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The Art of Manliness

The Future Is Analog

The Art of Manliness

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.714.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2016, David Sax wrote a book called The Revenge of Analog, which made the case that even as we marched towards an ever more digital future, we were increasingly returning to real, tangible things — choosing vinyl records over streaming, brick and mortar bookstores over Amazon, and in-person conversations over Skype. In the intervening years, the pandemic hit, and, David argues, truly reaffirmed his case, which he lays out in his latest book: The Future Is Analog. Today on the show, David explains how the pandemic gave us a trial run of an entirely digital future, and made us realize we really don't want it, or at least, we don't want all of it. We discuss the drawbacks that came from going virtual with work, school, shopping, socializing, and religious worship, and discuss how we're not as smart when we don't use our embodied cognition, how information is different from education, and why there are few things quite as awful as a Zoom cocktail party. In the intervening years, the pandemic hit, and, David argues, truly reaffirmed his case, which he lays out in his latest book: The Future Is Analog. Today on the show, David explains how the pandemic gave us a trial run of an entirely digital future, and made us realize we really don’t want it, or at least, we don’t want all of it. We discuss the drawbacks that came from going virtual with work, school, shopping, socializing, and religious worship, and discuss how we’re not as smart when we don’t use our embodied cognition, how information is different from education, and why there are few things quite as awful as a Zoom cocktail party. In the intervening years, the pandemic hit, and, David argues, truly reaffirmed his case, which he lays out in his latest book: The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Brat McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.

0:11.3

In 2016, David Sacks wrote a book called Revenge of the Analog, which made the case that

0:16.6

even as he marched towards an ever more digital future, we were increasingly returning to

0:20.4

real tangible things, choosing vinyl records over streaming, brick and mortar bookstores

0:24.8

over Amazon, and in-person conversations over Skype.

0:28.0

In the intervening years, the pandemic hit, and David argues, truly reaffirmed his case,

0:32.8

which he lays out in his latest book, The Future Is Analog.

0:36.0

Today in the show, David explains how the pandemic gave us a trial run of an entirely digital

0:40.4

future, and made us realize we don't really want it, or at least we don't want all of

0:44.7

it.

0:45.7

We discussed the drawbacks that came from going virtual with work, school, shopping, socializing

0:50.1

and religious worship, and discussed how we're not as smart when we don't use our embodied

0:53.4

cognition, how information is different from education, and why there are a few things

0:57.2

quite as awful as a Zoom cocktail party.

1:00.3

At the show's over, check out our show notes at a-wim.is-slash-futures-analog.

1:06.6

All right, David Sacks, welcome back to the show.

1:17.8

It is a pleasure to be back here, Brent.

1:19.8

So we had you on back in 2017, that's a long time ago, to discuss your book The Revenge

1:25.2

of the Analog, where you highlighted these pockets in our culture where people were intentionally

1:31.5

choosing analog versions of things we now do digitally.

1:34.8

So people listening to the vinyl instead of streaming, I guess now the thing is cassette

1:39.9

tapes are coming back, too, so you probably could have talked about that.

...

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