How digital can you get?

Rethinking the digital

and the analog

Marianne van den Boomen

Vannevar Bush (1945)‘As we may think’

‘A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and

communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and

flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent

screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks

like an ordinary desk.’

Vannevar Bush (1945)‘As we may think’

Trails as links:

• Created on the fly by user/reader, not preformatted

• Between complete documents or images

Vannevar Bush (1945)‘As we may think’

An analogue medium:

• Photographed on microfilm• Smallest entity: image• No further parsing• No edit, select, cut, copy, paste

Vannevar Bush (1945)‘As we may think’

Contemporary ‘new media’ themes:

• Machines as an extension of body or mind• Convergence of separate media into one device

• Dream of total transparancy and direct mind access

The digital and the analog

• Digital: produced or represented by a computer

• Analog: produced or represented by any other medium

The digital and the analog

• Digital: translatable, transportable and transformable by virtue of numerical representation

Digit: 1) number 2) finger

The digital and the analog

• Analog: translatable, transportable and transformable by virtue of conceived proportial similarity

Not perceived ressemblance, but conceived simularity (epistemological labor)

Digital/analog dichotomy

• Analog: tracable intrinsic relation between input and output

• Digital: non-tracable extrinsic relation between input/output and assigned numbers

Digital/analog dichotomy

Baudrillard (1983):

‘The cool universe of digitality has absorbed the

world of metaphor and metonymy’

Digital/analog hybridity

‘The noisy analogue universe of metaphor and metonymy has absorbed the world of cool digitality’

• No direct access to digital objects

• Access always mediated by analogue translations, interfaces & metaphors

Oreo: analogue/digital sandwich

• No digital cream without the analogue cookies

• Spirits instead: limitless possibilities, seamless communication, global brain…

• Fooled by the infinity of numbers; transferred to digitality

Digital and analogue hacking

•Digital = numbers & fingers, open to hands-on hacking

•Analog = similarities & analogies, open to epistemological hacking