On Sep 26, 2010, at 2:22 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote: > They may be not immediately tangible, but you can, with the aid of an > electron microscope, visualize a file on a hard disk platter; digital files > are a physical manifestation of phenomena on the hard drive platter.
I only used the term "imaginary" as a sort of insult to digital files. Yes, they may technically exist, but only in the same way that a song on the radio exists, not in an immediately available physical form (I can't very well remove my hard disk and play it in a CD player). > Wow, that's an impressive display of cognitive dissonance. > > In reality a vinyl record is just a piece of plastic with some scratches on > it that your record player decodes into sounds, just as a computer decodes a > MP3 file. With tapes it's even more like digital because you're literally > flipping bits of iron oxide in the tape. > > True it's an analog encoding rather than a digital one, but it's still a > non-aural, lossy encoding of a sound. Try as you might, without the aid of a > decoding device, a vinyl record, a reel-to-reel tape or a CD loaded with MP3 > files equally make no sound whatsoever. There is a big difference between analog and digital technologies. Both vinyl records and compact disc do use plastic circles with information stored on the surface, but analog information doesn't need to be "decoded" like digital does. The very minimum you need to play back a CD is a CD player, with complex mechanics and computer chips, while you can play a record with nothing more than a paper cone and a spinning surface that can be moved by hand. Sure, it won't sound nearly as good as playing the record on a stereo, but you can still retrieve the data with almost no technology whatsoever. This is because the scratches on the disc are an imprint of the actual sound wave, and while they may be recorded and read electrically (or in the case of some releases since the 1970s, even mastered digitally), the only real process that goes into recording and playing most records is electrical amplification and manipulation. With a CD or any other digital recording, you only get complex instructions on how to reproduce the file. Perhaps the simplest way to examine the differences would be to compare the most primitive versions of analog and digital recordings, player piano rolls and wax cylinders. The wax cylinder can reproduce the sound of a full orchestra with nothing more than a motor, lathe, needle, and horn, while the piano roll needs an actual piano and is incapable of performing other voices or even simple stylistic accents like volume and intensity. Both technologies have come a very long way, but there still remains the fact that an analog recording contains an imprint of an actual sound wave while digital recordings are instructions that tell the computer how to go about reconstructing the sound. > In reality the advent of digital photography has ushered in a true golden age > of photography...you get feedback *instantly* on whether your photo was > properly framed, exposed, focussed, etc...that instant feedback, coupled with > the virtual zero cost of digital photos has let people get the amount of > practice they needed to become better photographers. While that may be true in theory, the reality is very different. Rather than help them learn how to properly compose a shot by giving them feedback, digital cameras actually severely limit the abilities of the average user. Now rather than actually trying to compose a shot and take one good picture, people have become accustomed to pointing the camera in the general direction and clicking the shutter as many times as it takes before they accidentally get a good picture. While people used to come back from vacation with a few rolls of well composed pictures, now they have several thousand pictures that they will need to sift through to find a handful of good ones. This is of course generalizing, as there were many people in the time before digital who never bothered to learn how to take a good picture and there are many today who do use the advantages you mentioned, but overall knowledge about how to properly use a camera have fallen drastically. Even some "professionals" who use high end DSLRs don't have any idea what ƒ-stop and shutter speed mean, because the camera does all the work for them. Storage can be another problem, because while physical photos do take up room, digital pictures take up a lot of storage as well, and a shoebox is quite a bit cheaper than a new hard drive. In the end, most people switch to digital and never look back or care about the problems, but I want a physical master and total control of the picture, so I'm sticking with film until no one makes it anymore. Steven -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist
