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Summary
Summary
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 Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life.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.
Author Notes
David Sax is a writer, reporter, and speaker who specializes in business and culture. His previous book, The Revenge of Analog , was a #1 Washington Post bestseller, was selected as one of Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten books of 2016 for the New York Times , and has been translated into six languages. He is the author of Save the Deli , which won a James Beard award, and The Tastemakers . He lives in Toronto.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this study of consumerism in the 21st century, Sax (Save the Deli) sets out to prove that nostalgia is not the sole reason for the resurgence of vinyl records, film cameras, paper notebooks, and bookstores in an era dominated by digital technology. He travels across the United States, Canada, and Italy, visiting factories and startups, stores and cafes, where the focus is on solidifying a place for analog technologies and goods in a world full of screens, instant messages, and almost endless digital choices at one's fingertips. Lastly, he investigates the meditative practices of executives in Silicon Valley and returns to a summer camp he attended as a child outside of Toronto, discovering how the people one might most expect to be glued to their illuminated screens-computer programmers and kids-are limiting technology's place in their lives. 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. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An exploration of millennial fondness for old technologies and its implications for a competitive business landscape.Toronto-based journalist Sax (The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue, 2014, etc.) became curious why peers in his tech-focused circle were buying turntables and Moleskine notebooks: Certain technologies and processes that had recently been rendered obsolete suddenly began to show new life.Every week Id walk down the street and find a new boutique focused on an analog pursuit. Structurally, the author relies on the titular conceit of cultural revenge, as each chapter focuses on the revenge of paper, film, retail, and so forth. He finds support for his argument about the new vitality of analog in various anecdotal narratives, the strongest parts of the book. His point is most vividly made by the commercial resurgence of vinyl records, startling industry vets like the now-thriving United Record Pressing of Nashville. As the author notes, the [digital] streaming services have proven technology, but unproven business models, which are now being undercut by the tangible, collectible profitability of records. Similarly, Sax sees in Torontos packed board game cafes a mecca of analog funand an example of how a tangible community is closely tied to analogs revenge. He also shares a charming underdog story from Italy, where revival of the fragile FILM Ferrania factory is underway, and the shrewd lifestyle marketing of Moleskine (which actually revived a dormant notebook style described by Bruce Chatwin, thus inventing a symbol of creativity). Sax identifies intriguing representations of the swing toward analog, but his argument becomes more diffuse when linked to the less quirky and forgiving worlds of work, school, and digital innovation. He relies on a broad but shallow pool of interviewees, talking to a few innovators in each chaptere.g., the manager of Facebooks Analog Research Laboratory, who avers, the mission of the lab is to provoke and instill creativity in people. A perky and well-illustrated but repetitive, sometimes-pat look at a discordantly retro cultural trend. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Here is a compulsively readable book after a Luddite's heart. The digital revolution streamlined our lives, but it also curtailed crucial experiences. Sax looks at things and ideas altered irrevocably by technology and then asks why some people choose the old ways. The book examines the soaring interest in vinyl, paper, film, and board games and then delves into analog ideas : retail, work, school, summer. Sax articulates in a reasoned way what technophobes have been tantrumming about. Our human relationship with things is about full-bodied experiences and engaging with the world, warts and all. Analog vinyl recordings capture a heartfelt, organic sound that Auto-Tune would smooth over. Readers will be surprised by the chapter on technology and schools experts reserve damning comments for failed initiatives that didn't consult teachers or willfully ignored the basic tenets of early childhood education. Sax closes with a visit to a summer camp that bans electronic devices for campers. For some campers (and their parents), this concept is incomprehensible, but for the vast majority, it's a great stress reliever and contributed to stronger, more lasting social relationships. 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 that will be great for book groups.--Mediatore Stover, Kaite Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NO MATTER WHICH side you're on in the debate over digital technology, there's something to cheer you in "The Revenge of Analog." If you lament that the online revolution has wiped out the local, the tangible, the brick-and-mortar, David Sax's chronicle of resurgent vinyl record factories and board-game cafes will reassure you with some of the niche businesses that have survived the digital onslaught. (In some cases, Sax argues, analog business models work better than digital ones, despite Silicon Valley hype.) But if you think that Twitter and smartphones have brought us the best of all possible worlds, you'll enjoy reading that many of these new, in-real-life innovations are actually enlivened by the web, like the blogs dedicated to Moleskine notebooks, which are thriving in an era of print nostalgia. So there is not a whole lot of edge in the "revenge" part of the title: Much of the book is about how digital and analog can get along, like old pals who've made it through a brief rough spot and are high-fiving again. Sax, a Canadian business journalist best known for the James Beard Award-winning book "Save the Deli," clearly likes old things and does not believe in putting the word authenticity in quotation marks. In "The Revenge of Analog," he's not particularly angry or broken up about the disruptions of the last decade or so. He works through his topics chapter by chapter - "The Revenge of Paper," "The Revenge of Film," "The Revenge of Retail" - with scene-setting and friendly interviews with various innovators. One of his more substantial chapters looks at the cyber-utopian impulse that's led public school districts to purchase laptops and related technology; these kids, he argues, mostly just need good teaching. And his ardor for analog models does not turn entirely on nostalgia: He argues that the older system created more jobs, and filled human needs - for a sensory, tactile experience, for example - that the new ones don't. Part of what becomes clear in Sax's telling of the tale is that much of this posthumous wave of analog operates at the very high end. His chapter on the return of print, for instance, looks at Monocle, Kinfolk, Wallpaper and The Gentlewoman, not the huge number of newspapers and mainstream magazines that have bitten the dust since the one-two punch of the Great Recession and the online media onslaught. Other times he veers close to commodity fetishism. "You can be a buttoned-up investment banker or a nerdy engineer, but open up your Moleskine and you are playing on the same creative field as the cool architect designing an urban park at the cafe." BUT SAX IS NOT NAÏVE. Most of his chapter on "The Revenge of Work," for example, looks at the company Shinola, which makes retro-cool watches whose prices can exceed $1,000 (alongside a $15,000 framed American flag) in a formerly rough part of Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. He's respectful of the company's ambitions and accomplishments, but also points out the distasteful irony of a high-end hipster brand trading on its location in a struggling city. Soon after Detroit went bankrupt, and residents were literally freezing to death at home, Shinola sent out a tweet saying: "Bankruptcy, shmankruptcy. We have a lot of job openings here in #Detroit. Come join our team!" The battle between digital and analog may not be quite as benign as Sax paints it. There are plenty of talented people who work in music, journalism and photography whose careers have been all but washed away by the internet's disruption. Sax sets many of his scenes in Toronto (his board-game-besotted hometown), in Britain and in Italy, where he makes a convincing case that a vigorous and amorous fight for analog is afoot. But anyone who loved Other Music in New York or Rocket Video in Los Angeles, or any of the many bookstores destroyed by online bookselling, will know that there's another side to the story. SCOTT TIMBERG, a Los Angeles-based staff writer for Salon, is the author of "Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class"
Choice Review
Sax challenges the widely accepted belief that technological, or digital, advancement aligns with our perceived notion of human progress. He artfully illustrates a series of examples of an analog renaissance that is taking place around the globe in a variety of industries. For example, Sax's well-researched cases invite the reader to discover how vinyl record sales have surged in recent years, despite online music distribution dominance. Or, that moleskin notebooks have become a status symbol within the creative industry, challenging digital note-taking, brainstorming, and computer-aided design. His examples and arguments also span the domains of work, school, and even the digital industry itself, which seeks to find new ways of being "offline" (ironically) in order to become better in the digital world. Sax emphasizes that analog is no longer "niche," but mainstream. The book is thought provoking because it challenges existing assumptions about how technology advances our lives (or not), while also highlighting how analog technologies address fundamental needs that humans crave. It also provides insights on how entrepreneurs around the globe have taken advantage of this phenomenon. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --Christoph Winkler, Long Island University - Brooklyn
Library Journal Review
Passion is what fuels the analog revolution. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the most interesting chapters of this book are those in which the author is personally invested. It is clear that reporter Sax (The Tastemakers) loves vinyl, bookstores, and writing on paper. His descriptions of searching the bargain bins at his local record store or getting the perfect recommendation from the staff at a favorite bookstore demonstrate that Sax is not only reporting this movement, he's part of it. Even some of the areas he's less expert in, such as film manufacturing, reveal a lively interest and keen understanding of analog enthusiasts. However, in the chapters "Revenge of Work" and "Revenge of School," the benefits of analog are clear, but the evidence is shaky. When talking about work, Sax seems oddly blind to the utter lack of sustainability. On schools, he identifies many failures of educational technology (such as smart boards) yet offers none of the enthusiasm for analog found in the earlier sections. VERDICT Readers who eschew Kindles and iPods or who want to "unplug" will relish this title.-Cate Hirschbiel, Iwasaki Lib., Emerson Coll., Boston © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.