Save Time for Analog

I’m probably one of the more technology driven people you’ll find in a casual sampling. So I do spend a lot of time in the digital realm. Over the years I have turned in my time sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day. Time spent writing a little code and debugging a lot of it, all while chasing a very specific outcome.

And to be honest, a lot of that work was obsolete as fast as we could crank it out.

Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of the efforts made and the objectives reached. I certainly have my share of:

Stories
Bragging rights
Accomplishments

But once the dust settled, as it has I this stage of my life, I see one thing clearly – save time for the analog.

Table of Contents

We Are Analog Beings

We as people, those living breathing organisms that go bump across the land, are very definitely analog by nature. Everything we think and do:

Has a wonderfully non-exact quality
It’s how we fit in our non-exacting world.

Computers are getting better at approximating our analog world, but at best we are still shoe-horning them into our needs.

Even as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making tremendous strides to become sentient (Hello Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI), the difference between Analog and Digital are becoming more important than ever.

When it comes right down to it, the digital world has some very valid reasons to be jealous of the analog.

A Digit Versus a State

Take, for example, the basic single digit. For us humans, that could be considered a single number. For digital machines, that single digit is a bit. A single number in today’s most popular numbering system can represent 10 values (0-9.).

The bit, while extremely easy to manipulate and symbolize – it’s either on or off – still only represents two. Go to two digits, and we have a possible 100 values (0-99) compared to 4 (00-11.) Analog is winning the race already.

Go one step further and consider how we communicate. In the most popular language family, a single alphabet letter can represent any of 26 values. So a single four letter word could in theory represent over 456,976 different words.

And yet the human mind can easily navigate that and even correct your grammar (not THAT four letter word) while doing it. The point is that we use the power of analog, with its many different possible values, for everyday living.

We do it natively.

Nature’s Analog Call

So, wouldn’t it make sense that, if we are analog creatures by nature, we should strive to enjoy more things analog. I personally think one of the best ways to do this is to go out in nature and take in that wild, beautiful analog world that awaits us.

I am so often reminded of the Pink Floyd phrase, “Random Precision”, when I think about nature.

The Japanese philosophy of shinrin-yoku, or the art of forest bathing, is the art of appreciating nature. Immersion in an analog world is probably the best antidote for today’s modern world that I can think of, and nowhere do I find that more effective than being out in nature.

Music is Analog

But it doesn’t have to be that specific or elaborate. Dropping the needle on a vinyl record can serve to connect us with the music we love.

A vinyl record is at its roots a physical image of the sound that creates the music, and we can see each and every ebb and flow right in the grooves themselves. There is no coded representation of a given value at any point in a record, instead it smoothly flows on each ramp up and down as the music is made.

I think there is a connection made between audiophiles and their record collection that goes beyond the sound itself, and that is the natural analog connection. They feel it, and what’s more they can touch it for a tactile feedback to let them know it is real.

Books Are Enhanced By Analog Exposure

Books, it can be argued, give the same feedback. Sure, characters can be represented by any given byte, and I keep the majority of my book collection in a handy ebook format. I will argue that the best book you have is the one that is with you.

If I can carry a thousand in my pocket I win that argument.

But that’s not the complete picture, and I know it. There are some titles that I simply must own in old fashioned, tree-killing (sorry) paper pages. It may be nostalgia, but I refuse to part with that physical medium.

The feeling of turning an old page never gets old for me. I have explored so many beautiful realms through a novel or given tome that I miss when the adventure is over. But that adventure is based on my own reconstruction of the realm imagined through analog experiences I have had in my life.

It’s hard to imagine a forest floor, with its:

Sounds
Smells
Shadows

unless you have taken it in once or twice in the real world. When reading a book, you are basically taking the coded story that is based on the 26 possible value digits (the letters) and recreating the story in your mind.

So, experiencing the world makes such a story more enjoyable by being able to relate and reconstruct it from those past experiences.