The space I used to have

Back to analogue (Digital Minimalism Diaries #6)

Get a 7 day free trial with this special link—but hurry! It must be redeemed by April 1 2025.

---

I saw a thesaurus in a charity shop the other day and considered buying it. The sight of that thesaurus suddenly made me think of all the times I’ve played Scrabble with my family when one of us has had to Google a word to make sure we’ve spelled it correctly. Right there and then, in the charity shop, I thought about the fact that we used to have a thesaurus. I wondered if it was still on the family bookshelf, the shelf that nobody ever looks at nowadays, or whether I had donated it during a previous declutter. I couldn't remember, and I didn't buy the thesaurus, but I kind of wish I had. In those moments of Scrabble self-doubt we would have been able to flick through a physical book instead of the glowing screen of a smartphone.

Whether you’re trying to live a more analogue life like I am, or go fully offline (which I’m not quite up for), physical tools become a necessity. I’ve recently discovered this as I realized I have to buy an alarm clock since I can’t see my watch face in the wee hours. I have a horrible habit of keeping my phone by my bed as a clock instead, but if you’re anywhere as addicted to blue light as I am then you know that this is stupid—because what else am I going to be doing in bed except scrolling?

If you’ve tried to cut down your screen time in the past and “failed”, I bet it was because you didn’t take proper precaution to switch to analogue tools first. My ‘analogue toolkit’ will soon include an alarm clock, but I also rely heavily on notebooks to jot stuff down as it occurs to me. I also have a small collection of CDs and a growing collection of DVDs so I have less reliance on YouTube and streaming.

I’m definitely wistful about the days of analogue. As a “97 baby”, I remember flipping through the Argos catalogue fascinated by the pink sliding phones so cleverly marketed towards little girls. I remember analogue TV and desktop computers which were comically large in comparison to modern computers. Gigantic machines, with bits of wire and cords sticking out of them, taking up a whole corner of the room.

And who remembers the days when phones were the size of bricks? My dad used to have a phone that was so cumbersome it lived inside a briefcase! But despite the downsides of analogue technology it seems we’re all desperate to go back to it—I see a growing unrest on platforms such as Substack and YouTube with more and more people choosing to go back to analogue. As this article puts it, “old tech is cool again”.

Ah, the simplicity

Analogue tools are bigger and bulkier but have a strange way of making everything more satisfying. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that so many young people are reverting to retro technology. We are the second and third screen generations¹, after all. Having been raised on screens, we instinctively know there is a disconnect between what is right for us as humans and how we’ve been raised. We’re missing the analogue satisfaction that’s been absent from much of modern parenting. No wonder there’s a ‘retro revival’—vinyl is popular again, as are MP3 players and other technology which, until recently, were considered obsolete.