Loved this book! In a world always focused on the next major technological development it was refreshing to read about the benefits of taking time to be without screens and interesting to read about their long-term effects on us. This book is necessary reading.

David Sax's "The Future is Analog" is a thought-provoking book that challenges us to reconsider our relationship with technology. Sax argues that while technology has brought us many benefits, it has also created a number of problems, such as social isolation, attention deficit disorder, and addiction.

Sax makes a compelling case that we need to find a better balance between the analog and digital worlds. He argues that analog experiences, such as spending time in nature, interacting with other people face-to-face, and making things with our hands, are essential for our well-being.

Sax's book is full of interesting insights and stories. He interviews experts from a variety of fields, including neuroscience, psychology, and technology. He also shares his own personal experiences of trying to live a more analog life.

One of the things I liked most about Sax's book is that he doesn't offer any easy answers. He doesn't tell us to give up technology altogether. Instead, he encourages us to be more mindful of how we use technology and to make sure that we are getting enough analog experiences in our lives.

Overall, "The Future is Analog" is a well-written and thought-provoking book. It is a book that will make you think about your relationship with technology in a new way.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the impact of technology on our lives. It is a book that will challenge you and inspire you to make changes.

I did not like this book. It was not what I expected. It felt like one long whining complaint.

Just no. Cannot recommend.

Thanks to Netgalley, David Sax and Public Affairs for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Already available.

Before Covid-19, “future of work” thinkers and professionals lauded all of the new tech that has enabled remote work as, well, the future of work. And the barrier, of course, was adoption. But when Covid truly gave us the opportunity to bring every element of nonessential jobs online, we all found that it sucked. It drained all the joy and little variations of life that make school and work entertaining and creative. But honestly, this thesis is a thinkpiece at best. You cannot fill a whole book’s worth of material on this analysis, and the book certainly showed that.

As other reviewers have said, it’s really hard to find any insightful takeaways from this book. Most everyone I know who has transitioned to remote work during the pandemic (and even up to now) has the same exact vacillating opinions on remote work - perhaps some more to one end than other, but virtually no one I know is lauding 5-days-a-week 9-to-5 or 100% remote. Everyone thinks there’s pros and cons, and despite the title of his book making you think he’d advocate for the former, he often flip-flops between what’s best. Sax says that productivity, happiness, etc has gone down with Teams happy hours and Google Classroom, but in the same breath, he talks about how typical corporate office culture is soul sucking and how Zoom enabled his ability to interview many of the experts he quotes in his book.

I wish he proposed a solution somewhere in here - like based on his research, this is what an ideal in-person work environment and remote life balance should look like - but instead, it’s just endless iterations of exactly what I’ve spelled out here. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

I don't usually like to leave low-end reviews but this is such a pandemic book that it doesn't know what to do with itself. The first chapter itself was terribly too long and left me unable to find the energy to want to read more.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it was that we don’t want an all-digital world. All-digital is not paradise or heaven. It is not even a modestly desirable state of being. I can’t imagine anyone beyond Ray Kurzweil arguing against that. And yet, here is David Sax, once again hammering on this non-argument in The Future Is Analog.


The chapters of the book are all days of the week, which turns out be completely meaningless, as the topics are things like school, city life, entertainment, smart homes, social media, eating, commuting, office work – and little or nothing to do with the individual days of the week. Readers would be hardpressed to assign its topics to their respective chapters based on their titles.


Worse, every chapter is identical in structure. It begins with cutesy, even cartoonish slices of life, before, during and after the lockdown in Toronto, where Sax lives. There follows a dissection of the miseries imposed by doing whatever the chapter is about, but digitally, versus the massive relief of doing the same thing in real life, either before the pandemic when everyone considered it a miserable way to live, or after, when everyone was suddenly enraptured with a return to normal.


This formula is flat and monotonous. It never grows into anything: just more of the same, chapter after chapter. NDSS for those digitally inclined. In this case, literally.


In between there are all kinds of quotes from authors, friends, neighbors and acquaintances to the effect that everything was and is always better in person. It is better to learn with a teacher right there, to perform before a live audience, to meet in crowded restaurants, to have dinner at someone’s home, to visit the countryside but not have to live there, and on and on.


What is wrong with this “analysis” is that the medium is the message, as another famous Torontonian said to great effect. Zoom meetings are not perfect substitutes for plays or standup comedy or political town halls. So don’t complain that they don’t work as well as being there. Digital media have their place. And in an emergency, society co-opts whatever it needs to keep going. But Sax doesn’t distance himself to see that perspective on the human world. For him, humanity is up close and personal, and nothing else rates.


Sax moans about how people wilt working remotely, missing the complexity, the support, the friendships of the office and the joys of shopping and eating downtown. Offices are “hub(s) of interactions and positive relationships.” Yet in the next breath he acknowledges that at least half those jobs stifle people with pointless tasks, curtailment of creativity, boredom, stress, etc. So offices are not necessarily glorious ways to live and grow, either. But they’re better than remote work, he insists. This, even though he personally has worked remotely for 30 years, spending just six weeks as an employee early on.


He spends time adoring Jane Jacobs, lover of cities, and hating Robert Moses, bigoted lover of personal automobiles over all else. He finds a welcoming companion in the architect Richard Florida who says that after studying cities for 40 years, he has never found one that dealt with a pandemic or other biological disaster that “significantly slow(ed) their arc of growth.” He says that cities are not great because of the shops, restaurants and jobs available, but because of the “sheer physical proximity” – the “external economy of human capital.” In Sax’s terms, the analog attributes of humanity.


Who would disagree? Planned cities suck. They are dead on arrival and never come to life. Cities that grow by the force of the people who populate them are endlessly diverting. The cyclical exodus to the suburbs soon bores the participants. No news here. But Sax is after digital anything, and it is ripe for the picking after the pandemic lockdowns.


He points to contact tracing apps that were supposed to corral those exposed to COVID, which did “precisely nothing to actually slow the spread of the virus.” I don’t know if that’s quite true, and Sax provides no backup for it. But even so, there is a learning curve the whole world is going through. Some things work, some don’t. Some are worth adapting; others are total failures. It doesn’t mean it is wrong to try them, digital or not. Especially in a global emergency.


Sax claims to be a journalist, but that is nowhere to be seen in this book. A very high percentage of it is memoir. He writes of family and friends. He escapes the lockdown to his mother-in-law’s home on Georgian Bay. He surfs. He hikes. He takes acting and speaking classes. He loves religious ceremony even if he claims not to be very religious. His wife and kids provide lots of stories for him. He thrives on live entertainment, and likes to be entertaining among friends. None of this adds anything to his thesis other than David Sax likes life analog.


He loves padding paragraphs out with long, meaningless lists: “Social media helped some democratic reformers win elections and topple dictators, but it also let fascist populists, antidemocratic demagogues, authoritarians, absolute monarchs, Vladimir Putin, and other outright dictators warp truth, spread misinformation, modernize propaganda, repress their citizens, and steal elections at home and abroad with far greater ease than ever before.” I found it easy to just skip them, in search of new ideas.


Spoiler alert: there aren’t any.


Sax couldn’t watch Hamilton onscreen after seeing it live. He says he turned away in two minutes. That is typical of the level of complaint in The Future Is Analog. Sax just wants it all, always live and always in his presence so he can feel part of it. Otherwise he can’t take it.


Incredibly, this is the second such book from Sax, who really made his name with the first one, Revenge of the Analog. He said it all there, and he says it all again here, but with the pandemic behind him this time. It turns out after reading the whole thing, there is not a single original idea in the 2.0.


Sax’s big discovery is that digital life is less human. But he doesn’t point out that every technological advance suffers the same criticism. When typewriters started showing up in offices, customers complained that they were being treated like idiots: “I kin read writin’, y’know,” is the classic reply to receiving a typewritten letter. Telephones got the same treatment; they were subhuman, impersonal, and had bad quality sound. But phones don’t stop Sax from vastly increasing his reach for quotes from people all over the world. He gets to talk to them on the phone at length, and draw them out for the quote he wants. Phones are okay now, to the point where Sax doesn’t even notice them. Zoom hasn’t reached that stage yet.


As you have likely noticed, I was completely unable to find anything Sax said that is worth showcasing. There are no new thoughts here, just Sax’s clear preference for things analog. In the conclusion, he hopes for less emphasis on the digital and more on the analog, the natural way of life. He for one, intends to milk them for all they’re worth.


Ironically perhaps, reading The Future Is Analog on a computer screen as I must, is still not as bad as having David Sax read it to me in person. Some things can be better digitally.


David Wineberg

Funny that Sax almost didn't write this book (according to the "Acknowledgements" section), because he's turned in what's surely to be one of the best of its category for the year.

Definitely one of the essential post-pandemic (to be more specific, post-2020 lockdowns) books; it contains vital information to assist the reader in contextualizing and navigating a lot of thoughts and feelings regarding the move into an "all-digital" society that a world enveloped in COVID-19 forecasted.

From schools to work to media to leisure, Sax uses his subject-matter authority to helpfully lay out and put to words what many of us either felt but couldn't put into words, hated but slowly forgot once mask mandates lightened, knew all along but needed confirmation from an author...the list goes on.

It continually reminded me of Monica Guzman's I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY in how it could be distilled down to a certain point: People are social, conversational creatures and need that interaction to perform at their best on all levels--plain and simple.

Not that he made it any huge riddle or anything, but I am fairly certain that I know the book that he was speaking not so fondly of in here. Maybe one day I'll find out for certain.

There's something in this book for anyone. It's a restorative, invigorating read full of expertly-presented information. Feel free to read it and grow as a human being. As I said at the top, I have no doubt it'll be one of the best books of the year.

Many thanks to NetGalley and PublicAffairs for the advance read.

A nice companion piece to his stronger “Revenge of the Analog” book. Any book that has the phrase “Mark Zuckerberg can shove it up his robotic ass” is worth your time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the ARC!

Before reading, I was very sympathetic to the future Sax wants to build: it eschews needless and isolating digitization in favor of systems and tools that prioritize humanity in their analog nature. I’m not anti-digital; I’ve owned an iPhone for more than a decade, order my groceries (and most other things) through an app, and enthusiastically work remotely. But if it came down to it, I’d rather be an off-grid homesteader than upload my soul to be the god of my own digital universe. I was curious about Sax’s take on the direction we’re heading, why we should head elsewhere, and how we can.

After reading, I’m still sympathetic to that future. Perhaps most notably, I’m more convinced that problematic digitization is stoppable and avoidable. From the epigraph to the final chapter, Sax underlines the concept that the future is something we innovate, create, and choose, not an inevitable path to ubiquitous (and harmful) digitization. This isn’t a concept I’d dwelled on before, and Sax is right to make a point of it if his argument is to have any impact on the behavior of individuals, institutions, corporations, and tech billionaires alike.

However, I had one hangup with this book, and it’s unfortunately a big one: Sax uses the days of COVID-19 lockdown as the proxy for a more heavily digitized future, but I don’t think it’s an appropriate proxy . Taking, for example, the chapter on education, Sax laments the [try to] learn-from-home days and deems edtech a failure because of them. But it’s hard to separate the poor outcomes of edtech from all the variables of the pandemic. Teachers, admins, and districts had very little time to set up a remote learning system that had a chance at success. It can take years for a teacher, school, or district to select the right edtech tools and train their users to mastery (and that’s with students still in classrooms!). Of course edtech was a poor replacement for in-person learning; there was no infrastructure to support this fast, unwanted transition. The increased digitization in the early days of the pandemic was jarring and unpleasant because we didn't choose it. And, it’s difficult to use the lonely days of the pandemic to argue that digitization isolates us and deprives us of “real” human connection when it was a deadly virus, not our screens, that incited fear of in-person interaction.

Sax uses interviews and personal experience more than studies and data (though he does use some of the latter), and many chapters boil down to the simple (but powerful) notion that there’s simply no replacement for in-person interaction. While I agree with this bottom line, the emphasis on personal experience/anecdotal evidence and the use of the pandemic lockdown as a sample of a digitized future were a bit too weak for me to settle into anything more than mild agreement with Sax’s main point, which I was already primed to be on board with.

Thank you to PublicAffairs and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In his work, David Sax presents the following thesis: Since the world’s technological conditions mean the inevitable arrival of a digital future, an analog future is appearing instead. In the last few years, we have seen the pandemic introduce the WFH model and terminology such as AI and the metaverse find its way into our everyday language. We continue to question the future in a post-pandemic world. This book is divided into different aspects of our lives and the pandemic’s long-term impact: Education, commerce, the restaurant industry, the smart city concept, sports, theatre, book clubs, and interpersonal relationships. These is a sense of hope and optimism for what our digital landscape can provide people, yet Sax ultimately considers the analog, a non-dependency on technology, as the unparalleled form to reconnect with our humanity.

While acknowledging the many advantages of the digital age, the author makes a good case for in-person interaction, relationships, and good old fashioned conversations. I have to admit I was skeptical, having worked remotely since 2010. But after reading this book, I had to admit that the author made persuasive points for return to in-person work, school, and social activities.

This book was, in large part, a reflection on life during the Pandemic. The author had a miserable time, attempting to work from home, along with other members of his family also attempting to carry on their lives remotely. My own experience was much different - normal life simply came to a stop. I enjoyed a simple, quiet, and relatively peaceful existence, especially during the beginning of the lockdown. But if you hated lockdown and need affirmation of your struggles, this is the book for you.

A major blindspot of this book, as I saw it, was its almost entirely urban perspective. The author makes the case for the advantages of in-person cultural events and wide-ranging social interactions. But. those of us who live in smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas don't have those experiences. The digital age has opened up many new opportunities for us and has leveled the playing field in terms of work opportunities and cultural offerings. (For several years, I was able to work for an organization in NYC from my farm in Tennessee. I didn't want to move to New York, and I highly valued my greener, more spacious, far less hectic life in my rural home.) I wish the author had addressed the many advantages of the digital revolution for those of us who choose not to live in cities.

I realize there is something ironic about reading The Future is Analog by David Sax on my iPad, especially considering I very rarely read anything other than physical books these days, but the only way I could get my hands on it before November was to request a digital review copy.

And boy, did I want to get my hands on this as soon as possible! David Sax’s previous two books, The Revenge of Analog and The Soul of an Entrepreneur made my best biz books lists for 2019 and 2020 respectively, so I had a feeling his new book wouldn’t disappoint.

What I loved most about The Future of Analog is that that it wasn’t just a rehash of his previous books. Using the pandemic as a starting point for our accelerated transition to the digital, Sax questions whether this is the future we actually need – or want. This leads to a more nuanced conversation about the role of digital in our lives. Sax is under no allusions that we should get rid of all tech, but questions whether or not it should play a central role in the world.

As someone who runs a business that is, at this point, based solely online (a direction I was headed in even prior to the pandemic), but whose business is built upon championing analog (art and handmade) and who is increasingly disgusted with digital technology, I can appreciate this. In particular, the chapters on school, culture, and soul resonated with me. And the chapter on commerce really hit home, as I have seen that, far from destroying local retail, the pandemic has made us value and support it more.

The one place where I struggled a bit was the first chapter, on work. I found it interesting that a person who has never really worked in an office would argue so hard for the return of collective office spaces. As someone whose greatest fear is having to get a “real job” (translation: show up to an office at the same time every day) I have a hard time reconciling the research Sax shares. Yes, there is some scientific proof that being around other people boosts creativity, but as someone who has worked by themselves for the better part of ten years, I can’t imagine getting work done with other people around.

And I see that in the artists and makers I work with in my mentorship program as well. One recently posted about how she had to cut back her intern’s hours because she wasn’t getting enough alone time in the studio. And she is not the only one who feels this way. Not only do I see this in many of the artists I work with, but it is true for me as well. I need privacy to do my best work, and science backs that up as well. Open-plan offices, it turns out, do not spark creativity, they suppress it.

Still, I appreciate that the chapter on work got me thinking about my own preferences and the experiences of others. (Like my husband, who has had to go into work throughout the pandemic, while the office workers in his company have been able to work from home, creating real inequality amongst the workforce.)

And even though I didn’t agree with every single word, every word made me think. This is why this book definitely falls into the “must-read” category for me, especially for anyone who is increasingly dissatisfied with the idea that the future has to be completely digital.

Rating : 5 out 5
Blurbs :
For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered.

When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great. It turns out that leaving the house is underrated, instant communication spreads anger better than joy, and convenience takes away time rather than giving it to us. Oops.

But as David Sax argues in this insightful book, we've also had our eyes opened. There is nothing about the future that has to be digital, and embracing the reality of human experience doesn't mean resisting change. In chapters exploring work, school, leisure, and more, Sax asks perceptive and pointed questions: what happens to struggling students when they're not in a classroom? If our software is built for productivity, who tends to the social and cultural aspects of our jobs? Can you have religion without community?

For many people, the best parts of quarantine have been the least digital ones: baking bread, playing board games, going hiking. We used our hands and hugged our children and breathed fresh air. This book suggests that if we want a healthy future, we need to choose not convenience but community, not technology but humanity.

Thoughts : It hit home a lot. I can't say more but I do recommend this book to anyone! Please do read this book!