Everything Is Analog

In a digital age, engaging with the analog can set us free.

When we talk about “analog,” we usually mean circuits without a microprocessor or a physical format like a cassette tape. To define analog, however, the poetry of the concept is more interesting than a strict definition--because everything digital is also analog in the physical sense. You’re moving physical electrons in a digital process. When people have understood this connection they’ve been able to make exceedingly compelling use of both.  There’s no separate world where you’re outside analog and quantum physics. A friend of mine called analog “uninterrupted time,” so perhaps digital can be “time with perceived processing pauses.” 

Yet we are confined by this idea of the digital, that it is somehow progress, even though the digital era has been an unceasing unveiling of commercial products, whose goal has never been to illuminate the underlying science, but rather to have you “buy ours, not theirs.” At this point, it’s a limiting mantra that keeps the blinders on the buggy. If you don’t understand what’s happening, the digital feels like a conceptual world separate from physical reality. Digital is a tool for manipulating the world, both the world and the anvil that strikes it. But you sell yourself short if you think digital is everything, not just a tool. 

I’ve spent my entire conscious life trying to understand what the world is made of, digging into a mystery just beyond my reach. I always wanted to learn about it, though I never knew I would be designing musical instruments. As I pursued this understanding, I knew I wanted to do something with my life that was ethical. It’s more ethical to use the least amount of energy possible to do what you’re trying to do. A digital entity means making a bargain with electrons. It needs energy everywhere it goes. To be more efficient, you don’t fight forces; you use them, to use the words of Bucklinster Fuller. 

We’re not doing anything retro when we engage with the analog, when we experiment with tape or explore radio or use a film camera or a paper journal. We’re diving into the very present. For example, film cameras teach you how light works, how it moves and slows, in a very direct, tangible way. Those moments of seeing in an analog setting can ground you in the magic of the physical world. Light is no longer taken for granted. An image is not of a thing but of the light that isn’t the thing. 

We want these simple moments that feel real. It’s easy for the digital world to invade these moments in ways that don’t support us, however. With the newest iPhone, for example, you have to have Siri enabled to use Carplay, which is really about devising these subtle and unsubtle ways to take away private spaces. Nothing is sacred to those commanding and commandeering the digital. To them, it’s all real estate. The analog world says things are sacred. 

The analog can help us regain private spaces and find our voices. I experienced this in my own life. Many years ago, I spent a year in San Diego in the doldrums. I had attended a writing program and my writing changed, when I shared my writing the opinions of others mattered too much and I slowly changed my voice, and began writing poems that would get laughs but be meaningless. So in by the coast I  wanted to regain my own voice. So I went out to the water. I started by walking around and describing the interesting coast there. I tried to put together words in combinations I’d never seen before, words guided by the shape of the coast. I let the physicality of the world influence me. For 9 months, I did this every morning. I walked 30 miles of coastline and feverishly filled 10 journals. And I found my voice again, an analog process. 

Now, I can go back and look at a journal from almost 20 years ago and see what I was thinking, all my ignorance and foresight. It was all essential. The analog can help you humanize yourself, become a human in a way that is really important. The digital perspective of the world is fighting so hard to tell you that you’re a number. That’s simply not true. 

If we take the time to reduce energy, we see energy’s place in the digital and find a different relationship to the analog. We can really go deep into what’s really happening as we design things. This is how we approached the Demon Box. The Demon Box could have been 24 volts or diesel powered. But it works with hybrid analog- digital architecture and works off the least energy possible, a factor that’s as important as its musical effects because it’s about finding the limits. Also higher voltages can bring more unwanted noise. Once you create the goal of making something efficient, if you let that lead you, you’ll make discoveries. You’ll get into a new space of design so it’s not just about catching people’s eyes or conquering their lives’ moments. It’s a meditation on the universe, a sacred present when you are free.