Concept in Definition ABC

Today it seems that everything is digital; to the omnipresence of computers and smartphones that bring us all kinds of information, services and products, in addition to television and radio, which have also become digital. But is there anything against digital?

Yes, there is something, and that is the analog, which we define as that which is continuous in time and which is represented by an exact value that reflects its value in reality.

To understand the difference between one concept and another, and leaving aside the definitions of HandbookLet's take an example.

When we look at a scenery before us, we are capturing with our eyes analog information, that is, continuous, since reality is, for our perception, keep going.

Instead, when we capture that landscape with a Photography made with a digital camera (which may well be that of our mobile phone), what we are actually doing is taking many very small pieces of what we see (so small that the eye does not distinguish where one ends and the next begins) and endow them with a specific value of color and brightness.

Because this is another of the characteristics of analog: that reality does not pass from one specific value to another, but is a continuous whole

While in a representation digital, any value can jump from 1 to 3 without going through 2, in an analog representation, the space that remains between both values ​​must go through all the intermediate values ​​to join with a solid line both points.

Another example of analog would be the reading This is done on an oscilloscope, which shows a continuous line for the representation of various parameters. Of course, there are also digital oscilloscopes, which offer images similar, but built on discontinuous information.

From digitization, it is possible to build a representation that is perceivable as analog, since we only need to get enough sampling points to "fool" the human brain.

Likewise, and as reality is analog, to digitize it we only need to take values ​​at various points. The greater the number of samples, the more approximate and reliable will be the digital representation of the analog reality that we seek to represent.

Another example of analog reality is voice, which is continuous, but we can digitize (which all smartphones).

On resume, we will say that analog is something that represents, in a continuous way, a reality, taking it to the field of abstraction to make it understandable to a person.

Photos: Fotolia - amir bajrich / superlime