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I'd say the article is largely correct, but I have at least one nitpick: > ‘How do you burn a CD?’ It’s something that was common for us growing up, but that’s
by nayuki 1y ago
I'd say the article is largely correct, but I have at least one nitpick:
> ‘How do you burn a CD?’ It’s something that was common for us growing up, but that’s knowledge that’s being lost as everything is sort of transitioning to digital.”
This paragraph is using a colloquial but wrong definition of the word "digital" - in this context it seems to mean "online audio/video distribution".
This is wrong because CDs, by definition, hold digital data. Some of us who are old enough to have lived through the transition from unapologetically analog audio media - vinyl records and magnetic cassette tape - to digital, optical compact discs. That was the real transition to digital, not the transition from digital physical media to digital online downloads (both are still digital). Likewise, the transition from analog broadcast TV and analog VHS tapes to digital TV and VCD/DVD/BD was less than 20 years ago. (Side note: LaserDisc stores video analogly but audio digitally.)
Digital is a word that fundamentally contrasts with analog - where analog means infinite variation, no resistance to noise, and imperfect copies. Digital simply means being composed of integers, which further implies finite information and allows perfect copies.
The misuse of the word digital to mean superfluous things is a mockery to the monumental human achievement in inventing and perfecting digital machines and methods of storing/transmitting images and sounds, being much higher quality than previous analog technologies (e.g. photographic film) and allowing information to be delivered reliably across wider space and time.
Digital does not imply electronic, new and high-tech, virtual, or communications-based (as opposed to transporting matter-based recording media). Mechanical LEGO logic is digital. DNA is digital and very old. Alphabets are digital (we agree today there are exactly 26 letters in English). The telegraph network was digital and messages were relayed by humans. A "virtual" meeting involving digital videoconferencing could just as well be held using analog NTSC video channels; the fact that digital technology happened to be used doesn't define the virtual meeting. "Digital marketing" is understood as doing business on the web/Internet through electronic online communications, but I could argue that a paper brochure designed on a digital computer is also "digital marketing".
- idorosen 1y agoLanguages change over time.
- happytoexplain 1y agoThat doesn't mean new language can't be critiqued.
- do_not_redeem 1y agoA journalist making a mistake != language change https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital Which of these definitions means "fancier than what the speaker grew accustomed to during their formative years from 10-30 years old"?
- idorosen 1y agoVernacular shifts as society and technology change. As evidence, it doesn't seem like you or GP misunderstood the journalist's meaning. This is pedantry.
- nayuki 1y agoApplying wrong definitions results in confusion and contradictions. If "digital" means "by means of communication rather than delivering physical objects", then a digital camera held in your hand is not "digital". (But operating someone else's camera over the Internet would be a "digital camera".) Conversely, receiving music over analog FM radio would be "digital" because the information came from far away. If "digital" means electronic, then printing a black-and-white QR Code (which is clearly made of discrete squares) onto paper makes that paper image not "digital". DNA with its 4 possible base pairs would not be digital. Doing accounting with pen and paper, involving discrete numbers, would not be digital. Moreover, an electronic computer made of analog capacitors, resistors, transistors, and op-amps - and with a continuous range of input and output values - would be classified as "digital" under this definition. On the other hand, sending 0s and 1s as photons in a fiber-optic cable would not be considered digital as the signal is not electrical or electronic in nature. If "digital" means high-tech, then inventing an analog computer chip in the year 2026 would be considered more "digital" than conventional digital computer chips invented in the 1970s. (This isn't theoretical; there are researchers working on analog computers for neural networks to save die area and power consumption.) By misusing definitions for "digital", things that are not digital get misclassified as digital, while things that are digital get misclassified as non-digital. The only correct definition of digital with respect to information technology is the involvement of numerical digits. Everything else are qualities associated with popular digital systems, but are not fundamental definitions of digital systems.