Citation Link: https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/10259
Defining digitalities I
Source Type
Book
Author
Subjects
Digital
Analog
Binary
Differential analyzer
Bell Labs
DDC
302.23 Medien (Kommunikationsmittel), Medienwissenschaft
GHBS-Clases
Issue Date
2023
Abstract
Modern discourses emphasizes electronic immateriality as the defining feature of digital technology. The idea that digits might be digital when punched onto cards, or even written on a piece of pa- per, is no longer intuitive. Yet by reconstructing the context in which the categories of digital and analog were first distinguished histori- cally in the 1940s, I argue that the concept of digitality is rooted in the mechanical representation of digits in early computers, which con- temporary observers immediately recognized was shared with earlier technologies such as telephone switching systems, punched cards, and calculating devices. Digitality is not a feature of an object itself, but of the way that object is read (whether by human or by machine) as encoding symbols chosen from a finite set. In conclusion, digitality is constituted through reading practices.
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