Robert Hassan - Analog

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

A complete list of books in this series can be found online at https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/mit-press-essential-knowledge-series.

Robert Hassan

The MIT Press | Cambridge, Massachusetts | London, England

2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hassan, Robert, 1959- author.

Title: Analog / Robert Hassan.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022] | Series: The MIT Press essential knowledge series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022000731 (print) | LCCN 2022000732 (ebook) | ISBN 9780262544498 (paperback) | ISBN 9780262371810 (pdf) | ISBN 9780262371827 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: TechnologyPsychological aspects. | Analog electronic systemsHistory. | Analog computersPsychological aspects. | Digital electronicsSocial aspects.

Classification: LCC T14 .H29 2022 (print) | LCC T14 (ebook) | DDC 601dc23/eng/20220328

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000731

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000732

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For Kate Daw

(19652020)

She bought lemon-yellow carnations perfumed with the taste of hard candy, and garden roses purple as raspberry puddings, and every kind of white flower the florist knew how to grow.

Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (1932)

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced pocket-size books on topics of current interest. Written by leading thinkers, the books in this series deliver expert overviews of subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

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Here, the customs of acknowledgment and dedication attach themselves to memory of a time when I was writing a part of this book. Like many writers, I suppose, sometimes I can recall exactly what I was doing when writing a piece of text. In this case its not so much that the words themselves have any deep or meaningful resonance, but the fact that when I was actually writing them, I experienced a heightened awareness of my context that would stay with me. The words I was playing around with on the screen then were:

Like a secret code written in invisible ink all over everyday language and life we metaphorically paint a picture to describe something to someone, just as we draw a line in the sand to indicate the limits of this or that situation. And when speaking about the physical person, when we say that someone is blossoming or is wilting, we know exactly what is being communicated. Metaphors acting as linguistic objects allow us to focus on a concept in an evolutionary fashion that has worked its way so deeply into our unconscious mind that we need little or no training as to its practical operation.

Now it really does not do to quote oneselfespecially within the confines of the same bookbut as I say, the words in themselves are not important here; its when and where they were written, and its that time and place and one person that I want to acknowledge. Melbourne, where I live, holds the unenviable world record of the longest number of days under the 20202021 COVID pandemic lockdowns. One late summers day in 2020, Kate, my wife, Theo and Camille, our kids, and I were at home working and schooling like millions of others. Kate was then at late-stage cancer, but you wouldnt have known. She said she felt ninety-five percent and looked like she always did, beautiful. Kate had been a painter since she was fourteen and it never occurred to her to do anything else. Of course, her many talents led her to eventually becoming not just a much respected and admired artist (Elton John once purchased six of her paintings on the spot during an unannounced visit to a gallery where she was showing) but also a professor and head of the School of Art at the prestigious Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne.

Anyway, when my words were taking shape, I was in a spare room writing and Kate was in her next-door studio painting. The kids were quiet somewhere downstairs and the Cocteau Twins song A Kissed Out Red Floatboat was billowing out of the space between the rooms from a laptop sitting on a table under a window from where the late sun shone red-orange light into the stairhead connection. I got up from my desk, went downstairs, and brought up two cups of Earl Grey tea. Long ago Kate had said to me: Never ask if I want tea, just bring it. So, I did. I went into her studio, and she was sitting at her easel, focused on a detail of a flower. I put the cup and saucer on a rickety little three-legged table she had bought as a student on a trip to Venice. Bending down to pick up the previous cup and saucer from the floor, I kissed her on the crown of her head as she got in close into the canvas, her nose almost parallel to a thin brush dipped with lemon-yellow oil paint. A minute or two later I heard a semi-apologetic call of Thanks! from the studio when I was back at my chair, as Kate broke off from her concentration to drink the tea.

Its common enough in books to thank loved ones for what they give to you, and thats good. Here I wanted to go just a little further and express an infinite thanks to Kate for this one memory of her that was representative in so many ways of what we had. And what we had provided me with everything, including her advice and support to take the path that took me to writing this book, to everything I wrote before it, and to everything I will write.

In his review of David Saxs 2016 book, Revenge of the Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, the environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote: Digital lifes too self-absorbedeither we evolve quickly away from the social primates we have always been or else we will quietly suffer from the solipsism inherent in staring at ourselves reflected in a screen. Its too jumpy: concentration, from which all that is worthwhile emerges, is the great loss.

McKibben is mostly generous in his evaluation. However, he perceives a certain unworldliness in Saxs attitude. He senses that for Sax analog is primarily a neutral technology (as is digital) but that digital somehow lacks the realness of analog. And so, the resurgence of certain types of popular analog technologies such as hi-fi systems, vinyl records, board games, and other technologies reflects a peculiar, and almost unaccountable, psychological nostalgia for a predigital time. Its not that simple, McKibben argues, and our relationship to analog and digital technologies cant be distilled down to such a simplistic essence. McKibben doesnt develop his point that there is something much deeper going on, and in fairness he cant be expected to tell a more sophisticated story in the space of a couple of hundred words. His idea is certainly worth developing, though.