A Most Offline Journal
“We find ourselves in a historical moment of pervasive mediocrity” – the first line of the editor’s note in the first issue of The Analog Sea Review.
Though at first glance an age-old complaint whose repetition decreases its urgency, the statement is further enriched by its context: a brief and to the point shifting of perspective. The aspects we have come to ignore in the digital existence, our daily online life, our new normal, are made visible like when someone points out you can always see your nose and then you can’t stop looking at it. “A photograph of an apple is not food,” or as I like to say, none of this is real. This, the website you were on earlier, the one you’ll be on after you are bored of reading this.
Founding editor Jonathan Simons often explores ideas on our offline culture in the digital age in the introductions to the three issues of Analog Sea. After all, this is an entire publication completely on print and without online presence.
When Pendora came into existence, I was studying English, in my early twenties, broker than I am now, so it was never even a question of deciding to create it online: print was unimaginable. Even though we were reading exclusively print publications, to create one from zero seemed possible only online, as in many ways the internet seemed like a democratic utopia. This was evidently a naive vision, as the space was promptly usurped by the soul-crushing mechanisms of capitalism once it was clear there was money to be made. What this has now led to is the dreaded “attention economy” and the effects it has on the mental health of everyone on online platforms.
Last year I was starting to find a solution to Pendora’s “online problem” through a print issue that could capture the enjoyment of reading a magazine in its physical form but also escape the short life cycle of any piece that is published online. Something that existed. It was then that a copy of Analog Sea No.2 showed up on my doorstep. Along with a hardcover subtitled AN OFFLINE JOURNAL, there was a bulletin that outlined the editorial vision of the journal:
