Progression to Analog

Freeform Old School Phone

exploring a more human everyday

Reduced

screen time by 65%

Since 5 September 2022 and without exception, I begin each day reading nonfiction before any cell phone or computer use.

Purchased a landline

(and use it)

81+ hours in NYC with

no phone (on purpose)

dérives

72 weeks shooting film

of the everyday

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Progression to Analog Podcast with Caitlin Begg

Progression to Analogue Podcast with Caitlin Begg

About the Podcast

In Progression to Analog, Caitlin Begg, founder of Authentic Social and sociological researcher, speaks with practitioners and academics across Europe about ways to explore a more human everyday amidst technological modernity. Progression to Analog aims for listeners to emerge from each episode with practical strategies for a more human-centered and technologically balanced personal and professional life as well as with a nuanced comprehension of the underlying structures shaping the broader aspects of technological modernity.

About Caitlin Begg

Caitlin Begg is the founder of Authentic Social and a sociological researcher, focused on conversation, sociotechnical systems, human-computer interaction, and AI. She founded Authentic Social in 2016 after writing her undergraduate Harvard sociology honors thesis on virtual impressions and digital communication's effect on social interaction. About Authentic Social Authentic Social (offices in New York and Amsterdam) brings an education-forward approach to sociotechnical systems strategy.

Caitlin presents her research around the U.S. and Europe, most recently at the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Forum in Munich (13 September 2023). Her professional and philanthropic efforts have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, i Paper, Mashable UK, and more.


In her free time, some of Caitlin’s other interests include film photography, dérives, vintage collecting (including out-of-print technology and history of the internet magazines), rowing, and editing Wikipedia. Since 5 September 2022 and without exception, Caitlin has begun each day reading nonfiction before any cell phone or computer use.


caitlinbegg.com

caitlin@authentic.social


About Authentic Social

Authentic Social (offices in New York and Amsterdam) brings an education-forward approach to sociotechnical systems strategy.


CAITLIN BEGG

film "REAL"

digital HYPERREAL

digital HYPERREAL

film "REAL"

film "REAL"

PROJECTS IN PROGRESSION TO ANALOG HAVE DRASTICALLY IMPACTED MY LIFE SINCE

5 SEPTEMBER 2022.

(IN ADDITION TO POSITIVELY IMPACTING FOCUS AND REDUCING BRAIN FOG)

  • Since 5 September 2022 and without exception, I begin each day reading nonfiction before any cell phone or computer use.


  • 81+ hours in NYC with no phone (on purpose)


  • 49 hours in NYC with no phone (on purpose)


  • getting a landline (and using it)


    • Last year: 1 full book
    • From Sept 5, 2022 on: 50+full books, filled with dense critical theory like Society of the Spectacle, The Critique of Everyday Life, and more
    • Year-long literature review with French and American sociological texts from the 1940s to the 2020s, out-of-print technology magazines across seven decades, nonfiction literature on the history of the internet and social media, published studies and articles on technology, conversation, everyday life, social media, well-being, sociotechnical systems, symbolic interactionism — and a thorough analysis of cybernetics and technological determinism


  • Speaking about my findings at UCLA/UCSB conference, American Sociological Association (largest sociology conference in the world), and several conferences in Europe - Finland, Sweden, Germany... including the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Forum)


  • Link ongoing sociological research with ongoing processes for Authentic Social - company I founded in 2016 while a senior at Harvard after writing my undergraduate honors sociology thesis "Virtual Impressions: The Effect of Digital Communication on Millennial Social Interaction"
    • profitable since inception without venture capital or private funding
    • consult organizations on "sociotechnical systems strategy" related to said research - linking social and technical processes for joint optimization
      • Solve communication dysfunctions related to hybrid and remote work


  • 60+ weeks shooting film of the everyday (and covering the walls of my Lower Manhattan apartment with said film)


  • spending months sourcing out-of-print technology magazines, curating an exhibit in my apartment and hosting 46 people who, in an accidental social experiment, stayed off their phones for three hours


  • dérives


  • an emphasis on MOVING MY BODY EACH DAY instead of just ORGANIZED EXERCISE GOVERNED BY PSEUDO-CYCLICAL TIME


  • all of the above has also had tremendous effects on my gut health


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BEGIN YOUR

“PROGRESSION TO ANALOG”

The transformation of everyday life toward a more human daily existence filled with unmediated experiences begins with a


PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.


To rid daily life of the temporal discontinuities which techno-capitalism and the neoliberal regime have normalized, we must deconstruct everyday life and our "phone brain" era.


To move with our bodies, it begins with constructing situations in which we can free our minds from the chokehold of pseudo-cyclical time and return spontaneity and creativity to daily life.


The body is a movement,

the mind is not a machine...


we must nourish it with unmediated experiences and a


PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.

From "Everyday Conversation: The Effect of Asynchronous Communication and Hypercommunication on Daily Interaction and Sociotechnical Systems", which I have presented at major academic conferences around the United States and Europe as part of my ongoing independent sociological research following my 2016 undergraduate Harvard sociology thesis, "Virtual Impressions: The Effect of Digital Communication on Millennial Social Interaction" (see more in resume).

Since September 5, 2022, I read every morning (without exception) before going on my phone. This looks different each day - some mornings an hour or so of reading, on crazy days sometimes just a page or two. This often involves a lot of margin scribbles. Every time I read I date the page, and note where I am and the general time of day.


As a result of this habit, I decreased my screen time by over 65%.


The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem

Before September 5 2022, I read ~2-3 full books per year. As of today, I'm at 37 (honestly have lost count since I wrote 37...) full books for the year (and 14+ half-read), all of which is non-fiction and most of which is dense critical theory.


See below for some of my favorites. I have also sourced advertisements from over seven decades of out-of-print technology magazines, tracing the route of the deliberate manipulation of consumers to accept technological determinism as an everyday reality. (See the next section for some examples - the first four are scans, the next photographs are more low-quality photos of the frames in current exhibit.)

BOOKS AND ONLINE ARTICLES (~1.5x more since last updated this list)


  1. *Balkin, Jack M. and Zittrain, Jonathan. 2016. “A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy.” The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/information-fiduciary/502346/).
  2. *Baudrillard, Jean. 2012. The Ecstasy of Communication. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Originally published 1987.
  3. **Baudrillard, Jean. 2011. Passwords. Verso Books. Originally published 2000.
  4. **Baudrillard, Jean and Robin N. 2022. Simulacra & Simulation. Fourth Edition - NYABF Exclusive ed. Crisis Editions. Originally published 1981.
  5. **Baudrillard, Jean. 2020. The System of Objects. Verso Books. Originally published 1968.
  6. *Bennett, Jessica. 2014. “Bubbles Carry a Lot of Weight.” The New York Times(https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/fashion/texting-anxiety-caused-by-little-bubbles.html)
  7. **Berardi, Franco. 2018. Breathing - Chaos and Poetry. MIT Press.
  8. **Carpenter, Tim. 2022. To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die. The Ice Plant.
  9. Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. London: Atlantic.
  10. Cotton, Ethel. 1969. The Art of Conversation. London: Conversation Studies, a division of Markus-Campbell Company, Educational Publishers.
  11. Coulon, Alain. 1995. Ethnomethodology. Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications.
  12. **Debord, Guy. 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red. Originally published 1967.
  13. **Debord, Guy. 2011. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Verso Books. Originally published 1988.
  14. Debord, Guy. 1988. Commentaires sur la Société du Spectacle. Éditions Gérard Lebovici. 1988.
  15. Durkheim, Emile. 1952. Suicide. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Originally published 1897.
  16. Ellul, Jacques. 2021. The Technological Society. Vintage.
  17. Fine, Debra. 2005. The Fine Art of Small Talk. Hachette Books.
  18. Focault, Michel. 1977. Discipline & Punish - The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books. Originally published 1975.
  19. *Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.
  20. Freitas, Donna. 2013. The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually, Unfulfilled, and Confused about Intimacy. New York: Perseus Group.
  21. Gallagher, Bernard J. 2002. The Sociology of Mental Illness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  22. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. The Agony of Eros. MIT Press.
  23. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Burnout Society. Stanford Briefs.
  24. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2020. The Disappearance of Rituals. Polity Books.
  25. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. In the Swarm. MIT Press.
  26. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2021. Infocracy - Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy. Polity Books.
  27. *Han, Byung-Chul. 2021. The Palliative Society. Polity Books. Originally published 2020.
  28. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. Psychopolitics. Verso Books.
  29. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. Saving Beauty. John Wiley & Sons.
  30. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Transparency Society. Stanford Briefs.
  31. Heidegger, Martin. 1993. Basic Writings: Revised and Expanded Edition. HarperSanFrancisco.
  32. *Hemmens, Alastair and Gabriel Zacarias. 2020. The Situationist International. Pluto Press (UK).
  33. Heritage, John. 2008. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  34. **Hernandez Motaghy, Mark Anthony. 2022. Rehearsing Solidarity - Learning from Mutual Aid. Thick Press.
  35. **Jurgenson, Nathan. 2019. The Social Photo. Verso Books.
  36. Klosterman, Chuck. 2022. The Nineties: A Book. New York: Penguin Press.
  37. **Koren, Leonard. 2008. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. Imperfect Publishing.
  38. Lefèbvre Henri. 2014. Critique of Everyday Life the One-Volume Edition. London: Verso. First published 1961-1981.
  39. *Lorusso, Silvio. 2019. Entreprecariat - Everyone is an Entrepreneur. Nobody is Safe. ONOMATOPEE (Eindhoven, NL).
  40. *Morris, James. 1986. Art of Conversation. Simon and Schuster.
  41. **McLuhan, Marshall. 1967. The Medium Is the Massage. Bantam Books.
  42. Papanek, Victor. 2022. The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. Thames & Hudson. Originally published 1995.
  43. **Tarnoff, Ben. 2022. Internet for the People. Verso Books
  44. *Tiqqun. 2020. The Cybernetic Hypothesis. MIT Press.
  45. Tolmie, Peter and Mark Rouncefield. 2016. Ethnomethodology at Play. Routledge.
  46. Tolmie, Peter and Mark Rouncefield. 2016. Ethnomethodology at Work. Routledge.
  47. Turkle, Sherry. 2017. Alone Together. Basic Books.
  48. **Turkle, Sherry. 2015. Reclaiming Conversation. Penguin.
  49. *Vaneigem, Raoul and Donald Nicholson-Smith. 1983. The Revolution of Everyday Life. Rebel Press. Originally published in 1967.
  50. Vaneigem, Raoul. 1967. Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations. Gallimard.
  51. Vanhoe, Reinaart. 2016. Also-Space, From Hot to Something Else: How Indonesian Art Initiatives Have Reinvented Networking. ONOMATOPEE (Eindhoven, NL).
  52. **Walsh, Joanna. 2022. Girl Online. Verso Books.
  53. Wiener, Norbert. 1988. The Human Use Of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society. Da Capo Press.
  54. *Yanagi, Soetsu. 2019. The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin UK.
  55. Yu-cheng, L. Making the world observable and accountable: An ethnomethodological inquiry into the distinction between illustration and exhaustion. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9, 296 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01314-1
  56. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It. Yale University Press.
  57. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2022. “How to Fix Twitter and Facebook.” The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-mark-zuckerberg/661219/).
  58. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2021. “The Internet Is Rotting.” The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/06/the-internet-is-a-collective-hallucination/619320/).


MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND ADVERTISMENTS

(PREVIEW - SOURCED OVER 65 SO FAR ACROSS SEVEN DECADES)


  1. Panorama. February 1980; first issue. “Help I’m a Prisoner of my Video Recorder”.
  2. Creative Computing. August 1980; volume 6, number 8. “Join the Apple Infantry”.
  3. Personal Computing. September 1980. “Cover art”.
  4. Byte. October 1980; volume 5, number 10. “Cover art”.
  5. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “The brains of men and machines”.
  6. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “In control”.
  7. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “Permanent relief”.
  8. OMNI. November 1988. “Brains for sale!”
  9. Newsweek. August 8, 1994. “The birth of the internet”.
  10. Yahoo! Internet Life. February 1999. “Cover art: Love (and Sex) Online)”.
  11. Time. February 17, 2014. “The first time I swiped”.
  12. Time. January 28, 2019. “How to fix social media before it’s too late”.

WHY CAN LIFE BE SO DEEPLY UNFULFILLING? SOME OF THIS ENNUI MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE DEARTH OF CREATIVITY AND SPONTANEITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE. WE MUST MOVE AGAINST THE SUBVERSIVE FORCES THAT STRIP EVERYDAY LIFE OF ITS JOY. TO RECLAIM OUR BODIES, MOVE TO A FOCUS ON LIVED EXPERIENCE VERSUS MEDIATED REALITIES. ENGAGE IN SPIRITED DISCUSSION WITHOUT PRESUPPOSED NOTIONS; CONVERSATIONAL DÉRIVES. WE MUST SEEK TO DEVELOP THE SELF AND OUR RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE THE CHOKEHOLD OF TECHNOCAPITALISM. SEEK TRANSCENDENCE.

I currently have a “PROGRESSION TO ANALOG” exhibit on display in my lower Manhattan apartment. I covered the walls with over 572 film photographs of everyday life. This exercise initially began after obsessing over my disappointment with the digital photography from my 2022 birthday (THE SPECTACULAR). I had happened to bring a film camera on the trip for the first time in years. When the film photos came back, I was struck with how natural and happy everyone looked, and how the inherent lack of immediacy and emphasis on duration enables film to serve as a starting point for PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.


Since September 2022, I have spent 50 weeks shooting film of the everyday, everything from the banalities and beauty in daily meals an unmade bed to the spectacular. Subconsciously and consciously inspired by exhibits like The Stedelijk's "Everyday, Someday and Other Stories" and The MoMA's "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound" (see below), in a future exhibit I would like to construct an interactive situation for people regain a sense of calm in their everyday. Film serves as a wonderful starting point for this, as I have seen with my 19 year old cousins Caroline and Ella who have followed suit in their PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.


One of the bookshelves in my lower Manhattan apartment with my working analog phone

THE SPECTACULAR WILL NEVER SURPASS THE BEAUTY OF THE EVERYDAY.

Get in touch

caitlin@everydayconversation.com

Research

Learn more about Caitlin Begg's independent sociological research at

everydayconversation.com.

Social

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