Before the computer chip became widely available, we lived in an analog world. Our watches, telephones, televisions, music systems, and automobile speedometers were all analog machines that monitored conditions such as movement, temperature, and sound and converted them into a continuous analogous representation. However today, many of these same machines are being converted into digital machines that break the relationships into discrete units.
While analog machines can capture the subtle nature of the real world, they cannot make repeated copies of their output without marked signs of deterioration. On the other hand, digital output can be copied repeatedly with no loss of integrity. For example, it is possible to make repeated digital copies of copies of a CD, but copies of a copy of a record or audio tape quickly become useless.
Machines that have already been converted to a digital format include telephones, clocks and watches, and speedometers. Similarly, examples of the latest digital machines are:
Interactive compact disks (CD-I), which include video images, as well as audio, and which can be played over a normal TV using a CD-I player;
Portable players that play a 2,5 inch minidisk (MD) for 74 minutes with no skips due to jolts;
Digital audio tape (DAT) that allows individuals to record music of the same quality as is currently available on CDs;
35mm still cameras that allow you to have your pictures placed on a CD with up to 100 photos per disk and a companion player that allows you to display the photos on your television;
Musical keyboards that can be coupled with a PC or Nintendo Entertainment System.
In addition, other uses of digital technology may provide us with sources and forms of information that no one can yet imagine.
JOKES, LAUGHS, SMILES “If the dean doesn’t take back what he said to me this morning I am going to leave college.”
