve made via Improvised Life whom we’ve never actually met, and the vast range of ideas that it brings into our field of vision daily: all via a digital medium.
And we are reminded of the many analog things we love:
books especially…
…art…
chess, cards and board games…
…clouds…
…typewriters (manual and electric, make us write in a completely different way)…The vintage Olivetti Valentine designed by Ettore Sottsass is a joy to drive…
graffiti…
...small batch makers and sellers of things and services…
…the weather..
…cooking dinner with friends…
…talking…
…handwritten letters…
…poems read out loud…
….PLUMS!!!
…as Mary Oliver reminds, and the sublime realm of the senses and ALL it affords
Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and intothe body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishmentrattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’tsuccumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joyis a taste before
it’s anything else, and the bodycan lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking itinto the body first, like small
wild plums.
Enjoy the thoughts,
as usual.
Thinking about it,
for a while, actually,
..’anal-logically’,…;
It’s the speed,
that is threatening.
The speed.
“The fastests.”
“The quickest.”
“….the biggest, farthest, highest,,.”
Human nature?
Natural aethectics?
,…i’m still working on it,
not sure.
Social values?
,….not sure.
Speed is somehow so ‘time-related’.
Is ‘time’ our challenge?
,….not sure.
Thanks for the push.
Good one. Thank you!
It all serves its purpose, as you have hinted, there is room for several ideas to be enjoyed .. and take a different approach .
There was already a mission to the moon when we still considered our world to be analogue .
“All the modern things
Like cars and such
Have always existed
They’ve just been waiting in a mountain
For the right moment..”
(Bjork, Modern Thngs )
The more virtual things (can) become, the more we might realize that our world is such ….
Thanks Sahana, always great to find a poem/song hiding in Comments.