Do you know what? Sometimes technology and all this digital gigawizadry is just a pain. Literally, metaphorically and existentially.
Sure it's great that I can put my phone somewhere near my laptop and somehow my photos have transferred themselves over, (although weirdly in a different order than they do when I plug it in). And yes, Google Maps, you are incredibly useful when I have no idea where I am (although that time my battery died on the streets of London I just kind of figured it out and got where I was going).
But honestly. Sometimes I just want to throw it all out of the window and sit with a cup of tea, listen to some records and read a book (you know, the paper ones).
It's not about fear or frustration
This attitude is not because I don't understand all this modern magic. Actually I have to understand a fair bit of it for my day job. Anyone up for a conversation about global de-duplication? Or maybe the vulnerability in the OpenSSL cryptographic software library that shook internet security last year? No?
There's plenty I don't understand too. I mean how the heck Apple technology works is beyond me, although I reckon it's probably down to micro-wizards hiding in the hard drive. The point is: I'm not waving the analogue banner because digital scares me.
And while the phenomenal ability for software to crash at the worst possible times in the most inexplicable ways often makes me seethe obscenities through gritted teeth, my desire for this analogue revolution isn't about frustration either.
It's about what it is to have a better-put-together approach to being the kind of enlivened humans I think we're meant to be.
Propaganda don't preach
Listen. This isn't some patronising call to close your Twitter account and smash your smartphone. There are plenty of brilliant digital things: blogs, music streaming and hilarious videos to name a flippant few.
I use it all. A lot. But I really wish I used it a bit less.
It's not necessarily a good idea to monitor and measure everything we can get our coders on to. All these metrics are penetrating into our spare time and quiet little moments, interrupting them, disrupting them and leaving us a little more fractured as a result.
Isn't it pretty weird that we feel phantom texts and get addicted to the dopamine rush of tweets? Even when we're not physically using our technology, our brains are waiting, anticipating, structuring our thoughts ready for the next rush. It's exhausting. And it freaks me out.
Keep thoughts analogue
We're cognitive beings. Surely that means we need time and space to do our cognition? You know, 'the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses'.
There's no flow, no slowing down when it's all broken into bits and bytes and we get notified of those isolated fragments of information, analysis and even human connection with a little beep and a red dot. I don't want information streamed to me: I want to go out and find it.
Technology shouldn't be making the connections and providing the intertextuality in our lives. We should be doing it ourselves because that's where the fun lies. And it's how we understand things, as opposed to just knowing stuff.
Time to power down
Well, I think I've made my point. Enough raving about the analogue. I know we all still have a choice, to a certain extent, about just how much technology we let into our lives, and how deeply we let it penetrate our experiences.
I guess the analogue revolution is just my way of saying: I hope it stays that way.
I'm going to close my laptop now. I think I'll go downstairs and sit on the sofa next to a real human being and listen to a few old-school analogue grooves. Over and out.