[Frameworks] **VL-JUNK** Re: Analog and digital

[Flick Harrison]

Steven,

I don't quite understand your points... are you disagreeing with me, or supplementing what I'm saying?  I'll go with the former, since debate is more fun than agreement on rowdy email lists.

re: POINT 1: ones and zeroes aren't analog representations of "on" and "off."  You could more fruitfully say that "on" and "off" are mechanical representations of 1 and 0, since the binary number system stands in the abstract, like the decimal or roman system.

I can transmit the same information to you by reciting ones and zeroes over a tin-can telephone as I could by sending an email.  You would have to translate them into ASCII text in order to read the message, which you could do with a printed reference card.  On and off would not be needed during that process.

In a digital process, noise floor and strength of signal are eliminated with error checking.  A digital signal doesn't degrade, it corrupts, it becomes unreadable or noisy and has to be re-transmitted.  This is one of the reasons it challenges analog-lovers who also love degradation and imperfection.  Noise is not the same as fading.

To quote spider robinson, who was referencing william gibson,

"I remember when sky the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel, didn't mean blue sky."

re: POINT 2: if you're saying that all imagers are analog, that's true in the sense that the light waves coming in through the lens are analog, but in a digital process they get sampled at some point.  In an analog process, there's no sampling anywhere; waves are recorded as waves with more or less fidelity, like film exposure or signal on tape. But sampling is different: however it's recorded, the sample isn't a wave.

Of course things also end in an analog way, either when they become light and sound waves from the projector and speaker or at least when they hit your retina or ear drum.

-FLick

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