The Days of Our Lives - Analog vs.Digital

[Ina]

Just because there is a TV series with the same title it does not mean that the meaning is trivial, and the Analog vs. Digital is actually the most important nail head that we fail to hit everytime.
It started with modems, it progressed into digitizing, multiple choice education, and brought us to question our sanity.

Humans are very much what we call natural beings. According to our post enlightment technical evolution humans were first thought as machines and today we are almost thinking ourselves as powerfull computers. Indeed, our current world is modelled accordingly striving to all things digital. However, our full complexity as an information conduit system and our physiological adaptation seems to ellude us because our psycho-physical bodies do not thrive, from the contrary, they seem to tend to anihilate each other.

So what are we thinking... wrong? Are we analog or digital in nature?

 

[BHelmet]

Digital is a facsimile of Analog. I’m thinking Analog clearly came first and Digitization is a product of technological reductionism.

Artificial Intelligence is exactly that: artificial; and digital is also artificial: artificial analog. If somebody pulls the plug, it goes poof.

We have forgotten who and what we are. We have been and are still being entrained to lose what we once may have been. If we see as though through a glass darkly, that applies as much, if not more, to ourselves; our own being, as to the outside world.

And yes, these fundamentals become more important than the nit-picky details at a certain point along the guided path to our destruction. At some point we may need to call upon our analog nature to “save us” in spite of the innumerable weaknesses and vulnerabilities inherent in our analog systems.

Thinking out loud.

 

[brandon]

I do broadly agree about analogue vs digital, but check out this thing the C's said:

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I found this article that sums up a widespread belief about digital vs analog audio, IE CD vs turntable.

I have tested many thousands of phonograph recordings made over a period of more than eighty years, and have found that almost most examples have been therapeutic, often highly so.[3] In 1979 this changed. I suddenly found that I was not achieving the same therapeutic results as before, that playing records of the same compositions to the same patients was producing a completely contrary effect! Instead of their stress being reduced and their Life Energy being actuated, the opposite was occurring! For instance, music that I had long used to promote sleep now seemed to be actually aggravating the insomnia. I found in one case that instead of the music helping a patient withdraw from tranquilizers, it seemed to increase his need for them. Special tapes for businesspeople to use during their rest periods seemed suddenly to increase rather than reduce their stress. These findings were very alarming.

When I investigated these and many other paradoxical phenomena, I found that in all cases they were related to the use of digital recordings. These were vinyl records (and later CDs) made from digital masters.[4] When I substituted analog versions of the same work, sometimes even with the same performers, the positive therapeutic effects were again obtained. There seemed to me little doubt that something was “wrong” with the digital process. Apparently the digital recording technique not only did not enhance Life Energy and reduce stress, but it was actually untherapeutic; that is, it imposed a stress and reduced Life Energy. Through some mechanism, some severely detrimental effect on the Acupuncture Emotional System, the digital process was somehow reversing the therapeutic effects of the music!

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A: If one is depending on a 3rd density effect, analog is best. If one is attempting to tap higher or "other" realms, digital is more likely to capture the effect.

Q: (L) So if you just want a 3rd density thing like giving somebody drugs or something, you use something analog like records that deliver actual physical vibrations or whatever to the individual. But if you're trying to capture or transmit other realms or other-density effects and so forth, then digital is better. Let's face it, if you're trying to make a recording of ghosts for example, and you leave some kind of recording device in a haunted house and it is supposed to make a record, that would require a kind of cross-density type of energy that would be pretty momentous, I think. It's mechanical. So mechanical effects happen with analog. Digital can be very subtle, electromagnetic...

(Joe) It can be more easily used to convey non-3d stuff.

This makes sense to me, at least in the context of audio recordings, because digital recordings can capture and reproduce much higher frequencies than analogue can (with our existing tech, anyway). i.e. you can record a much wider field of information with digital, going well beyond what's even audible to humans. The limitation with analogue is because of the physical characteristics of the recording medium...eg maybe you can capture a 192khz signal into your microphone, but when you write that onto cassette tape pretty much everything above 20khz will be lost.

(Would it be possible to make high frequency analogue recording gear? No idea! That would be cool and expensive though :))

So anyway, all this is specific to audio, and perhaps video recordings...not to the general concept of analogue life vs digital. I thought it was interesting though. Basically, it all just depends...

 

[BHelmet]

Interesting distinction. True that analog taps out at around 20k with good equipment but then so does human hearing which is also an analog function. Flesh and blood is analog. However I assume the brain can “hear” higher frequencies which can be digitally produced. Kind of like light frequencies the eye can’t see.