The End of the Analog World

Coffee makers are equipped with graphical user interfaces; cars are computers on four wheels; phones are computers with camera and telephone technology. More and more products come with a chip: toasters, shoes, and soon even glasses. Books are written, typeset, printed, and distributed on computers; record players are full of microelectronics; houses are designed on computers. Everything today is digital to some extent. The difference between digital and analog is no longer clear-cut; it is gradual.

Going digital is, of course,

The more digital technology advances, the more natural the digital world seems. No one thinks about the fact that they’re operating a computer when they press the espresso button; the iPad and Kindle have already technically surpassed the average printed material (though there’s still room for improvement in typographic design). The audible difference in quality between a CD and an LP is, scientifically speaking, far from clear.
While it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between digital and analog in terms of user perception, the difference is clearly evident in how they’re used. Records have to be flipped over, cleaned, and carefully stored; CDs do not. You unscrew the lid of a coffee pot and fill it; you operate a coffee machine at the push of a button. You flip through the pages of a book; on an iPad, you swipe, slide, and tap. Digital products, with or without a screen, are handled differently than analog products. On the one hand, they’re more practical; on the other hand, they’re flatter.

Going Digital Is Getting Easier

When we talk about analog and digital, we are—consciously or unconsciously—referring to the fact that digital processing is both simpler and more abstract.

While interacting with digital products generally seems more practical by comparison, it simultaneously loses a sense of physical reality. People often say that what digital products lack is an active physical connection. Screwing, tilting, pulling, unpacking, lifting, pushing, flipping through pages, turning, and tapping are reduced to a nearly two-dimensional swiping and tapping.

Analog tools such as hammers, scissors, or binoculars are extensions, enhancements, and simplifications of our bodies. A hammer is a hardened fist; scissors are finely sharpened teeth; and glasses are sharper eyes.

Every product has an interface. A hammer has a handle that fits in the hand and an end that resembles a fist. Scissors are adapted to our fingers; the blades resemble our teeth. Glasses are fitted to the face and function with the eye like a second lens. Unlike analog tools, which—with a little practice—almost immediately become an extension of our bodies, computers always feel somewhat foreign. Computers do not adapt to our minds as naturally as the hammer in our hand. Digital products lack the immediacy of analog tools. Computers are extensions of our brains. Brains are confusing. So how could computers not be confusing?

Analog Becomes Digital

Nevertheless, it is only a matter of time before these strange computers seem as natural to us as a hammer and a pair of scissors. The first hammer fit as naturally in a person’s hand as the first hammer we ever picked up as children. How meaningful is it still to speak of «digital» as distinct from «analog»? It is as meaningful as it is revealing, but it’s getting harder by the day. Soon, one will have to be a writer just to be able to imagine a purely analog life at all.