[-empyre-] D-to-A conversion

[John Hopkins]

additional musings:

I think a discussion of 'digital' needs to include, somewhere, the term 
'analog', as one of the key devices that *has* to be invoked *and* implemented 
in any interaction with the digital is the A-to-D or D-to-A converter. This is a 
device without which the digital would remain a total abstraction. Even the 
brain of the coder has to function in the capacity of such a converter.

The digital is the abstracted (sampled) representation of the analog: a sampling 
of a flow that reduces the energized sample to a numeric (abstracted) coded 
value. This is the essence of a 'digital-to-analog converter' -- it is the 
primary interface between the world of (real!) energy flows and the abstracted 
world of code. (see http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199 for an exapnsion 
of that)

The present techno-social system we are enfolded within may be described as a 
hybrid code/energy (digital/analog) system. A digital signal is digital only in 
a static and dormant (potential) and provisional sense. Just as money is the 
abstracted social representation for (potential) real energy exchanges, the 
digital (as an abstracted protocol for the organization of information) is a 
representation of what is, at base, a movement of energy. Digital information is 
a representation of some originary flow of energy 'out there': when the digital 
it is in motion, it is analog. Changing a digital data set does not impact the 
nature of the digital data-set in its abstraction. The changing of a digital 
'signal' is fundamentally the changing of an analog signal: it is coded 
abstraction coming-to-be. By the discrete and representative nature of the 
digital, change is only an issue at the analog input and output. A unit of data 
on a spinning hard drive disk (as one example of 'digital storage') is a 
temporary set of aligned magnetic dipoles (which take energy to align!). To 
transfer data is to duplicate the highly ordered (analog!) arrangement of 
dipoles in another location through electromagnetic amplification (and 
transmission) following a precise pathway within a highly defined and strict set 
of protocols: what is the sound of one bit flipping? Duplication, transmission, 
and interaction requires the (analog) movement of energy.

For the body-system to interact with the digital, a movement of energy is 
necessary. The body cannot 'be' digital, it is embedded in and interfaces with 
the universe through the movement of energy. Our 'interactions' with the 
'virtual' or 'the digital' require a complex deployment of interdependent energy 
flow pathways within the global techno-social system...

Cheers,
JH


-- 
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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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