Searching for the origins of the 'digital world'

Searching for the origins of the 'digital world'

JAKARTA (JP): Remember the old days when your Mom or Dad -- or
maybe your Grandma or Grandad -- had to crank the telephone
repeatedly before the operator in the central office picked up
her receiver and asked which number he/she wished to call?

That was way before the digital era arrived. Today, most of
the telephone networks in the world are still analog, but the
communications are digitized using a technique called Pulse Code
Modulation (PCM) as they travel along the inter-city and inter-
continent trunks.

And do you still play those vinyl records of Connie Francis
and Pat Boone? These are not digital recordings. They are analog
recordings. When these beautiful recordings were transferred into
compact discs, they became "digitized".

In the analog world, the voltage of the electrical current
that carried your Mom's or Dad's, your Grandpa's or Grandma's,
Connie's or Pat's voice from the microphone to the operator's
earpiece or your hi-fi's speakers simply varied according to the
frequencies and the amplitudes of the sounds.

In the digital world, these sounds are captured and converted
into the digital form using a process generally called
"sampling". Suffice to say that the sound waves are translated
into a series of ones and zeros (1s and 0s). The first advantage
is that transferring and storing information is easier, faster
and cheaper in the digital form. To give you an idea, just
compare the compact disc and the phonograph records. The smaller
disc can easily contain the music from two of the larger records.

Another advantage is that the quality of the copy is just the
same as the original. You can copy music from a cassette to
another cassette repeatedly, but chances are you will get lower
and lower quality over time. On the other hand, you can duplicate
Luiz Bonfa's CD a hundred times using the copy of a copy and the
sonic quality will remain the same.

Today, information is increasingly captured and encoded in the
digital format rather than in the analog format. Digital cameras
are everywhere. Voice recorders from Samsung, Sony and others
capture and stores digital audio files, not analog audio
recordings. Video cameras store images in digital format, not
analog. Even the greeting cards you are receiving this year are
digital rather than paper-based.

People have gone as far as using digital cash -- and digital
coins -- to make purchases on the Internet. You can visit
www.ecash.com if you wish to have a real taste of the "Digital
Economy". When you send a formal letter through the Net, you will
be asked to add your digital signature on it. Digital radio
programs are now broadcast from the satellites, and using the
special radio receivers with antennas you can listen to CD-
quality music anywhere in the world as long as you are still
inside the satellite's footprint.

Life in the digital era is obviously different from the life
in the days of analog. We are depending more and more heavily on
digitally controlled devices -- or computers in various forms and
sizes -- from communication to life support. At any rate, the
word "digital" means more than merely displaying digits, as in
the calculator-looking digital watch that was so fashionable
during the early 1970s. It is an entirely different way of doing
things.

Different in what way? In the digital world, geographic
distance has become so irrelevant. Everything has become instant,
and thus the pace of life has accelerated tremendously. Whether
digital life is better or worse than the old analog life, you
tell me. (Zatni Arbi)