Fifteen years ago, a rotund man in his mid-40's walked into a mom-and-pop computer store. It was the dawn of CD-ROMs and "multimedia", of single-disc encyclopedias, offering ready recall of everything from JFK's moon speech to early Louis Armstrong, along with convenient playback through the combination of that new marvel, the Sound Blaster, and a pair of compact "computer speakers".
To the staff at the store, he would become known as Analog Man. He rejected everything about the Way New Multi Media, all the way down to its binary core. He insisted on the superiority of the analog production chain. To support his position, he claimed to be able to discern the subtlest murmuring from the noise on his pristine vinyl editions of The Dark Side of the Moon. He defied anyone to repeat the feat with digital equipment, spare no expense.
Analog Man did not buy a computer that day.
