[Leica] digital

[Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net>]

>Digital means a symbolic representation, period.  It is somewhat of a
>misnomer, but that's what it means in practice.  It is used even when the
>symbols are not numbers per se.

This is incorrect. Going to our friend the dictionary:

  digital- providing information in numerical digits.
  digit  - 1: finger or toe; 2: any of the figures 0 through 9 used
           to represent numerical quantities.

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. The
information in the Dead Sea Scroll can be (and has been) recorded
digitally as well, but the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves do not consititute
a repository of digitally encoded information.

The advantage of encoding information as numerical quantities is that you
can apply all the rules of numerical manipulation to the information. This
provides us with the ability to transform tonal scales, color balances,
etc etc when photographically recorded information is stored and
manipulated digitally. 

A property of digitally encoded information is that it can be recorded and
duplicated infinitely without loss, unlike information which is encoded
with analog means, because you are simply duplicating long strings of
numbers. This is why the question of archival permanence is obviated with
digital storage: you can duplicate the exact same information without any
chance of loss to any media that you want, as many times as you want.

The battle of digital vs analog as it pertains to photography is not too
complex at the theoretical level, but I'll leave it to y'all to debate it
until you're satisfied that you're each right and everyone else is
wrong... ;)

Godfrey
  i'm digitally recording my current level of boredom using my toes