In a recent after-speech interview with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, commentator Tucker Carlson suggested that the audience not throw away their hard copies of books because they represent the physical repository of knowledge necessary for an informed citizenry. As I’ve stated earlier, I basically quit buying e-books because I want to own a physical artifact that cannot be censored or deleted from my device. And I am headed to the area book fair tomorrow for more titles.
“Analog innovations aren’t nostalgic. They are solutions firmly focused on the future—not some technocentric version of it, where we invent our way to utopia, but a humancentric future that reflects where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and how we actually want to live,” writes David Sax, author of The Future Is Analog: How To Create a More Human World. “The default setting is the physical, analog reality that we humans are naturally inclined to.”
According to Pamela Paul, author of 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet, a recent Gallup poll found Americans visited the library more than they went to the movies. And speaking of the movies, Linda and I just saw our first movie in months at the local multiplex. It was called Jesus Revolution and you cannot make this stuff up but we had to ask a couple of Mennonite women seated next to us to turn off their phones during the movie, only one of whom actually complied.
“The technical term for smartphone addiction is nomophobia, or the fear of being without your phone,” writes Celeste Headlee, author of We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter. And it is for the very reason that most people act so addicted to them that we rarely attend such public gatherings anymore. While trying to enjoy an outdoor concert last year we were distracted by noises from a nearby kid playing video games on a tablet.
Among the other casualties of said communal experiences are live plays at local theaters, which we used to enjoy regularly. And I try not to attend large sporting events as I am not prone to paying the extortionary prices of admission only to be subjected to some clown’s selfish antics ruining the shared experience. As an aside, I actually blame Apple’s refusal to include earbuds with its devices as one of the main contributors to the overall decline in public civility.
Another couple examples of our return to simpler media include the board version of Scrabble together with a corresponding branded dictionary (pictured above) and a Sony boombox for our old school music collection. While I am at it, allow me to suggest turning off your device notifications with all of their rings, dings, and pings as you play your own board games or even vinyl records! And feel free to check out my earlier post titled “The Revenge of Analog.”