LAUSR

J U N E 2 0 1 9 ∕ IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE as interaction with other humans: bookstores where we can touch, weigh, maybe even smell the product and talk with someone browsing the same section; stores where we might make an unexpected discovery of a book, much as we do in a library. But another leitmotiv, not mentioned by the author, tempts me to call the book The Revenge of the Rich. We are treated to a world of expensive analog watches (the Shinola at $550), expensive blank notebooks — the Moleskine, an overpriced simple camera (the Lomo), and a device-free summer camp that currently costs $8900 for 7 weeks. To participate in the author’s revenge and to reject analog you typically need some disposable income. As always, the au courant consumer has some extra money. Such examples of revenge will always belong to a niche market — and their buyers want that; it makes them feel discerning. The book does suffer from a lack of historical perspective that might have helped tie together the various revenge chapters. Even before the so-called digital age there has been a yearning by some segment of the population for technologies that are more transparent or tactile than those in general use. In the age of the typewriter, many writers preferred the experience of placing a pen on the paper. I’ve had decades of electrical engineering students who claimed that the sound obtained from a vacuum tube amplifier is superior to that produced by one with transistors. Both are analog devices, but the warm glowing vacuum tubes suggest to their user a stream of electrons being amplified or modulated. And surely much of the appeal of a long-playing record is in watching the needle move through the grooves — something you don’t get from an CD or an MP3 file. The photographer’s romance with cheap plastic cameras producing unpredictable results preceded the Lomo. The popular, Chinese made, Diana camera dates from the early 1960s, and was famous for light leaks and its bad plastic lens. It was the antithesis of the handsome, complicated Nikons and Canons that were becoming very popular in that period. The Diana was of sufficient importance in serious photography to have figured in an essay by Janet Malcolm in her 1980 book Diana and Nikon — she remarks that photos taken with the Diana have the look “of avant-garde art.” The popular steampunk movement, now over a generation old, also has its roots in transparent technologies: the steam engines, balloons, and high wheel bikes of the Victorian era. Open the hood of a modern car and you are hard put to figure out how the engine functions. Look at a steam engine and the workings become clear.