Why slow tactile and (preferably human-made) things still matter in an uber-efficient digital world.

"... It's because their groundedness in physical experience, in the actions and sensations of our bodies as we interact with the world–as we pour water out of a jug, or as we walk along a path, or as we open a door and go into a room: simple basic physical experiences that underlie so many metaphors and so much understanding."

–Philip Pullman, Daemon Voices

There's a reason that, for generations, people have kept boxes of old letters, notebooks filled with half-thoughts, ticket stubs from concerts long past, random people's numbers, libraries full of books. Objects, big and small! These serve as little reminders to us of little moments that felt essential, moments to keep that shouldn't be forgotten. Now we don't need tangible objects to keep our memories, of course, but further down the line, those objects and books help preserve those memories for others later in time. There is something magical about holding things in our hands, things that aren't perfect or weightless. All to say that there is so much value in the analog.

Analog asks something of us; it demands our time and engagement, it slows us down, and it gives us back the weight of things. We can see that interaction in the scratch of a pencil against paper, or feel the resistance and texture (even age!) of a page as it turns, we hear the soft crackle before the first note on a vinyl record when we set the needle down. Each gesture requires attention, and in that attention, we can find ourselves again in surprising ways. It sounds whimsical, but it feels true; we can find the humanity in ourselves and others.

We live in an age where everything is meant to be immediate, convenient, and efficient. Where the measure of success is how fast we can produce, post, or respond. The trouble here is that when everything accelerates, meaning thins. I just heard a short interview with Kenneth Frampton, the architectural historian and professor, in which he said, "We do not ask to be eternal beings. We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning. We do live in a world where things are progressively losing their meaning..." I've just written about how analog things have staying power, but that is not all they have; they can hold histories, cultures, and personalities beyond the objects themselves. This is something that the digital cannot do nearly as well. The other issue with the digital is that when everything is everywhere, in the blink of an eye, and gone just as fast, it begins to feel like it is nowhere at all. Queue thinning. 

Analog offers an antidote: the deliberate, embodied act of being here.

Slowness as Rebellion

The way we relate to time has shifted drastically over the years. The most fundamental shift has been moving from a cyclical, event-oriented perception of time rooted in natural rhythms to an explicitly linear and abstracted understanding driven by technology, industrialization, and globalized commerce. We as people went from the idea of "making time", the idea that time is created through social interaction and experiences focused on the quality of experience over punctuality, to believing that time is a commodity. Therefore, we think and feel like we can "spend" and "waste" time. 

With this in mind, there really is something quietly radical about moving slowly in a world optimized for speed. I remember once driving down US1 at 5 miles per hour (not to fret, it was very late and I didn't endanger anyone!) It sounds ridiculous, but driving very slowly felt as exciting as speeding wildly. It was thrilling in a strange way. Now, back to the point, slowness is not laziness; nowadays, it feels more akin to resistance. It is rebellious. Choosing to dwell in the moment rather than skim over it and have it done with seems impetuous. From the outside, it can look irresponsible even, especially given the puritanical work ethic we've developed, at least in the U.S.A.

To pay dedicated attention means taking time with something or someone. Simone Weil, the French philosopher and activist, wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Attention is inherently active; it cannot be passive. It involves being engaged and taking the time to do so. She equates attention with love; to recognize another is an aspect of love. In this case, I feel that attention not just to people but to whatever we choose to grace with it is an act of love toward ourselves as well, because we've been willing to invest ourselves in it for the moment to give it that attention, to hold it not just physically but in time. To recognize that we matter over efficiency. 

Hannah Arendt thought deeply about how attention shapes judgment and responsibility. She wrote that attention was more than just focus; it was active mental engagement to understand and engage with reality. For Arendt, attention serves to prevent the "thoughtless evils" that stem from ignorance, carelessness, or indifference (like following orders blindly or falling into tropes and generalities). Analog living is, at its heart, a practice of attention. Practicing and engaging with the analog is vital to cultivating a genuine connection with the world. When we slow down enough to write, to read, to make, we are giving our time, our mind, and our care to one thing at once, but really, we are making time for ourselves. That kind of sustained attention is almost countercultural now.

The Tactile Memory of Things

I am not oblivious to how valuable and convenient the digital is. I am currently typing on my computer, not, in fact, scribbling all this down wildly on a pad of paper. Yes, I even type up drafts on the computer. But! I research by hand. The whole foundation for the work I develop digitally, as well as anything I make in analog ways, is done by hand. It just feels different. When I work by hand, I understand and explore more deeply. When I write things down, I can go back and review what I've written and the connections I've made, and then move forward. You see, digital experiences vanish the second you scroll away, but analog ones leave traces. It's more than the pencil smudges on our hands or the folded corner of a page, to make sure we know what you wanted to revisit. Handwriting, for example, offers superior benefits for memory retention, conceptual understanding, cognitive development, and facilitating creativity and critical thinking. Touch has memory, and our hands can often remember things our minds forget.

David Abram is an ecologist and philosopher who, in his work on the sensory world, reminds us that human understanding is fundamentally embodied (ie, shaped by breath, touch, smell, and gestures). When we hold something, we don't just "consume" it; we enter into a relationship with it. Abram's focus of reclaiming an analog existence means having to embrace and appreciate a direct, bodily, sensory engagement with the world. He feels that keeping the analog primary counteracts the isolating effects of the modern digital aspects of the world. He also explains that devices like microphones, cameras, and phones extend human senses but can create a "hypnotic reflection", preventing true, awe-inspiring contact with the wild, distinct otherness of nature. Instead, he calls for "a rich, wakeful inhabitation of our own bodies to re-enter the wild, intercorporeal life of the Earth itself." Although I might disagree with some of his ideas, I don't think anyone can argue against the damaging effects our devices have had on us as a society...

Not to end on a "down with the digital!" note... it really is essential to recognize that there is a genuine intimacy in the tactile memory of things. A quiet comfort that we can hold something real, something that can be altered, and passed along.

The Aura of the Original

Walter Benjamin famously wrote about the "aura" of an original artwork. This aura is the energy of its presence in time and space, the way it carries the imprint of its history. Now, I don't agree with some of the things Walter Benjamin thinks, like how the same aura that holds the historical, cultural, authentic, and ritual imprint also gives it an unapproachability and distance... and that he thinks this is a good thing! I rather think that the imprint an analog item carries makes it even more approachable. The humanity embedded in the object helps connect people to people through it. The other thing I disagree with is that he believes mass accessibility and democratization are problematic because they diminish art's traditional power.

Benjamin argues that the aura is found in a work of art that contains presence. The aura is precisely what cannot be reproduced in a work of art: its original presence in time and space.

– Jessica S. Manuel  "How Time and Space Converge to Evoke Walter Benjamin's Aura"

 We can all agree that a print will never truly replicate the original. I understand the issue here with mass production and overconsumption of copies; those copies and prints don't carry the imprint that original works do, but they may lead people to become aware of work and artists they might not have been exposed to otherwise. And so they serve a truly great purpose. Then, if we're lucky, we can find the original and experience it and its aura, but we can't do that if we are unaware of its existence.

So he argues that only original one-off analog things have an aura and that digital copies do not. I believe that even analog copies carry an aura, an altogether different one to the original, but an aura just the same. Just pick up an old copy of Where the Wild Things Are or The Little Island at the library! Are they the original manuscript? Of course not, but do they carry a special imprint all their own? I think so. Now, what I do agree with is that, for example, a handwritten letter has aura, and a text message or an email does not. A digital message doesn't have enough embodiment to hold an aura of its own. A single printed photo, creased, worn, lightly sun-faded, holds the memories of the hands that have held it, or the pockets and notebooks it has traveled in. For all the incredible pictures I have saved on my phone, I am insanely grateful, but they won't get that intangible something until they get printed or added to a book, perhaps. 

Benjamin's point wasn't just that only originals are special. I don't want to oversimplify his thoughts. It was that mechanical reproduction strips away the unique, lived presence of a thing. Analog returns that presence. It restores aura in a world that copies and reproduces endlessly, and more now when those copies are immaterial.

The Ritual of Making

Analog creation is like a ritual. To sharpen a pencil, uncapping and recapping a marker, threading a needle, and winding a film roll are gestures that mark the passage of time; they create rhythm. They make us much more aware of beginnings and endings.

I've written about John Dewey before, focusing on his role in the education system. Here, I'm going to explore how he argued in Art as Experience that art is not an object but an experience, the rhythm of doing, and what happens as we make. As a professor once said to me, "The process is the product." I scoffed when I first heard it because I had always considered the finished piece the work, but now I see it differently. The active engagement of creating something doesn't just show up as a finished object. There is a series of emotional, cognitive, and sensory impacts that the making has on us. 

Dewey challenged traditional views that isolated art as exclusively residing in museums. He argued that art emerges from the dynamic interplay between individuals and their environments in everyday life in a myriad of ways. Art's value and aesthetic qualities are found in a complete experience, not just in the physical object itself. When we think of it this way, every analog act becomes a small ceremony. When we make something by hand, we don't just produce an object; we enter into a dialogue with it. And that dialogue, imperfect and tangible, changes us. Unconsciously, the interplay that happens while making (even perhaps when interacting with tangible objects) shapes the meanings achieved, the structure, and the aesthetic quality into a sort of ritual. These moments are ones that insist: I am here, and this is happening now. I am somehow making this happen. There is something of a ritual in there.

The Medium Has an Impact

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work serves as a cornerstone of media theory. He proposed the idea that "the medium is the message" and that the tools we use shape not only what we communicate but also how we think and who we become. So the characteristics of the channel of communication shape society and human perception more than its actual content, if not as much. If the medium is fast, we think fast. If the medium is endless, we skim endlessly. If the medium rewards immediacy, we react immediately. He believed that the real message lies in the environmental and physical impacts the medium has on our senses, thoughts, and social structures, and in how subtle and/or pervasive they are. 

The analog cannot be endless or too fast. This slows the message, which in turn slows us down, giving us time and space to consider and think properly without the rush of dopamine, adrenaline, and sometimes outrage. It guides us to sit with ideas, even uncomfortable ones, instead of racing past them. To ground this in context is easy: think of how we consume news with a newspaper rather than the pop-ups that assault our phones. It is much harder for a newspaper to generate a harsh emotional response than it is for a strategically worded pop-up, despite what the entire article it links to might say. If we focus on the form first and not the content, McLuhan argues, we can see how the medium's inherent qualities change the human experience, followed by the content, which ends up being secondary to the first's impact. 

While McLuhan didn't refer to the analog as a counterpoint or foil to the digital, he provides a groundwork for understanding the profound differences between them. He did not argue for or against them. He just thought it was vital that we consider the medium first. 

On a different note, Neil Postman cautioned us about technological determinism. This is the idea that new technologies reshape society, whether we like it or not. And more importantly, that they do so according to their own logic. Digital culture's logic is infinite scroll, endlessness. That is the impact it has as a medium. But this infinity dulls the senses on one hand and makes the brain addicted to it on the other. It is a two-fold hit. He does not take such a neutral stance as McLuhan does, because he believes that technology itself is not neutral. So while the message is truly shaped by the medium, Postman thinks the medium has biases that influence how we think, feel, interact, and value things, which change how we receive the message. He wrote that technology creates "Faustian bargains" where it offers a gift, and these benefits, like convenience or speed, come at a price, like loss of meaning and depth, privacy, and attention. And it also hides or overshadows these essential losses. 

The analog carries those biases as well, but they show up differently, and maybe because we have lived with them longer, they seem more manageable. The analog doesn't have the same impact on our physiology as the digital does; it leaves a lot more space for our agency. A notebook has a last page, a record has an ending, and a roll of film has 36 frames; these limits help us in many ways. To stop, to consider more deeply, and even to enjoy the moments more.

Perfection and Imperfection

Digital tools are built for efficiency and correction: instant edits, endless undos. This is very helpful and useful in many circumstances. Analog tools, on the other hand, do not offer these conveniences. Like in life, remind us that there is no undo button. When you write or draw by hand, when the ink meets paper, it stays. When we make a mark, we live with it. And in doing so, we can learn to appreciate imperfection as evidence of progress and growth rather than failure.

A page full of cross-outs and rewrites isn't ruined; it's alive, showing the process of development and change. It serves as a sort of map of thoughts becoming themselves or a mind shifting its perspective. The analog helps us be kinder and softer in our judgment of ourselves and others because there really is no such thing as "perfection," as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: 1a) being entirely without fault or defect. When humans make things, our humanity prevents this version of perfection, and thankfully so, because it's all those pesky faults that make things invaluable. That idea of perfection is intimidating and discouraging because it is unattainable. If we, on the other hand, embrace the definition exactly below that one: 1b) satisfying all requirements. Then we have opened the door for imperfection in the best sense, which means we can do our very best, meet all requirements, and keep developing without having "failed" at an unachievable task.  

Imperfection is a sort of proof of life. The analog world is full of errors: the uneven print, the out-of-tune string, the coffee stain on the margin, but as I wrote before, these imperfections are what make it human. Digital perfection is sterile and challenging to connect with in profound, more intimate ways. There is a reason people still fall in love with film photography, letterpress prints, and the warmth of vinyl. Because what's imperfect feels more alive. The messiness of life is what makes the analog so relatable and so alluring.

The Analog, The Mind, and Connection

"Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of the Soul discern'd by the five Senses."

–William Blake

Studies show that writing by hand activates regions of the brain tied to memory, comprehension, and creativity in ways that typing does not. It slows our thinking just enough to let thoughts deepen and take root. Doing things by hand embeds ideas into gestures and muscle memory, not just memory. To draw, paint, annotate, or write longhand is to think and learn through the experiences of the body. Embodied cognition is a theory that suggests that thinking isn't just a brain function but is equally shaped by our sensations, actions, and interactions with our environment. Analog cognition is embodied cognition. This means the mind emerges from the interaction between the world, the brain, and the body, so physical experiences are part of the cognitive system. Critical thinking is the analysis of information, and it benefits by incorporating these bodily insights. Sensory experiences help the critical mind move beyond pure abstraction to include felt experiences, biases, and sensory-motor understanding, encouraging deeper, more comprehensive reflections and action. Therefore, embodied thought resists manipulation; it's slower to influence and much harder to automate. It is interesting to think that the analog serves as part of our intellectual self-defense. 

In the same way the analog helps with our critical thinking, it also assists in developing empathy. Analog and empathy intersect in both traditional, tangible methods, like storytelling and physical objects. In contrast, digital tools like AI and Virtual Reality, which aim to foster deeper human understanding, actually remove the human connection or relationship. The analog relies on direct experience for connection, while the digital struggles with genuine feeling and instead offers (as discussed before) the little gift Postman spoke about: convenience and scale. The key tension is between digital detachment and analog richness. While digital tools can be isolating, analog experiences build fundamental emotional intelligence.

We keep hearing that the world is more connected than ever, yet loneliness runs deeper than ever, too. We have to think about how we define connection. To me, connection is about presence, about personal intimacy. A handwritten letter carries more humanity than a thread of text messages, but print that thread or collect those messages into a little booklet, and the tables may turn! A shared meal, splitting a muffin with a friend, the shared experience of listening to a record with someone, a shared silence, looking at the brush marks in a painting that is hundreds of years old, these are analog forms of connection that cannot be compressed or translated digitally. The analog is tangible, interactive, and real.

Balance

(talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) "Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals."

― Kurt Vonnegut

To value analog is not to reject technology; it's to reclaim proportion. The goal here isn't to go backward, but to go deeper, or at least to defend depth and meaning. It is obvious we need both: the reach of digital and the roots of analog.

In the end, analog isn't nostalgia. I am not a Luddite, nor do I resist progress, but I do champion empathy, connection, and critical thought, not progress for progress's sake with no concern for the damage it can do or what it lays waste to. The analog is an act of remembering how to be human. To slow down. To touch. To make. It involves choosing experience over convenience. To hold things, and in holding them, to hold ourselves as the dancing animals we are.

Super Genius Society lives in an in-between space, as do we all I think! We have a place that exists both online and offline, where ideas discovered online can become tangible, where curiosity and exploration online can turn into sharing and conversations offline, and, importantly, where learning feels human, free, and fun again. So we balance the analog and the digital.

References & Recommended Reading

• Simone Weil — Gravity and Grace

• Hannah Arendt — The Life of the Mind

• Iris Murdoch — The Sovereignty of Good

• Marshall McLuhan — Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

• Neil Postman — Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

• Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death

• John Dewey — Art as Experience

• Richard Sennett — The Craftsman

• David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception

• Walter Benjamin — The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

• Susan Stewart — On Longing

• Philip Pullman — Daemon Voices

• William Blake — The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• Ursula K. Le Guin — The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction