VIA NATIONAL POST | “I just like the feel of a book in my hands!”
Despite living an otherwise digital world, this sentiment is almost impossible to avoid anytime the topic of eBooks comes up. While Silicon Valley might think those who try to stave off the inevitability of technological advances are behind the times, maybe they’re actually on to something.
According to David Sax, author of Save the Deli (2009), The Tastemakers (2014) and now, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, analog is having a comeback. And he took me on a tour of some retailers on Toronto’s Queen Street West – a record and audio store, a bookstore, a watch store – to prove it. “This book began when I was writing Save the Deli back in 2007, right when smartphones were taking off,” he explains.
“Friends of mine were getting Blackberries, and I was seeing the difference in how they interacted with the world, and how I was interacting with technology through things like downloads and iTunes.” What Sax also noticed was how what should have been the triumph of digital technology seemed to coincide with the rebirth of its predecessor.
“There was kind of a parallel with Save the Deli, which was about the re-emergence of artisan deli food.” To extend the metaphor: “Everything else is only going to get more digitally connected, and that’s only going to make us hungrier for this analog stuff.”
Sax begins The Revenge of Analog with perhaps its best-known resurrection: vinyl records, which we browse at Planet of Sound. A few years ago, Sax notes, there might have been one bin of new records, but now there’s a market to support much more – priced at $25 to $35 a unit – alongside expensive turntables, some priced in the thousands. “And it’s not just audiophiles,” Sax notes. “The vinyl geeks never went away: it’s the cheaper turntables that have totally boomed in the past couple years.”
“It’s not about the sound quality – that’s the false flag,” he maintains. “It’s the process of engaging with it. You have to commit to it, you have to commit to it financially, and you have to commit more of your time to it.”
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