Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

To understand the significance of the term “digital,” we must place it alongside its “other” – the term “analogue.” The technical distinction between these terms is relatively straightforward. Each signifies a different method by which data are captured, transported, processed, distributed, and represented, that is, the means by which they are mediated . Whilst analogue media “encode” data using “traces” – such as light burnt on to chemical film stock, or grooves cut into vinyl records – whose patterns have a physical connection to the source data, digital media translate source data into strings of binary computer code lacking that physical connection. Like the written word, digital code is an “arbitrary” signifier. Unlike the written word, however, it is a system comprising just two “symbols” (the “on” and “off” states of an electrical current), making it unreadable by human beings (it first has to be translated back into analogue forms such as light or sound waves) and robust enough to encode many different types of data simultaneously, including words, images, and sounds. A commonly held assumption is that whilst we may still be in a transition phase, the future will be wholly digital. This is problematic on both technological and cultural grounds. Technologically, mediation is never purely digital: when “Cypher” in The Matrix (1999) performs the unthinkable feat of reading ... log in or subscribe to read full text