When I was a kid my parents had cable TV that came from the wall and hooked directly into the TV through a copper wire. Sometime between 2008-2010 we had to “upgrade” to digital cable which required getting a cable box with a new remote for every TV in the house. We’d no longer get analog TV (cable directly hooked into the TV) because it was “insecure” and “low-quality”. Being the technical child of the house I was tasked with upgrading the TVs. At the time I felt like I was doing something right and productive.

Over the years some of these boxes were lost and my parents had to pay a lost fee of $100 each. Then I found out these boxes were actually “leased” from the cable company for $7-$12/each per month to have the privilege of “secure” and “high-quality” TV that we used to have hooked directly to the TV from the wall for $0 (besides the normal cable fee). Every once in a while I will lose access to cable TV or internet (thanks to extended power outages in Michigan) and realize that over-the-air TVs has been severely degraded over the years too.

I get it, over-the-air TV and analog TV are things of the past due to low demand and high cost to run. TV delivery is an obvious example of the transition we’re quietly seeing for many different products including:

Digital	Analog	Tradeoff
QR code restaurant menus	Physical menus	Dependency on slow WiFi
Spotify	Record players	Better sound quality
ATM machine	Teller	Loss of financial guiderails
Roomba	Manually vacuuming	Loss of hard work
YouTube parasocial friendships	IRL friendships	Shallow connections
Digital games	Physical games	Loss of ownership
Online photos	Physical photos	Storage costs, could lose access
Cloud	On-prem servers	Higher costs
Ebooks	Libraries	Place to exist

Beyond the obvious transitions from analog to digital, there are deeper implications with the move from analog to digital:

• Privacy/Security Implications – Digital products are usually collect by default which means that they are a high value target for potential hackers. This is apparent whenever we hear about website hacks or when health data is breached.
• Reliability & Longevity – Digital products are often embedded directly into hardware. For example most games on Xbox/Playstation are digital downloads now meaning after Microsoft/Sony determine they no longer want to maintain the server to run the multiplayer the software essentially becomes useless.
• Cost of Ownership – Digital-based products often come bundled in with subscriptions, meaning to make your product worthwhile you’ll have to pay a reoccurring subscription.

Trust me, I love every single digital product that is designed by humans who care. I wouldn’t be able to get out of my neighborhood without Google Maps. But maybe I was meant to get lost? Maybe the bank teller was there to protect me, to warn me that I was getting scammed when I withdrew $500 to buy an iTunes gift card?

I do not wish for the days where people had to farm their own food. Instead I look forward to the days where humans are respected and technology adds to my life instead of controlling my life.

Besides some world-class software (Microsoft Excel, Google Maps) I think we’ll see more people rejecting, “slow-cheap-hardly working knock-off” digital products that attempt to mimic their analog counterparts. I believe that in today’s digital world, people are yearning for analog alternatives. We will see a future where people merge these two types of technologies rather than accepting purely digital solutions.