> Oh, good god. There's no positive difference between "discrete values"
> and numbers, and in the context of the actual discussion I was
> responding to ("digital things are ... discrete values or objects"),
> there's no positive difference between "discrete objects" and numbers.there are other kinds of values than numerical ones. there are all kinds of systems of valuation. so yes there is a difference between 'discrete values' and numbers, unless you are taking a purely western mathematical construction of 'discrete values' Thinking outside of the box, as well as within it, isn't a bad thing here, because it opens up some possibilities for thought. > Not, at any rate, if we understand "discrete objects" here as "digital > discrete objects" (as the context of the discussion and your own > sentence imply), specifically in the sense of digital media (which is > what we were discussing). digital just means... discrete objects. you seem to want to define digital as meaning 'numerically representable discrete objects' but... that is different i think you likely want to mean binary representable discrete objects. which then your argument makes perfect sense because you are saying numbers=numbers, which is tautology. the problem is that, some things in the world that have the property of being digital, and thus are discrete but do not have the property of being capable of being isomorphic with numerical representation. I agree completely with your perspective insofar as we agree the framework is purely mathematical computability, but the world of digital media is more than that, though people usually collapse it. The point is to say, we don't have to collapse it, there can be more and if so, how can we do things differently? > Of course there is still the question of semantics, as Evan pointed > out; or to put it another way, of the use-value of numbers under > various regimes of interpretation. Though this problem doesn't arise > with digital media; that the same integer may be a telephone number, > the combination to a safe, and a random value obviously does not mean > those three uses are identical. > > But the specific point I was responding to - Flick's objection (as I > understood it) to the reduction of "digital" to "numbers" - lay > outside the domain of interpretation and use. I think there are plenty of digital things that are not necessarily isomorphic with numbers, though as I said, plenty of things are. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
