David Sax > Quotes

“Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“North Americans had two distinct ways of looking at food trends brought from other cultures: foreign and ethnic. Foreign was refined, upmarket, and expensive. Ethnic was exotic, downmarket, and cheap. French and Japanese were foreign. Chinese, Mexican, and Indian were ethnic. With ethnic, “people start to complain if a meal costs more than $10,”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“Once we remove ourselves from the flow of physical, messy, untidy life.… We become less willing to get out there and take a chance.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“The world is analog, and digital is always a representation.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“The real world isn't black or white. It is not even gray. Reality is multicolored, infinitely textured, and emotionally layered. It smells funky and tastes weird, and revels in human imperfection.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“These kids are skilled with technology for entertainment, but they are not so skilled at technology for learning.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“You see, writing and talking breathlessly about how technology changes everything might seem harmless, but, in practice, it acts as a distraction from more mundane issues—and an excuse for handling those issues badly.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“The real world isn't black or white. There's not even grey. Reality is multicolored.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“In the eleventh century obese English king William the Conqueror took to bed and consumed nothing but alcohol to shed pounds, a practice many of his countrymen seem to continue to this day.”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“These kids all just want e-books.” When she studied students in Canada and Israel, McNeish discovered something interesting that linked them all: students overwhelmingly prefer paper not out of any sense of nostalgia or a resistance to new technology, but because paper learning materials simply work better. “It’s a lot of work to use these e-learning systems. And a lot easier to just learn from a textbook,” McNeish said. “These kids are skilled with technology for entertainment, but they are not so skilled at technology for learning.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“The previous day she had been on a conference call with a younger Urban Outfitters marketing team member (the chain now sells more vinyl and turntables than anyone else in America), who asked Braun what the little lines on the records meant. “I had to tell her those are the songs,” she said.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“Numerous studies have shown that handwriting notes is simply better for engagement, information retention, and mental health than is writing on digital devices.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes,”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“trend—”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“The choice we face isn't between digital and analog . That simplistic duality is actually the language that digital has conditioned us too : A false binary choice between 1 and 0 , black and white , Samsung and Apple . The real world isn't black or white . It isn't even gray . Reality is multicolored , infinitely textured , and emotionally layered . It smells funky and tastes weird , and revels in human imperfection . The best ideas emerge from that complexity , which remains beyond the capability of digital technology to fully appreciate . The real world matters , now more than ever . "
The Revenge Of Analog by David Sax”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“clear enough. I asked Birenbaum what he was ultimately trying to preserve by keeping Walden technology free. Was it the land, the cabins, and the lake, and leaving those spaces undisturbed by the outside world? Or were his efforts to keep the digital barbarians at the gate driven by a desire to preserve something deeper, that universal truth that not only made Walden what it was, but drove the Revenge of Analog in all its various forms? Birenbaum didn’t hesitate to answer. “We look at the heart of what we do, and it is interpersonal relationships,” he said. Any debate about technology’s use came down to a simple binary question: will it impact interpersonal relationships or not? “This camp could be wiped out by a meteor tomorrow, and we could rebuild across the road and we’d still be Walden,” he said. What mattered were the relationships and the uniquely analog recipe that enabled their formation. First, you place lots of people together, and have them relate to one another with the guidance of caregivers, who encourage and enforce mutual respect. Next, you mix in a program that creates various stresses, frustrations, and challenges that campers need to confront. This ranges from the simplest task of getting to breakfast on time to ten-day canoe trips in the harsh Canadian wilderness where twelve-year-olds might be expected to carry a 60-pound canoe on their head for a mile or more in the pouring rain, as blackflies gnaw at their ankles. These situations eventually lead to individual perseverance and self-respect . . . what most people call character. And that character is the glue that allows the relationships built at camp to last a lifetime, as my own friendships formed at Walden have. “You go a bit out of your comfort zone, endure a little hardship, people push you and help you to succeed, and you end up with friendships, confidence, and an inner fortitude that ends in a sense of belonging to a greater, interdependent community,” Birenbaum said. “This is one of the most basic aspects of the human condition.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“A 2015 research report in the United Kingdom found that the main consumers of vinyl records that year were 18- to 24-year-olds, and research group MusicWatch noted that more than half of vinyl buyers were under 25. Not ageing, retro hipsters. Not crusty old dudes.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“trends fade as they were usurped by competitors (those same fajitas and sushi platters giving way first to burritos and ramen soups and then to fish tacos and izakayas), while trends like espresso coffee have assumed a permanent role in my diet. I’ve also seen heavily hyped trends vanish as suddenly as they have appeared, like thin snow hitting the ground. Watching Superbowl XXVII in 1993, I, like millions of others, was spellbound by the halftime commercial for Crystal Pepsi, with its new-age messages saying, “Right now, the future is ahead of you,” set to the tune of Van Halen’s “Right Now.” Suddenly”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“Even the best educational computer programs and games, devised with the help of the best educators, contain a tiny fraction of the outcomes of a single child equipped with a crayon and paper. A child’s limitless imagination can only do what the computer allows them to, and no more. The best toys, by contrast, are really 10 percent toy and 90 percent child: paint, cardboard, sand. The kid’s brain does the heavy lifting, and in the process it learns.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“A bakelitlemez hallgatása kevésbé hatékony, nehézkesebb, és gyakran minőségben is elmarad a digitális fájlok hangzásától. De lejátszani egy lemezt aktív tevékenység, mely sokszor kifizetődőbb, mint ugyanazt a dalt egyszerűen meghallgatni digitálisan: a címek böngészése a polcon, az albumborító vizsgálgatása, a tű első érintése a lemez felületén, az első karcos hangok érkezése a hangszórókon keresztül. Mindez több érzékszervünkre is hat, igénybe veszi a szemet, a füleket, a lábakat, a kezeket, még az ajkakat is, amikor óvatosan lefújjuk a porszemcséket a borítóról. A bakelitlemez hallgatásának élménye átlép mindne minőségi szempontot. Sokkal jobb volt, egész egyszerűen azért, mert kevésbé volt egyszerű.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“When I think back on the twenty years I spent in school, what sticks with me isn’t any particular subject, learning tool, or classroom. It is the teachers who brought my education to life and drove my interest forward, so that my passion for learning continued, despite the long days, the hard chairs, the difficult problems. These women and men were giants. They were underpaid, and they put up with all sorts of crap, but they made me the person I am today vastly more than the facts they taught. That relationship is what digital education technology cannot ever replicate or replace, and why a great teacher will always provide a more innovative model for the future of education than the most sophisticated device, software, or platform.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“Az üzleti világban gyakori hiba az, hogy teljesen beleszeretünk a számokba, és az adatokba, és azt hisszük, hogy az adatok a teljes igazságot tárják elénk, főleg most, a big data korában. Azonban a világot nem lehet minőségi adatokkal definiálni. Az adatok csak a múltat mutatják meg.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“take an edible piece of nature and create a promise out of it, communicate that promise to the public, and then deliver on it with taste.”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“All digital music listeners are equal. Acquisition is painless. Taste is irrelevant. It is pointless to boast about your iTunes collection, or the quality of your playlists on a streaming service. Music became data, one more set of 1's and 0's lurking in your hard drive, invisible to see and impossible to touch. Nothing is less cool than data.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“the elevated anxiety he’s observed in this generation of campers is directly related to the constant hovering of their parents, who use digital technology to keep tabs on their children around the clock. They cannot surrender their authority. Many of the phones that Birenbaum has seized from campers over the past few summers were sent on the insistence of parents, who wanted to remain in touch.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“Choosing from every book ever published seems like a dream, until you’re forced to sift through hundreds of thousands of titles on your Kindle, and all the reviews attached to them, hoping to find something good.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“Nicholas Carr wrote in The Glass Cage. “But the real sentimental fallacy is the assumption that the new thing is always better suited to our purposes and intentions than the old thing. That’s the view of a child, naive and pliable. What makes one tool superior to another has nothing to do with how new it is. What matters is how it enlarges us or diminishes us, how it shapes our experience of nature and culture and one another.”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“I visited McBeth’s eleventh and twelfth grade classes, which were both working on prototypes for projects they had approached through design thinking. One was a revitalization scheme for Toronto’s waterfront, and the other was creating an indoor agriculture system. The students were producing all sorts of creative solutions, from elaborate models of their waterfront developments to fish farms where the fish’s own waste would fertilize the plants that cleaned the water. It was loud, messy work. At one point, three girls were hand-sawing a piece of lumber balanced between two desks, and sawdust quickly coated their preppy uniforms and hair. With a few exceptions, all the students said they preferred to work without computers on this type of project. They felt they had more creative freedom, were less distracted, could be more accurate to their vision, and gained a better understanding of the scale and materials involved. It also seemed more fun. The groups building models and contraptions around the room were laughing and joking as they glued and taped and cut and broke things. The only ones working on computers were two girls who gave up on a model and decided to make an app instead. They sat side by side, quietly checking out the pricing options on various app-building websites, flipping over to Facebook whenever McBeth was out”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

“Gluten is just a term for things that are bad for you. Like calories or fat, that’s all gluten.” —Seth Rogen”
― David Sax, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue

“Nincs az adatnál kevésbé menő dolog a világon”
― David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter