Returning to Analog

Send us a text

In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein questions the use of the popular idiom "returning to analog."  While agreeing with the sentiment that we reconnect with the preciousness of our humanity as technology continues to advance rapidly, she questions placing that sentiment within in technical context. Amy discusses the balance between digital experiences and the visceral richness of our awareness and connections and looks at some of the questions surrounding Ed-Tech and the integration of AI into the classroom. 

Key themes include:
• Exploring the concept of returning to analog in a digital age
• Evoking the transcendent experience of listening to analog music
• Highlighting the sacred nature of the emergence of human awareness in the broad sweep of evolutionary history 
• Emphasizing the importance of genuine human relationships
• Discussing the role of AI and its potential impact on learning and relationships
• Advocating for mindfulness and contemplative practice in the classroom and its connection to our humanity 

Support the show

If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review!

Your review supports our podcast to reach more educators and share the importance of creating more conscious classrooms.

The Conscious Classroom was honored by Feedspot in their Top 100 Classroom Podcasts. We are committed to sharing insights that transform outlooks and inspire with what's possible.

Subscribe so you don't miss a single episode!

Visit Inner Strength Education for more on the great work of the Conscious Classroom.

Want to train to teach mindfulness, compassion, and systems thinking to students? Courses are available at The Conscious Classroom.

Get your copy of the award-winning, bestseller The Conscious Classroom: The Inner Strength System for Transforming the Teenage Mind.

Episode Transcript

Amy (00:10):
Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're
exploring tools and perspectivesthat support educators and
anyone who works with teens tocreate more conscious,
supportive and enrichinglearning environments.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein,and I'll be sharing
transformative insights andeasy-to-implement classroom
supports that are all drawn frommindful awareness and systems

(00:32):
thinking.
The themes we'll discuss aredesigned to improve your own joy
and fulfillment in your workand increase your impact on the
world we share.
Let's get on with this nextepisode.
Share let's get on with thisnext episode.
Hello, welcome to this episodeof the Conscious Classroom

(00:53):
podcast.
My name is Amy Edelstein andI'm really excited to be here
with you and to talk aboutsomething that has been coming
across my field of vision moreand more recently, has been
coming across my field of visionmore and more recently.
The first time I was introducedto this concept was probably a
little more than five years ago.
I was at the 50th birthdaycelebration for a dear friend of

(01:17):
mine who's an evolutionarythinker and a synthetic thinker
around changes in culture, andit's always tracking interesting
things on the leading edge.
We were in the Bay Area on afreezing summer night, as can be
in the Bay Area.
The event was populated by allkinds of interesting people

(01:43):
thinkers, new friends and old,meditation teachers,
transformational leaders,technologists.
I was having a conversationwith someone who was talking
about how the rate of change isincreasing so rapidly that we
are approaching what they callthe singularity, a vertical line
of the rate of change, andbecause the rate of change was

(02:09):
moving so fast, all needed to goback to analog.
What do you mean by returningto analog?
I asked, and this person saidto me asked, and this person
said to me I don't really knowwhat I mean, I just pull things

(02:30):
from the air, but we need toreturn to analog.
I thought a lot about this,because analog is a term that
refers to a mechanical process.
When we're talking aboutleaving the technological world
because we can't keep pace in ahumane way with its changes, and

(02:54):
return to analog, we are stillsomehow situating ourselves in a
context that's defined bynon-sentience, which I take
issue with and did at the time.
Now, some five plus years later,at the recent Wisdom 2.0 Summit

(03:16):
, which is really an amazingcollection of technologists,
meditators, transformationalleaders and visionaries, the
term return to analog has madeits way into common parlance.
I wanted to unpack this,because the intention of

(03:40):
everyone using this term is tovalue our humanity.
To value, as Jon Kabat-Zinndescribes, the achievement of
13.8 billion years ofevolutionary unfolding of human
sentience, of human capacity toreflect on their ability to be

(04:05):
aware, to know.
And this miraculous emergenceof consciousness and sentience,
I feel needs to be defined onits own term and not in

(04:25):
reference to something thatmakes us analogous with
something non-thinking, feelingand caring, if we're going to
use this term in order tohighlight what we need to value

(04:46):
as we move forward Now.
I'm part of the generation thatvery much remembers that great
musical shift from analogrecordings to digital was spent

(05:08):
long afternoons into earlyevenings in converted basements
with speakers mounted near theceiling in each of the four
corners of the room and pointeddown at some center point in the
room where we would gatheraround, lean forward, pouring
over the album covers and anyhidden meetings we might be able
to find in the artwork.
Listening to the tracks insurround sound, noticing the

(05:34):
blend in the band of notes andpercussion in a way that was
visceral, you could feel thetings of the bells and the
xylophones as the mallet hit theinstrument and then the
reverberation, that wave thatwould move through you.
This was an experience for formany of us as teenagers of the

(05:58):
dawning of transcendence, ofgetting out of our minds and
into that felt, visceralexperience of the unbroken
current of life, and analogrefers to that.
It refers to that wave-likequality where there's no break
between the bits of informationwhich is why vinyl is something

(06:24):
that people are returning towhen we could break music down
into little digital bits andtranslate those beautific
continuous waves into zeros andones little bites of information
that you could string togetherand create the songs we loved

(06:47):
and store them in very tinylittle iPods in our pockets, it
was convenient but it wasn't thesame.
We traded in our LPs for compactdiscs and we traded in our
compact discs for streamingservices and somewhere along
that towards digital bits andbytes, we lost the pageantry and

(07:17):
ceremony of listening togetherin a room to the sensory
experience of an entire albumfrom start to finish, a feeling
into probably what our ancientancestors felt when they created
music on the plains or thesteps or the mountains, and it

(07:58):
feel it's valuable, extremelyvaluable, that we maintain our
reference for our relatednessabout that beating heart that
connects with others and withour world, that has a care and

(08:22):
compassion and that can relatein a tactile way to the
non-separation, to the wave-likemovement of consciousness of
all that exists, of how the pastand the future and the present

(08:42):
are all connected.
And because they're allconnected, in a sense they are
all one thing.
And when they're all one thing,when they are all one thing, we
recognize the profound way weaffect one another and relate to
one another.
And it calls forth our higherhumanity.

(09:04):
It calls forth our desire thatpull to be noble, to be noble in
character when I think aboutthe future of education and the
incorporation of more and moretechnology which is coming, and
we want to do it right.
We want to do it in a way thatcan foster independent learning,

(09:28):
that can help students identifywhere they're tripping up and
find new ways to determine thesolutions to the problems
they're working on, whether it'smath or chemistry, or to
challenge their expression byintroducing other forms of meter

(09:53):
and verse, so that they canexpand and innovate their
rhythms and ways of usinglanguage, and to learn even
forgotten languages, lostlanguages, to bring them back.
I think that AI has justamazing phenomenal capacity.

(10:17):
What we want to watch?
The recognition of theinvaluable nature of our

(10:43):
awareness and of animals'awareness and plants' awareness.
Living beings have and share,to different orders and
different degrees, awareness,consciousness, and that
consciousness can demonstrate tous our interconnection and our
connection.

(11:03):
So we're not so alone.
We want to maintain that, as inthe context within which we
work with AI, rather than takingour human sentience and placing
it in a technological metaphor.
The risk that we run when weelevate the digital is that we

(11:29):
start creating an ideal of aperfect friend, a perfect tutor,
a perfect companion.
And human beings aren'tperfectly attuned to us.
They are independent, valuablein their own right, and that's

(11:54):
where our individuation, withinour interconnectedness, is part
of what gives us the richness oflife.
We want students to engage inall the messiness of
relationship.
That's how we grow, that's howwe deepen our understanding.
We move through loves andconflicts, we move through moods

(12:19):
of agreement and disagreement,we move through patterns of
synergy and disharmony.
That's all part of the humanexperience and especially a part
of the educational experience.
And if students feel so met andseen by their digital tutor,

(12:46):
their digital companion, theymay lose interest in the
messiness of sentience.
And if we do that, we will belimiting our own evolutionary
edge around capacities that areuniquely to do with the living

(13:10):
world do with the living world.
Part of the ways we canintroduce this in education, as
we think about the future ofeducation and AI, is to
increasingly speak about,explore and lean into that

(13:32):
beauty of the surround sound ofconnectedness, of relationship,
of mentorship, of emotion, ofphysicality, of the give and
take, the back and forth thatmakes us feel connected to one

(13:56):
another, not just interconnectedat a level that we can intuit,
but connected at a level that wecan touch the hands we can hold
, the shoulders, we can hug.
Returning to analog is a callfor valuing that.

(14:17):
Returning to valuing ourhumanity would be to set digital
in the human context, theevolutionary context of the
formation of life, andtechnology being, within that,
not the definer of that.
It's going to take a lot ofcare to lean into all the

(14:44):
different impacts and effectsthat our increasing reliance on
the digital world is creating.
It's really hard to see intothe future and it's really hard
to see what's lost through thedazzle of what we gain, which I

(15:06):
believe is very positive and Ithink can provide amazing
diversity.
I think we can explore learningin different languages.
The nuance of that is often notrecognized.
English has a certain structureand a certain command to it and

(15:29):
a certain phraseology and acertain number of words.
Other languages prioritizedifferent values and if we can
start conversing in those withthe assistance of AI, who knows
what capacities for care andwisdom and connectedness will

(15:51):
come forward, especially foryoung people who can explore in
that new terrain free andunfettered.
At the same time, we want themto explore free and unfettered
and uncontrolled in theirplaygrounds with their friends,

(16:13):
without fear of humanity.
The rough and tumble andmessiness of our human world is
what makes us who we are.
Our contemplative practice andexploration of letting go into
silence and being intimatelywith ourselves, with our bodies,

(16:38):
with our breath, withconsciousness, exploring our
experience miraculously releasesthat curiosity and care,
especially if we prioritize thecuriosity, care and compassion
that traditional contemplativepractice is meant to lead to.

(17:00):
Mindfulness is not a shortcutfor efficiency.
Breath meditation is not analternative to a pharmaceutical
attention deficit disorder pill.
Attention deficit disorder pill.

(17:22):
The contemplative practice inits traditional context is meant
to connect us with our higherhuman qualities and, when we
lean in, to define those in theinfinite ways that poets
throughout the ages of ourcultures and times have defined
the nobility of heart, thewisdom of a clear mind and the

(17:47):
compassion of hands at theservice of those in need, we
become exalted and when we tastethat lightness of being, we
sense our potential and anevolutionary direction towards

(18:11):
that which is good and true andbeautiful, beautiful.
So let's not return to analog,although we're all welcome to go
back to our vinyl records andsurround sound and enjoy.
Let's keep aspiring andreaching towards the future in

(18:33):
ourselves and in our educationalformats in order to continue
that beautiful lotus ofevolution.
It's unfurling and unfolding,so that we continue to smell its

(18:54):
unbelievable fragrance ofpurity and wisdom and love.
And let's have thatevolutionary ideal be very
connected with all of ourevolutionary history, so that we

(19:16):
recognize the preciousness anddelicacy of this experiment and
continue to wonder with awe athow those conditions seem to be
just right.
So oxygen formed and carbonformed, and single-celled
organisms appeared and mammalsand, as the great cosmologist

(19:43):
Brian Swim used to say, frommolten lava to rose bushes, to
giraffes, to a mother with herinfant consciousness has evolved
.
Let's keep evolving that edgein all its fullness and no
reduction.
Let's incorporate this into oureducational design and light up

(20:10):
children with the wonder ofbeing a human being and all that
can be done with our flesh andblood and connection and
mysterious access to unfetteredconsciousness.
Let's close with a shortmeditation.
If you're driving, save thisfor later.

(20:32):
And if you're not, come into acomfortable and alert
mindfulness posture where yourspine is tall, your head's
balanced at the top of your neckand your feet are planted on
the ground or in a stablecross-legged position.

(20:53):
Begin by focusing on the breathgoing in and the breath going
out, and as you breathe in, letyour attention go to a starburst

(21:15):
, to a starburst that happenedbillions of years ago and when
that star exploded.
In its aftermath, as the gasesswirled, oxygen was created and

(21:45):
over billions of light years,that atom of oxygen is reaching
your nose.
Recognize that you are connectedacross time, in the immediate
present, with your distant past.

(22:06):
Wonder at how what issustaining you, that molecule
that goes in through your noseand gets spread throughout your

(22:27):
system, traveling to a cell,carried by your bloodstream,
creates life in you, energy,growth, all the functions that

(22:50):
make us human and whole, andthose functions can't be
separated in that most intimateway of breath, with our ancient,
ancient past and a starbillions of miles away, of miles

(23:23):
away.
As you let that wonder settleinto your body, allow your mind
to be soft, calm and allow yourheart to be filled with
gratitude and appreciation foryour own mind that can reflect,

(23:51):
for the evolutionary processthat created our bodies, our
brains, language, the thoughtprocess, communication and our

(24:13):
ability to choose to be stilland reflect on the miracle of it
all.
And as we finish this shortcontemplation and meditation,

(24:53):
let's hold that reverence andgratitude close to our hearts
and choose to align our actionsand our intentions with the
reverence for the mystery andsacredness of the evolutionary
unfolding that's created us andall things in our world.

(25:17):
That's created us and allthings in our world.
Thank you all, till next time.
Thank you for listening to theConscious Classroom.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein.
Please check out the show noteson innerstrengthfoundationnet
for links and more informationand if you enjoyed this podcast,

(25:40):
please share it with a friendand pass the love on.
See you next time.