Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]From: Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 1999 20:11 Subject: [Leica] digital > This is incorrect. No, it's correct. > Going to our friend the dictionary: If you need to know how to diagnose, say, heart disease, do you consult the dictionary for that as well? > The Dead Sea Scrolls contain information which is > symbolically encoded using glyphs to represent phonemes, > which represent words, which represent things, etc. But > it is not "digital" information, which is specifically > information represented by encoding as numerical quantities. This is incorrect. Digital applies to any symbolic representation. For what it's worth, alphabets have often been used to encode numbers. That would make letters the same as digits, wouldn't it? > ... but the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves do not consititute > a repository of digitally encoded information. This is not true. They are digital recordings. > The advantage of encoding information as numerical > quantities is that you can apply all the rules of numerical > manipulation to the information. You can do exactly the same thing with letters. > A property of digitally encoded information is that it > can be recorded and duplicated infinitely without loss ... True for the written word, also, which is understandable, since written language is digital in form (at least in all the cases I've encountered). > The battle of digital vs analog as it pertains to photography > is not too complex at the theoretical level ... You'd think so, but given the number of people who apparently do not understand information theory even partially, I sometimes wonder. -- Anthony