IDEAS
PRE ANALOG
Idea, Design, Writing
PROJECT: Explore and uncover the true meaning of “analog” and “digital.” Speculate on the appropriate title for today's era. Design a diagram that illustrates the ideas.
BACKGROUND: Through a series of discussions I had with Norman Klien, Media Theorist, we landed on a incongruency in the general use of the word “analog.” In redefining the meaning of this word, we have come to a better understanding of where technology is trending in today's era.
INSIGHTS: The word analog seems to get more meaning than it deserves. The original definition of the word implies an analogous relationship--something that resembles another thing but is not the same. When we say analog today, we tend to accept the idea that it encompasses everything that is not digital. But then what is “everything not digital” analogous to? Looking closer at history you see that analog, the common adjective, more accurately refers to the way that electrical technology is analogous to the processes of the physical world. An example is how radio waves are analogous to water waves. Norman claims that the electric dynamo and all that it has produced led to the misuse of the “analog” we use today.
How does this apply to the present? We are at a cross roads between a loss of trust in the digital and a yearning for a return to the richness of the physical world. We yearn not for Analog but for Pre Analog and the recent economic crash has fueled this yearning. If we unplug completely, the loss of the digital would be too drastic in its ramifications, we already know this. The future then is neither Cyber Punk nor Luddite, it seems to be a hybrid of the two. Pervasive computation, the network cloud, and sensory everything will take us to a more familiar, amalgamated existence. One that is more physically intuitive.