----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- additional musings:
I think a discussion of 'digital' needs to include, somewhere, the term 'analog', as one of the key devices that *has* to be invoked *and* implemented in any interaction with the digital is the A-to-D or D-to-A converter. This is a device without which the digital would remain a total abstraction. Even the brain of the coder has to function in the capacity of such a converter.
The digital is the abstracted (sampled) representation of the analog: a sampling of a flow that reduces the energized sample to a numeric (abstracted) coded value. This is the essence of a 'digital-to-analog converter' -- it is the primary interface between the world of (real!) energy flows and the abstracted world of code. (see http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199 for an exapnsion of that)
The present techno-social system we are enfolded within may be described as a hybrid code/energy (digital/analog) system. A digital signal is digital only in a static and dormant (potential) and provisional sense. Just as money is the abstracted social representation for (potential) real energy exchanges, the digital (as an abstracted protocol for the organization of information) is a representation of what is, at base, a movement of energy. Digital information is a representation of some originary flow of energy 'out there': when the digital it is in motion, it is analog. Changing a digital data set does not impact the nature of the digital data-set in its abstraction. The changing of a digital 'signal' is fundamentally the changing of an analog signal: it is coded abstraction coming-to-be. By the discrete and representative nature of the digital, change is only an issue at the analog input and output. A unit of data on a spinning hard drive disk (as one example of 'digital storage') is a temporary set of aligned magnetic dipoles (which take energy to align!). To transfer data is to duplicate the highly ordered (analog!) arrangement of dipoles in another location through electromagnetic amplification (and transmission) following a precise pathway within a highly defined and strict set of protocols: what is the sound of one bit flipping? Duplication, transmission, and interaction requires the (analog) movement of energy.
For the body-system to interact with the digital, a movement of energy is necessary. The body cannot 'be' digital, it is embedded in and interfaces with the universe through the movement of energy. Our 'interactions' with the 'virtual' or 'the digital' require a complex deployment of interdependent energy flow pathways within the global techno-social system...
Cheers, JH -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
