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Why Analog is Here For Life
The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, Book Review
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.
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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.
