nitpick: discrete vs. digital

[Jeffrey Reid]

> On Thu, 11 Jul 1996, Jeffrey Reid wrote:
> > I can't help but think that the television/film division is reinforcing
> > a larger analog/digital division in Pynchon's work.  After all, film is
> > digital, operating at 24 fps with absolute demarcations.
> > Don't be confused about the difference between digital and discrete.
> > a digital recording is (straight from the OED)
> >   "a Designating (a) recording in which the original waveform is
> > digitally coded and the information in it represented by the presence or
> > absence of pulses of equal strength, making it less subject to degradation
> > than a conventional analogue signal; of or pertaining to such recording."
> >
> You are confusing "digital recording" with "digital."  Digital is
> nothing more than having the property of being able to be represented
> in discrete digits.  It isn't just ones and zeros (that's binary code,
> perhaps the most common use of the digital in Pynchon, but not the
> only one).  After all, doesn't a digital clock uses ten digits?
> In fact, I am wearing a standard face watch (hour, minute and second
> hands) and it states on the clock face that it is "Quartz digital".
> And you can tell because it clicks from second to second rather
> than sweeping as an analog watch would.
>
They call them digital clocks since they tell time using a digital
mechanism, a representation of passing time in ones and zeroes (that is
the "presence or absence of pulses of equal strengh" which the OED
definition refers to) which then get displayed to you in some way (like a
standard watch face as you point out, or as a 'numerical' led display),
but ultimatly the display [and it's ten digits] is immaterial, it's what
the clock actually uses to tell time that is really important.

By it's definition a digital representation is one made of ones and zeroes,
whereas an analog one is a device which has a physical analog to some effect
(time passing ; an oscillating gear, sound wave in air ; a physical
representation of that wave on magnetic tape) which allows it to operate.

Jeff

---------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey G Reid       			jgreid at u.washington.edu
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"O holy mathematics, may I for the rest of my days be consoled
 by perpetual intercourse with you, consoled for the wickedness
 of man and the injustice of the Almighty!"  -- Isidore Ducasse