What Does it Mean to be Digital? (WIP 3/24)

Any media, whether it be a painting, photograph, or language can be placed into two categories: digital and analog. But what does it mean to be digital? In short, the idea of digital explore the concept of separating the noise from the signal. This is something that was hard to achieve through analog technology. In this post, topics concerning what it means to be digital and what advantages it has over analog will be discussed.

Error Detection and Prevention

Digital systems’ ability to discretize and precisely define information allows for more sophisticated processing techniques that can effectively separate signal from noise. Analog systems, while having their own advantages in certain applications, cannot match the level of noise separation and correction that digital systems offer due to their continuous and inherently less precise nature. This idea is backed through the evolution of voice messaging over long distance from the past to the present.

When the telephone and radio communication largely relied on analog means of travel, a long distance of travel could lead to a heavy disruption of quality. This is due to the idea of heat electrons. Analog Amplifiers could not distinguish the difference between real electrons and heat, and would often amplify more and more heat the longer a communication traveled. This lead to a sharp loss in quality when sound traveled a long distance.

When voice communications became largely digital, heat electrons could be distinguished and corrected. This was largely due to the incorporation of binary: the information system of 1s and 0s. WIP

What Does it Mean to be Digital? (3/4)

The idea of being digital explores the concept of separating the noise from the signal. The idea of being digital is an evolution from when media used to be seen as analog. We can classify really any media between these two categories.