The Return to Analog

I’ve been in tech my entire life.

• I played with Apple IIe’s in elementary school.

• I hacked my Packard Bell Pentium 60Mhz in middle school.

• I worked at a computer repairs store in high school.

• I went to MIT twice (undergrad and grad).

• I’ve been building tech startups for the past 18 years.

And yet I’ve seen and felt the pull that many others are feeling... the return to analog.

Here in Oklahoma, a few family friends have returned to the 90s. They ditched their smartphones for a single landline. They have a single, shared family computer. They’ve removed all TVs from their homes. Their lives are almost entirely screen-free, and they don’t appear to have any regrets.

I feel the pull, too.

During my work day, I’m YOLO’ing into the bleeding edge of AI, building multi-agent systems to scaffold software that would have taken me days/weeks before. It’s surreal and addicting.

After hours? I’m with my kid on a bike, cruising around the neighborhood, helping her find friends to play with outside.

My work is digital. My life is analog.

I hear rumors of people leaning hard into this concept. It’s almost like a version 2 of Amish living. But instead of living like it’s the 1700s, they want to build communities that feel like the 1970s, 80s, or 90s. A time-warp, if you will, where you can still visit the world we live in today, but your new normal is all-in on analog.

I’m going to do a little more digging and research on these topics and share if I find anything of interest. I’m intrigued, but it feels infeasible (maybe?). But part of my longing for this type of simplicity, at least after hours.