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 Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life.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.
In this international bestseller Sax examines the people and companies at the forefront of analog's new growth and makes essential arguments for the enduring value of real things, even while embracing constant change.
#1 Washington Post Bestseller
One of Michiko Kakutani's (New York Times) top ten books of 2016
A Globe and Mail and National Post best book of 2016
An Inc. best book for entrepreneurs
Longlisted for the ALA/Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Translated into 6 languages (South Korean national bestseller)
Reviews
“In his captivating new book, “The Revenge of Analog,” the reporter David Sax provides an insightful and entertaining account of this phenomenon, creating a powerful counternarrative to the techno-utopian belief that we would live in an ever-improving, all-digital world. Mr. Sax argues that analog isn’t going anywhere, but is experiencing a bracing revival that is not just a case of nostalgia or hipster street cred, but something more complex.”
— Michiko Kakutani
“David Sax’s thesis in his new book, The Revenge of Analog—and it’s a beguiling one—is that these islands are growing larger and more numerous. He brings us tales of these analog refuges, crankily safe from the instantaneous and universal. Places where we can relax, and maybe even think, as opposed to click. Places where we can touch actual physical objects.”
— Bill McKibben.
“Sax outlines the many ways in which analog tech bests digital because of what it does not do. Your paperback novel cannot interrupt your reading to tell you the weather, your newspaper has a start and a finish, and your analog recording studio forces you to make decisions and just cut a track, rather than the malleability of digitally creating "a moving target of unachievable perfection." In the face of such endlessness, it is subtraction, boundaries – less – that is the strategy for survival in the digital era.”
— Navneet Alang
Interviews and Media Coverage
