There really is a lot of loss in the conversion from analog to digital, and I am not someone that is particularly attached to vinyl records.
Digital always forces you into choices. There can still be a lot of choices in a digital world, but it still requires you to choose.
This is the root cause of many of the problems people face as they move to ‘digital.’
The analog world leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. Ambiguity is not necessarily good, but at certain points in time it is just a fact of live.
Sometimes it is good to leave some options open-ended. Digital systems are not good at open-ended. Yes, you can create rules that allow you to leave things open ended in a digital environment, but that is not the same.
I have spent a lot time converting paper based order forms to their online equivalent and always marveled at how hard it was to make an online form as easy to fill out as the print version. The rules of digital might have reduced errors and saved time overall.
But there is definitely something lost with the move to digital. Complex systems can be developed to emulate analog systems, but this added complexity comes at the expense of flexibility.
Photo by Internet Archive Book Images
