Ever since the world entered the digital era, it has seen more frequent appeals regarding the value of ‘analog’ concreteness in design. The grain of materials, the vibrations of the senses, the tangible flavor of the product, have taken on an increasingly central role in the contemporary narrative. It is worth wondering, however, if this insistence on the importance of the physical nature of objects, punctually juxtaposed with the coldness of the digital, might not be due to a subcutaneous hemorrhage that is surreptitiously but inexorably depriving the body of the produce of its traditional objective value.
This is a legitimate doubt: the response, nevertheless, is negative. The central role of the physical dimension of furnishings has not been threatened. It is true that the inebriation of the digital has led in recent years to the pursuit of the latest neo-tech invention. But while the predigital generations were busy absorbing technological evolution that would not spare a single aspect of everyday life, the first true generation of digital natives was growing to the point of becoming a specific target of reference, which presents itself today with its own psychographic profile and, more prosaically, with its own buying power. Above all, what was seen as an arrival point for the predigital generations – namely the complete convergence between real and digital – represents a starting point for the younger subjects, an acknowledged situation on which to build and nurture their idea of the future.
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