David Sax

Real Things and Why They Matter

The Revenge of Analog

One of Michiko Kakutani's (New York Times) top ten books of 2016 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 Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life.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. David Sax has uncovered story after story of entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even big corporations who've found a market selling not apps or virtual solutions but real, tangible things. As e-books are supposedly remaking reading, independent bookstores have sprouted up across the country. As music allegedly migrates to the cloud, vinyl record sales have grown more than ten times over the past decade. Even the offices of tech giants like Google and Facebook increasingly rely on pen and paper to drive their brightest ideas. 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.

Ron Bronson

Would probably be fine if you're uninitiated to the ways analog has taken over the world in many ways. If you don't have any audiophile friends with phonographs (or one yourself) or have any idea about many of the other topics related to this reversion of "real culture" and how things have seemed to evolve backwards in spite of the speed of digital, this book will probably pique your interest and teach you a lot you didn't know.

Otherwise...not.

Nick Gracilla

Sax works to understand why, in the face of an increasingly digital world, there's a resurgence of interest in non-digital good and services—from vinyl LPs to independent bookshops, film and board games to physical paper books and notebooks, retail "experiences" and no-phones-allowed summer camps. Read this if you're interested in exploring the limits of "digital transformation," and how these limits are driving the bankable desire for human-centric, tactile, relationship building products. Four stars, as a rigorous editing job could have made for a more concise read; some of the case studies seemed interminable. Recommended.

Kerry Gibbons

Okay so here’s the thing about this book: it is written reasonably well, it’s an absolutely fascinating subject matter, and the pseudo-test cases the author explores are fine examples for the most part.

But what the author did not do is really apply a good amount of objective analysis to what he was writing about. I imagine he planned the book out, then planned what he’d research, then researched those things, then wrote the book. He mentions once or twice being surprised by the findings of a particular avenue of his research, but I have to say that’s a pretty underwhelming method for doing research! It implies he had a hypothesis and then set about proving it instead of letting the research lead him somewhere.

A great deal of really interesting implications are never explored: hybrid tech/analog options for each of his topics (especially education); how technology companies (other than Evernote, which is not his strongest example anyway) are exploring integrating analog benefits into their plans and products; places analog fails compared to tech; the socio-economic demographics of those pushing the analog revolution; analog in areas as-yet virgin to technology’s dominance (physical goods, clothing, etc...) and/or the hidden ways technology has been integrated into these fields; non-digital technology; a further exploration of the impact on workers and quality of life in analog vs digital workforce’s etc.

And meanwhile we cover somehow a robot dog? The sense of editing made very little sense to me. 

It’s a worthwhile read but kind of preachy and a narrow, one-sided view of a very complicated and nuanced topic. The author attempts to make broad conclusions and suggests it’s simpler than I think it is (though he does not go so far as to say it’s actually simple).

The Revenge of Analog Real Things and Why They Matter

Reviews