Hi, today I’m reviewing The Revenge of Analog by David Sax. Real Things and Why They Matter. They do matter. Yeah, very interesting. Chapter by chapter, he goes through the different types of media that are going analog and some that have been in existence since the digital revolution and continue to exist. And, well really, all of them because everything started with real things as opposed to ones and zeros and algorithms and apps. App is just another word for program, computer program. That’s what they are. Computer programs. Everything is a computer program. Somebody programmed a thing to do something. Oh, okay, well, I’ll just shut up and go on with this book review. “The Revenge of Print”. I love that part. Okay. Yeah, naturally I would love that part. I especially love what he had to say here.
When he had come up with the idea of writing a book, somebody asked him “why a book? What did she mean? Why would you write another book? She then proceeded to spell out all the arguments against publishing a book as a means of expression. Books took tremendous amounts of research and writing. Publishers paid relatively meager amounts for that work.” Yes, that’s true. “And very few books sold well enough to make their authors any significant money.” Also true. “Besides no one read print anyway.” No one reads print, right? “What was the alternative? I asked. Branded content, she replied as though it was obvious. The world was driven by brands, she said, and artists and other creatives were producing great works on behalf of brands. She could easily see The Revenge of Analog as one of these projects. Perhaps Sony Music would pay for a web video series about the vinyl record industry, or Canon would sponsor a blog about analog makers, quote-unquote. People didn’t want more books, she told me. They want digestible bits of branded content. And those like me who create art or ideas can either make money producing that content or grow poor while we desperately cling to our dying systems of culture.”
Yeah, I wish I could do that. Wow. That left him feeling profoundly shaken, he said. But I like his response. “Who the hell did she think she was, this former model with a nose like a ski jump to question my very professional existence five minutes after we met? As days went by, her questions ate at me. Was I so upset, because she was right? Why the hell was I writing another book?” Boy, I hear those words so loud and clear.
Let me tell you, it is no easy thing to be an author, period, but it is a very, very gratifying thing to find a book like this. And thank you David Sax for writing it, and thank you for believing in the book as a medium of worth, the printed book. Thank you very much, and I hope you all feel similarly. I mean, I hope you all believe still in the power of the printed in real ink on real paper word and the love that goes into making something like this, the life force that is being given up by people to create these things.
They devote their lives to this, folks. That’s why the system has been so hard to change. There are people out there who have been invested in that system for decades and suddenly upstart Amazon comes along and makes me a New York Times bestseller. And of course nobody cares.
So anyway, see, that’s the kind of topsy-turvy shit that’s going on. And of course it’s going to upset people and of course people are going to argue about stuff related to it, and I am just so tired of those arguments at this point.
But I am very happy to see this book exist and the fact that there are people who are still making movies on film and there are people who are still creating vinyl records. And I have my old vinyl records downstairs in the basement and I never play them, because we don’t have a turntable anymore, and that kind of breaks my heart a little bit. Oh, well, it’s one of those days. What can I say? Have a good day, and thank you for listening and watching. Be seeing you!
You can get the ebook from these retailers:
You can also get it in print from my Bookshop.org bookstore and support indie bookstores.