A blog for the curious.
The attraction to analog is about the totality of the experience.
Jocelyn K. Glei’s conversation with David Sax is a good 40-minute discussion of the appeal of analog tools. Sax talks about how the march of technology is not an absolute process. And that developments we once laud are things we eventually also reconsider. There’s also a very interesting discussion of a summer camp for kids which banned phones and connected devices.
Sean Blanda from Growth Lab interviews Shane Parrish, founder of the Farnam Street blog. Farnam Street is one of my favorite blogs on the web. Over the course of the interview Sean and Shane cover business models, events, social pressure, and audiences.
Part of what stood out in the interview was Shane’s framing of what to focus on:
I want to spend time doing things that are first order negative and second order positive because I know that not a lot of people are willing to do that.
Shane discusses this as a competitive advantage. Focusing on things that are difficult in the short-term makes your work less subject to copying. Fewer people will push through that initial difficulty to attain results.