Expert Comment: Why cherish the analogue in a digital age?

Dr Carissa Véliz

Tech enthusiasts talk about AI like nothing more important has ever happened in history, like it is the answer to our every question, the solution to our every problem. But the more I study digital technology, the more I realise and am in awe of the richness and primacy of the analogue world, the world of things you can touch and smell, the world of things that are not made up of ones and zeroes (the building blocks of the digital).

We are analogue creatures. Virtual water will not quench your thirst, digital food will not satisfy your appetite, and AI companions are no companions at all. What matters most for your wellbeing is and will always be analogue. 

The roof over your head and the home that brings you safety, warmth, and comfort is made out of brick and concrete. The people around you —those who make you soup when you’re ill and give you a hug when you need one— are made out of flesh and blood. The natural world that sustains everything you see around you is made out of carbon molecules. 

All too often we forget that everything virtual depends on the analogue. The internet works thanks to heavy underwater cables. That AI that sounds so human was trained by an army of underpaid and overworked people. And the cloud is someone else’s computer, a server sitting somewhere, made up of metals and minerals, using up fresh water for cooling and electricity for power. If we focus on the digital to the detriment of the analogue —the natural world, the urban sphere, our personal relationships— dereliction lies at the end of the road.  

If we focus on the digital to the detriment of the analogue —the natural world, the urban sphere, our personal relationships— dereliction lies at the end of the road.  

In the Republic, Plato criticises fiction for being a copy of truth, rather than truth. Plato worried about arts that mimicked truth, that can pass for truth without being true. The digital mimics the analogue without providing the grounding and reliability of the world of things. 

Think of a digital book. Its design is a bad knock-off of the real thing, from its shape to the gestures it invites you to perform to “turn” a “page” that is not actually a page. Whereas you can fully own a paper book, an electronic book is not exactly yours: you cannot lend it to a friend, or give it away, and the publisher can modify its content remotely and without your consent or even knowledge. A digital book needs to be charged or else it becomes a brick. It can be hacked. And it doesn’t work for you. It works for tech companies who are using it to heavily surveil you. It tracks what you read, how fast you read, what you highlight, and more, and shares that information with the highest bidder. If the mighty paper book is a true friend, a digital one is a false one. The digital is but a ghost of the analogue at best, and a threat to the analogue at worst. 

Tech enthusiasts like to brag about AI as being cutting-edge, forgetting that cutting-edge means experimental. The safest technologies are the tried and tested ones. The analogue tends to be safer partly because we have thousands of years of experience with it, polishing our interactions with it, and partly because we tend to have more unmediated control over it. When you use AI, you’re always constantly depending on the company that is providing it. (And when it comes to big tech, these companies have proved to be untrustworthy and disrespectful of people’s rights time and again.)

To keep our societies safe and robust, we’d do well keeping analogue backups of our most important documents and systems. We should retain the ability to run institutions on analogue in the event of an emergency. 

To keep our societies safe and robust, we’d do well keeping analogue backups of our most important documents and systems. We should retain the ability to run institutions on analogue in the event of an emergency.

That is one lesson left in the wake of the cyberattack to the British Library in 2023. Two years later, and millions of pounds spent recovering, readers still can’t take out many of its books. Both readers and books are analogue, but the map from the former to the latter was digital and digital only, and we lost it. Libraries have been working well for thousands of years. It took a cyberattack to break this one. Don’t tell me cutting-edge technology is better.

The world of things is not only safer; it’s also where beauty inhabits, where you can experience shapes and colours that don’t pixelate, watches that tick with the satisfying sound and feel of craftsmanship, and sunrises and sunsets. 

Close your laptop for a minute, put that phone away, and take care of the analogue world around you, because if you neglect it, you might lose it, and the digital is no substitute. Water your plants, hug the loved one who happens to be closest to you, go for a run, visit your local coffee shop or bar (and pay in cash), borrow a book from the library. 

Cherish the analogue.