The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
by David Sax
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 Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life.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.
Articles, reviews, interviews, etc. related to the book The Revenge of Analog:
1. Review (The New York Review of Books): Pause! We Can Go Back!
Bill McKibben
Feb. 9, 2017
2. Review (The New York Times): ‘The Revenge of Analog’: See It. Feel It. Touch It. (Don’t Click)
Michiko Kakutani
Dec. 5, 2016
3. Review (The New York Times): Times Critics’ Top Books of 2016
Michiko Kakutani
Dec. 14, 2016
4. Interview (CBC Radio): David Sax makes the case for real things that still matter
Brent Bambury
Oct. 28, 2016 (09:33 mins.)
5. Review (The Globe and Mail): David Sax’s ‘Revenge of the Analog’ extols the superiority of ‘real things’
Navneet Alang
Nov. 4, 2016
6. Review (Pop Matters): There Is Only One Reality, and It’s Analog
Hans Rollman
March 20, 2017
7. Audio (Hatchette Book Group): Preview and excerpts from ‘The Revenge of Analog’