The digital economy has made billionaires of a few individuals at an enormous cost to the world. Tom Hodgkinson suggests ways to beat the broligarchy

In 1821, William Cobbett published a book called Cottage Economy. Cobbett was a radical politician and rabble-rouser, whose weekly magazine Cobbett’s Register reached a circulation of 70,000. The idea of Cottage Economy was to reacquaint Brits with the old ways which were in danger of being lost thanks to the Industrial Revolution. Cobbett lamented the way that full-time workers in the factories and mills had neither traditional husbandry skills nor the time to perform them: things like baking bread, brewing beer, keeping pigs, keeping bees and making ice were being lost as society was ruthlessly urbanised.

At the same time, the Romantic poets were rebelling against the new utilitarian view of the world which was being promoted by the greedy financiers at the top. The Romantic movement was above all a political idea, which was to resist enslavement by the top-hatted bandits, who, at the time, were reducing men and women and children to the level of mere machines. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 reduced the working week to 60 hours for women and children under 12. It had taken a small group of do-gooders 15 years to get the Bill passed, such was the force of resistance from the laissez-faire capitalists.

In the spirit of Cobbett, I now present Analogue Economy, or AE. Since the mid-noughties with the invention of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon and so on, we citizens of the world have been reduced to mere consumers of digital products. Culture has been digitised, downloaded and monetised by a tiny group of monopolistic investors, tech bros, middlemen, swindlers at the top, and ad sales brokers. Video shops have closed, newspapers and magazines have disappeared, we’ve forgotten how to write postcards and letters and instead of keeping a diary of our thoughts we upload “content” to the tech bros via Instagram who then sell billions of dollars’ worth of ads – Meta sells £200 billion worth of ads each year; Google an annual £250 billion. AI is producing piles of digital rubbish every day at vast expense in the form of data centres that need constant cooling and drink electricity. Meanwhile, our soulless masters of the universe dangle the absurd fantasy of humanoid robots in front of us.

I started to resist the digital revolution in 2007. That’s the year I discovered that Peter Thiel and his PayPal mates were attempting to take over the world. Nearly 20 years on and sure enough, countless small businesses around the world have closed down thanks to the tech bandits’ takeover of ad sales, and Musk, Thiel and David Sacks – the PayPal billionaires – are among the major supporters of Trump. He does what they want.

AE is a way of resisting all of that, taking fun and communication and creativity back into our own hands, and saving money into the bargain.

Yes, it requires a little bit of effort and thought to go analogue, but in doing so, you are not only increasing your quality of life and that of others, you’re also contributing to the growing analogue economy. If you want to support the producers of books, vinyl, travel, beer – small businesses run by people who love what they do, not financiers who are only interested in growth and profit – then you’ll find it well worth your while.

Here’s our guide to AE.

PHONE: Chuck away the smartphone and get a £35 Nokia or one of the many designer dumbphones out there. With the money you save, buy a decent digital camera. This will produce great pics and will last you ten years or more. If you feel you need to use apps, then you could consider an iPad, though they are very pricey. Idler Slow Tech correspondent Lee Osborne offers a cheaper solution:

“I have my SIM card in a simpler phone (the Mudita Kompakt in my case) and use my Android smartphone without the SIM in it, so I just connect to WiFi whenever I need to use it. If you already have a smartphone you can continue using it – but just as a secondary device. Secondhand Android phones are the cheapest option for access to the world of apps.”

TICKETING: Tickets can generally be printed out at home. You will need to make sure you have a good supply of paper as it tends to run out just when you need it. I don’t really buy the idea that e-tickets are more environmentally friendly. All phone interactions burn up horrendous amounts of electricity, something that your Instagram-addicted Green party voters somehow sidestep. There are presently over 10,000 data centres which use at least 1 per cent of the world’s electricity supply. That figure has been estimated to go up to 20 per cent by the mid 2030s as a result of AI which drinks power.

MAPS: Before going out, you can look at a map on your laptop and make a sketch in your diary or print out the directions on your printer. If you get lost, simply ask for directions. While people may be surprised that you’re asking, they will generally be pleased to advise, so you’ll make human connection and even have a laugh rather than staring morosely into your phone on a street corner like a dumb tourist signalling to thieves to snatch their pocket computer from their hands. No phone thief will be interested in your dumbphone or piece of paper with a map printed on it. In central London you’re never far from a street corner map – these are excellent. As is the venerable streetmap A-Z!

MAIL: I don’t see email as particularly evil. After all, it’s not owned by a single corporation – and it’s not covered in ads. The feudal overlords don’t open your emails and insert ads into them based on their reading of your likes and dislikes. Whatsapp is a different story entirely. Right now, it’s patiently building up profiles of billions of people and groups and studying what they like and what concerns them. When the time is right, they’ll start selling ads to make more billions for owner Meta. The AE way? Embrace postcards. Here are your practical steps. Go to the post office and buy ten second class stamps and some envelopes. Write a postcard. Take it to a post box. You’ll be surprised actually how quick the process is. At the other end, your correspondent has received a work of art accompanied by a handwritten note. This is immeasurably superior to an email or text. It shows love and thought.

DIARY: Cut back on shared online calendars and go back to using a printed diary. I’ve always found that with digital calendars, I was prone to miss appointments and forget things, if one tiny reminder setting went wrong. You won’t forget a pocket or desk diary and there are many stylish and affordable versions of these in shops like Flying Tiger, Waterstones and indeed most charity shops, in sizes that will fit in your pocket or bag, as you prefer. These delightful AE items also double as notebooks, thinking pads and places to draw those copied streetmaps into.

MUSIC: Cancel Spotify and buy vinyl. It sounds better, looks better, and you’ll be supporting the artists who actually make these products and get paid for their troubles when you do it this way. Support your local independent outlets – Rough Trade, who have outlets across the UK, Cob Records in Porthmadog, Carnival Records in Malvern, Truck Store in Oxford, Tribe Records, Jumbo and Vinyl Whistle in Leeds, Thorne Records in Edinburgh, Assai Records in Dundee and Uptown Vinyl in Weston, Lincolnshire were all recently listed in the Financial Times’ top record shops. I’d like to add my local Special Rider in Shepherd’s Bush Market which was a source of many fantastic Christmas presents this year.

JOURNALISM AND MAGAZINES: Why fork out £6 or £10 a month on one hack’s Substack when you can subscribe to beautiful, meticulously crafted magazines, assembled by a team of dedicated experts, for far less? A subscription to the brilliant World of Interiors costs £2.30 a month. Or, you can start a subscription to the complete compendium of world wide weird that is Fortean Times for just £3. Compare that with your typical Substack subscription.

TRANSPORT: Silicon Valley has imposed a tax on travel via its Uber and Lime scams. In the case of Uber, they started up illegally all over the world and undercut existing cab firms. Now their profits run into the billions per year, while their employees had to go to the high court in Britain to get minimum wage and paid holidays. Are these forms of transport really an ethical alternative to public transport, maintaining your own bicycle, or simply walking?

MEETINGS: Zoom, Microsoft Teams and such internet meeting platforms became a part of life during the pandemic and have since become an entrenched way of working. However, if your business doesn’t have to involve bringing together people from across the globe in one meeting place, why not try going back to being human? Using a landline to have a one-to-one conversation or getting out and about to actually meet up in person brings back the humanity, humour and even excitement to doing business.

JOURNAL: As with diaries – get yourself a nice notebook and a pen and start writing.

GAMES: Reject Grand Theft Auto Five and embrace any games that will make your life more sociable. This, as we discussed in the last issue of the Idler, will do so much more for your mental wellbeing. Find a local pinball machine, meet up with a friend and go flipper crazy. Buy a backgammon board or scrabble and have friends over for an after-dinner game. Or get a simple pack of cards and turn yourself into a magician.

FILM & TV: Victoria and I found ourselves impulsively cancelling all our streaming services – Netflix, NOWTV, Apple TV and possibly one other that we signed up to by mistake. We saved over £500 per year in the process. Instead, we bought a DVD player for £29. DVDs cost £3 from CEX and even less in charity shops, where you will also find plenty more vinyl, CDs and books.

I should point out by way of conclusion that I’m not against all technology. It’s embedded itself into all our lives and it is neither possible nor desirable to get rid of all of it. The above is not a list of commandments. It’s merely an invitation to think, to tackle control, to refuse total submission to the feudal overlords.

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