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.