Friday, June 8, 2012

Digital vs. Analogical

Digital is composed of discrete units, which are arbitrary, while analogical is continuous.  I never thought of life in this way, but it surrounds the world every day.  It is important to note that everything is moving to greater digitization, but a good question professor Strate brought up is, "is this important?"  The clock face shows other potential times that exist when compared to a digital clock.  It is important to learn how to tell time on a clock face because knowing the other potential times, for me at least, helps me sort out my day easier.  For example, if I wanted to plan out my workout, homework, and beach time, it is easier to split my time by the numbers visually than it is to count on a digital clock how much time I should leave aside for each activity.  What was interesting in class was that counting is digital and measurement is analogical.  Measurement is always an approximation and counting is always precise.  My favorite part of class was when we talked about different mediums of music.  It first started with the records and when the magnetic tape came out, people like professor Strate were not happy because they had developed a passion for collecting records.  I was just born when some people still used magnetic tapes, but I never used them.  I do remember using CD's (which were made of discrete units), but I always thought it was unnecessary because I would put my music online and discard the CD rom.  Television was another medium we spoke about and I could not imagine not having a TV that was not digital.  DVD's also came up.  When I was younger, I had a great assortment of video cassettes that I still have in my basement, but those always took up too much room.  In todays society, DVD's are easy to store and better quality, in my opinion.  We also spoke about how analog requires space, similar to how I mentioned DVD's being easy to store.  I loved how professor Strate said that, "we live in a remix/mashup world."  On a side note, I think learning about the background of Marshall McLuhan was good for the class because I am eager to read his book that we are assigned to read in a few classes.

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