AI and Analog Living

Draft for Van's review before publish.

There is a version of the AI conversation that almost nobody is having. It is not about replacing jobs, generating content, or building autonomous agents. It is about using AI to live more analog. About treating AI as a planning tool so powerful that it can get your hands back on physical things. Van Neistat is having that conversation, and he is building the proof in his workshop.

The Thesis

Van's core argument is deceptively simple: AI should free us from screens, not add more of them. Every generation of personal computing has taken something away from human hands and given it to a glass rectangle. Buttons became menus. Menus became gestures. Gestures became invisible interfaces that require you to remember where to tap on a featureless surface. Van has watched this happen across 44 years of using Apple computers. He is not theorizing about the trend. He lived through each reduction.

The thesis of The Spirited Man's flagship show is built on this observation. The tagline, "using AI to live more analog," is not a slogan. It is a design principle. AI is powerful enough to let you specify exactly how a system should work, route the signals, choose the hardware, and plan the build. Then you put the AI away and operate the system with your hands.

The Switcher Cart: Proof of Concept

The clearest example is the multicam video switcher cart Van built in Episode 1. He needed a production system for four cameras with live switching, recording, and monitoring. The constraint: no software menus. Every function had to map to a physical button, a knob, or a cable connection.

He used ChatGPT to design the signal routing. The AI specified the hardware, mapped the connections, and solved the compatibility problems. Van then built the cart in his workshop. The result is a production system that runs without a touchscreen, without a mouse, without a single dropdown menu. Physical switches. Physical cables. Physical buttons. The computer disappeared, and the filmmaking got more direct.

At the center of that cart sits the Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro, which Van calls the best computer he has ever used. The reason is simple: every function has a dedicated physical button. No menus to navigate. No modes to remember. You press a button, and the thing happens. This is what AI and craftsmanship can produce when the goal is not automation but physicality.

Cal Newport Theorizes. Van Builds.

The intellectual lineage runs through Cal Newport, the Georgetown computer science professor behind Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, has done more than anyone to articulate the cost of constant connectivity. His argument that our attention is being strip-mined by design is correct and important. Van has read Newport. He respects the work.

But Newport is a theorist. He writes about what you should stop doing. Van builds what you should start using. Newport writes about protecting your attention from digital intrusion; Van designs a multicam switcher cart where the interface cannot intrude because there is no interface. Newport argues for fewer apps on your phone. Van uses a Franklin Language Master, a 1990s electronic dictionary with a keyboard and a screen the size of a fortune cookie, no Wi-Fi, no notifications, no updates.

Intentional technology use requires more than principles. It requires objects. Someone has to design and build the physical systems that make analog living possible in a digital world. That is Van's contribution to this conversation: not a book about why screens are bad, but a workshop full of evidence that you can design around them.

AI from a Craftsman's Perspective

Van is a filmmaker who builds things with his hands. He has been using Apple computers for 44 years. He built sets with Tom Sachs out of plywood, foam core, and hot glue for a feature film that premiered at SXSW. He modifies his own cameras and fabricates production gear in the same workshop where he shoots. His medium is physical: cameras, sets, wood, metal, cables, paint.

When someone like this picks up AI, they do not use it the way a software engineer does. Van treats AI the way he treats a phone call to a distributor. It is the part of the process that used to require six hours of research, three calls to a parts supplier, and a stack of spec sheets. Now it requires a conversation. The output is not a file on a screen. The output is a blueprint for something you build with your hands.

Most people assume AI's value lies in what it generates: text, images, code, music. Van's argument is different. He used ChatGPT to spec out a multicam switcher cart, then built the cart by hand. The AI solved the signal routing in an afternoon. Van spent weeks in the shop wiring, soldering, and testing. The finished system runs without a single software menu. The AI is gone. The cart remains.

Balancing Technology and Analog Life

Analog living is not Luddism. Van is not smashing looms. He uses professional cameras, editing software, and YouTube to distribute his work to hundreds of thousands of people. The point is not rejecting technology. The point is balancing technology and analog life so that screens serve specific functions and then get out of the way.

The tools and craft thread running through The Spirited Man explores this balance in practice. Each month, the flagship 30-minute episode documents a build, a fix, a ranked list, and the objects Van loves. The segments (The Build, A Fix, A Thing We Love, Ranked List, Fast Mock) are structured around physical engagement with physical things. The show itself is evidence of the thesis: made with professional tools, distributed digitally, but grounded in workshop work.

There is a video about a custom pencil that captures this better than any manifesto could. You watch a man shape a piece of wood into an instrument for making marks on paper. No algorithm improved the pencil. But the care and specificity Van brings to that object is the same care he brings to designing an AI-assisted switcher cart. The common principle: the best tools are the ones that respect your hands.

What This Means

If Van is right, and AI is powerful enough to let us design our way out of the interface, then the most important AI applications are the ones nobody is building yet. Not chatbots. Not generators. Design tools for physical systems. Routing engines for hardware. Specification assistants that help craftspeople, tradespeople, and builders skip the research phase and get to the bench faster.

Most commentary on AI stays on screen: blog posts about productivity, demos of generated images, debates about automation. Van publishes a 30-minute film each month showing what he actually built with AI as his planning partner. The finished objects are made of wood, metal, and cable. You can hold them.

The manifesto lays out the argument in full. Episode 1 is the proof of concept, a multicam switcher cart designed by AI and built entirely by hand. Everything since has been Van testing that idea against new projects, new tools, and new constraints.

Explore more: Analog Living | Tools and Craft | Episode 1: The Switcher Cart | The Manifesto