Optimistic Analog Technology: Independence from digital risks
When power went out across Spain recently, communities were plunged into chaotic uncertainty as they sought ways to survive without digital devices and networks. They realised how fragile they were, reliant on systems that can fail unexpectedly, either by accident or at the hands of the enemy.
Even when the networks don’t fail, many of us are wary of technologies that we depend on but cannot control, as they surveil us and leave us beholden to corporations whose objectives do not align with ours.
Upon initial consideration, the idea of moving away from digital technologies in our daily life may sound unrealistic and undesirable. Yet in the increasingly oppressive contemporary context, and with AI offering to take ever more responsibility and control, we can consider the cultivation of analog-first lifestyles a necessary endeavour to ensure social resilience, as well as a rich opportunity to explore new cultural and technical terrain. We chart visions and pathways to independence.
OAT (Optimistic Analog Technology) offers a framework for community documentation and development of non-digital technologies, as well as tools and practices that allow people to integrate them into their own lives.
OATs in action, either through highly practical application, or in playful and romantic exercises that remind us of the abundant prospects for complex life away from the machines. Concrete examples include:
- letter writing with design patterns like stenography, punk post, and ethical chain letters
- physical money, cash, IOUs, community currency
- trustworthy governance featuring paper based voting etc.
The framework, partly constituted by an open source git repository, is divided into various aspects of contemporary life, detailing methods for communication, economic activity, food production, political organisation, etc., either without digital technology or with a conscious and reduced reliance on it, so as to maintain human autonomy.
We are at a crossroads in our journey as digital beings. We may soon become dangerously dependent on digital technologies, so should urgently assess the situation and build alternative infrastructure lest we become trapped.
With a view to cataloguing effective traditions whilst inspiring new techniques, the repository makes an appreciative nod to earlier generations who achieved so much with primarily analog tools.
More examples…
The Notephone – a paper notebook and pen attached to your mobile phone case which invites you to jot notes instead of checking your phone. Poems, letters to friends, life plans: the notephone keeps you entertained, or productive, instead of sinking into your phone again.
Letter lattices - games and techniques to tempt you into regular letter-writing practice. For example, writing a physical letter to a friend, say Alex, that includes a message for a mutual friend, Sam, and the request that they write a letter to that friend with your message in it. The intention is that Sam will then send you a letter back, perhaps with another message for someone else, to