The Love of Analog

A philosopher dives into the analog world to show what it can offer us and say about our values.

Vinyl records. Board games. Paperback books. Film. A philosopher dives into the analog world to show what it offers us and what it says about our values.

Packed with first-person anecdotes, hand-drawn illustrations, and extensive scholarship, Darren Hudson Hick takes us through the pleasure of board games and jigsaw puzzles and inside the values of materiality, care, and agency. Hick moves from pinball machines and first editions to meditative cleaning and pottery to introduce us to key ideas in value theory, everyday aesthetics, virtue theory, and care ethics, alongside findings from psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

What accounts for the resurgence of analog media? Why are we buying all this stuff? Hick approaches these questions from a pragmatist perspective — a view that demands drawing on personal experience to better understand the values that pervade our daily lives. The result is a lively and informed exploration of material culture that tells us a surprising amount about ourselves and how we live.

Whenever we set up a board game, dust a record, load a roll of film, or sit down with a coloring book, we get to think about what we value. The Love of Analog is a study in what’s important to us. It’s a celebration of being human.