Staff Pick
As a potter and an independent bookstore employee, reading Revenge of the Analog was fortifying. Of course people still care about actual objects. Of course it is not all digital nonsense. But still, it’s nice to be told so by someone who put thought into the matter. David Sax talks vinyl, paper, film, board games, print, retail, work (as in: making actual things), and school (as in: actually going to a place to learn) — why they’re back, and what value they hold that cannot be replaced by their digital counterparts. Recommended By Britt A., Powells.com
David Sax's wonderful, relentlessly informative new book, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, upends the tired (and tiresome) notion that digital technology will usher in an era of interpersonal connectivity, efficient manufacturing, educational advances, and utopian innovation. With chapters on vinyl records, paper products and print books, film, board games, retail, manufacturing, work, school, and others, Sax charts the resurgence of analog technologies, reporting from across a wide spectrum of industries to make the case that, despite the promise of technology-based social salvation, we may well have reached the digital apex.
With an engaging blend of anecdote and analysis, The Revenge of Analog contravenes the ongoing media narrative extolling our brave new digital future. Wherever Sax makes a foray, he seems to find a thriving (and increasingly more lucrative) marketplace with a renascent interest in the tried and true. Fusing human psychology, futurism, history, marketing, business, and economics, The Revenge of Analog is a stimulating, thought-provoking work on the enduring importance of analog technology in its myriad forms and applications, and the omnipresent trend toward the revitalization (and renewed appreciation) of analog in our contemporary society.
While a work like this, in lesser hands, could have easily devolved into a Luddite screed, nowhere within the book does Sax romanticize analog for its own sake. The benefits, virtues, and advantages of analog are many (especially in how we relate to one another both individually and collectively), and Sax's reporting on the movement towards a more balanced future portends an age where our over-reliance on digital technology ought to decrease in favor of "real things." The Revenge of Analog is well-researched, frequently amusing, and wittily written; Sax has done a tremendous job at distilling the momentum behind a most necessary (and underreported) cultural shift gaining ever more traction by the day. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com
In the last few years we have witnessed firsthand the resurgence of local independent bookstores. However, I was surprised to learn that it is not just books, but board games, vinyl records, and paper journals that have also benefited from this shift towards nondigital lifestyle products. David Sax is one of the great chroniclers of cultural change, and his newest book, The Revenge of Analog, is a fascinating investigation of why society is increasingly choosing to embrace analog products of all kinds. Recommended By Shawn D., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"The more advanced our digital technologies, the more we come to realize that reality rules. David Sax reassures us surviving members of team human that material existence is alive and well, and makes a compelling case for the reclamation of terra firma and all that comes with it." — Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
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.
Review
"Here is a compulsively readable book after a Luddite’s heart…. Sax isn’t preaching a return to the pre-Industrial Age, but neither is he embracing the robot overlords. He thoughtfully, wisely, and honestly points out how analog experiences enhance digital creativity and how humans benefit from what both have to offer. Essential reading." Booklist
Review
"The better digital gets, the more important analog becomes. In this fun tour of modern culture, David Sax has collected hundreds of ways that an analog approach can improve our newest inventions. Sax’s reporting is eye-opening and mind-changing." Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired and author of The Inevitable
Review
"Sax’s message is that digital technology has certainly made life easier, but the analog technologies of old can make life more rich and substantial. This book has a calming effect, telling readers, one analog page at a time, that tangible goods, in all their reassuring solidity, are back and are not going anywhere." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
David Sax is a journalist specializing in business and culture. His writing appears regularly in Bloomberg Businessweek and The New Yorker's Currency blog. He is the author of two books, including The Tastemakers: A Celebrity Rice Farmer, a Food Truck Lobbyist, and Other Innovators Putting Food Trends on Your Plate, and Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen, which won a James Beard Award for Writing and Literature. He lives in Toronto.
David Sax on PowellsBooks.Blog
One of the best things about writing
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter is it was basically one big, tax-deductible excuse to acquire some very cool things. After all, if I didn’t practice the analog gospel I preached, what kind of evangelist for the benefits and pleasures of a tactile world of objects and ideas would I be?...
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