Today's guest is journalist and author David Sax. We talk about his new book The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter.
There is no denying we live in a world dominated by digital, but that matrix of digital process and product did not actually destroy the analog things it replaced. Those things are still there, behind the glowing green flow of ones and zeros. Pen and paper, photographic film, vinyl records, dice and playing cards... not only are these things not lost in our past, they are storming the future in surprising ways.
David Sax would describe The Revenge of Analog as a business book - and it does indeed track the surprising resurgence of analog products, work flows and consumer preferences, showing how even in the age of tech dominance there is a solid business incentive for going real. All good stuff, but I read the Revenge of Analog almost as a self-help book - as a reminder that there are board games on the high shelf in my closet, that there are vinyl records in my parents garage, just waiting to bring me the same pleasure they did when I first bought them forty years ago, and that, like my previous guest Michelle Berry, real folks are laying down real money to open real old-school businesses like bookstores, still.