The case for the analogue life

‍    This is an excerpt from the Substack of The Archivists, along with Stephanie Valente. You can read the full post at their site, here. 

      The appeal of analogue life is often misread as nostalgia with a sentimental longing for older tools or simpler times. But what many people are responding to is sense of structure.

      Older technologies impose limits. A vinyl record has sides. A notebook has pages. A landline rings or it doesn’t. These constraints create rhythm. They offer an ending and make attention finite again. Granted, we live in a world of planned obsolescence, which feels more like a marketing tactic (because it is) versus the choice to read a paperback book versus an e-reader.

      Philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously observed that the medium is the message. Which means that the tools we use shape not only what we consume, but how we think, feel and relate to existence at large.

      Analogue tools slow cognition just enough to let sensation catch up.

      My video iPod from college… should I resurrect her?

      There’s an important distinction between having less and choosing less. One is deprivation and the other is discernment.

      Choosing less is an act of authorship. It says: this is enough for me right now. It allows taste to replace impulse, rhythm to replace reaction.

      In a culture that equates value with accumulation, choosing less can feel almost subversive but it’s also deeply stabilizing. Why? It restores a sense of proportion between effort and reward, between desire and fulfillment.

      Choosing analogue moments restores a form of sovereignty over one’s attention. What often gets lost in discussions of analogue living is the pleasure of it.

      Put aside the idea of morality or interpersonal expansion. Simply exist in a state of delight or play.

      There is pleasure in:

• Hearing the soft click of a camera shutter

• Rewinding a tape

• Annotating a book’s margins

• Waiting for a letter

• Listening to an album from beginning to end

      Creativity thrives in conditions that allow for wandering. When you’re less reachable, you become more available to boredom, to curiosity, to lateral thinking (three very important modes, in my opinion). After all, many creative types credit their best ideas to unstructured attention.

      Analogue life demands that you do things long enough to feel them.