You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax
Published in November of 2016.
What should I think about a book that is excellent is every respect - save the one area that I care about most?
David Sax’s Revenge of Analog is just such a book.
Sax brilliantly captures the emerging analog subculture - including the return of vinyl records, physical film, paper magazines, independent bookstores selling paper books, - while completely mischaracterizing the world of online learning.
Before I focus on what Sax gets wrong about online education, I want to start by recognizing just how much Sax gets right.
The Revenge of Analog is an important counterweight to the unthinking cheerleading that so often accompanies every new digital technology. The media’s enthusiasm for digital startups such as Uber and Airbnb tends to obscure the individual and community costs associated with a declining manufacturing (analog) sector.
The postdigital economy, as Sax points out, does a good job of creating a few high-paying jobs (data scientists, etc.), as well as lots and lots of low-paid service sector jobs. What is increasingly missing are the middle-skilled / middle-wage jobs that built a solid middle-class society.
Sax also offers a compelling portrait of the growing numbers of people - often young and highly educated people - who are choosing analog over digital experiences. They are not only buying vinyl records in such large numbers that the vinyl record industry can’t keep up with demand, they are also hanging out at board game cafes and spending money at independent booksellers. Ironically (as Sax discusses), the most vocal enthusiasts for physical goods - such as the iconic Moleskin notebook - are often times those professionals who make their living in the digital economy.
Sax is on to something important in calling out the economic and experiential limitations of the digital.
The Revenge of Analog is not, however, an anti-technology book. Sax is quick to acknowledge the benefits of digital technology. He has no desire to give up his laptop for a manual typewriter, or to swear off the internet as a tool for research or entertainment, and he doesn’t think that you should either. It is this balanced, skeptical, and non-dogmatic approach to critiquing digital platforms, experiences, and companies that makes Revenge of Analog so persuasive.
It is perplexing why Sax chose not take a more balanced (or even well-researched) approach to digital education. It is as if he started with the idea that anything related to technology when it comes to education (especially online education) must be bad, and then decided to only talk to people who might confirm this viewpoint.
First, Sax makes the error of confounding MOOCs with traditional online education. He makes no distinction between small, intensive, and often low-residency online programs and the largest open online class.
Sax’s discussion of the research about online learning is both cursory and misleading. He writes:
Studies of online courses, from advanced classes affiliated with brick-and-mortar colleges and universities to charter school experiments from elementary to high schools, have all given online education an F. (page 202).
Nowhere does Sax discuss the vast majority of research that has demonstrated no significant difference between online and residential learning. Nor does Sax engage with anyone working in the field of online, low-residency or blended learning - and therefore misses the passion of these educators to improve learning.
Sax is as equally misinformed about open online education as he is about traditional online education. He confuses those who hyped the MOOC phenomenon with those educators who actually create and teach MOOCs.
Those of us who participate in the open online education movement for many reasons, but in no way do we believe that MOOCs are a substitute or a replacement for quality residential, blended or online learning.
A quick look at the edX website would have revealed the actual mission of the open online learning community, as opposed to how this work has been characterized by the press and the critics alike. These goals are:
- Increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere
- Enhance teaching and learning on campus and online
- Advance teaching and learning through research
You may argue that MOOCs are not an effective way to reach these goals - I’d argue that they are - but what is less forgivable is a failure to do the basic research required to accurately convey the objectives of the open online learning community.
Is there any chance that David Sax will read this review, and then decide to take a second look at the world of online learning and educational technology?
I hope so, as David Sax is an important thinker and a wonderful writer.
The Revenge of Analog is easily one of the best books that I read in 2016.
What are you reading?
