

We are analog beings trapped in a digital world, we did it to ourselves. - J3nnings
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html#makesense

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DanielStraight
With that in mind, please write your blog in a font and colors that can be
read by analog machines and does not require the accuracy of a digital one.
Interesting, yes, but it took me disabling the color scheme and zooming in to
even be able to read it.

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scottjackson
It's Donald Norman's site: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman>

You'd think a usability expert would know how to make a readable web page,
right? When I come across a page like that, I use Readability to punch it up:
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

Not my project -- I just find it _way_ useful.

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DanielStraight
Awesome link. Thanks.

Also, their bookmarklet thing can be set as a shortcut for Site Launcher
(hotkey-based launcher for bookmarks), so all you have to do is push
Ctrl+Space and then your hotkey (mine is R) and you've got actually readable
content. I love it.

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blasdel
Take your false dichotomy and shove it -- whether any system is _analog_ vs.
_digital_ is entirely dependent on your point of view -- it's not grounded in
anything concrete.

Your _analog_ vinyl record is composed of discrete molecules and thus has a
hard (and very low) limit on quantization range and dynamics (it's
fundamentally _digital_ ).

Your _digital_ CD has the data stored with error-correcting parity so that the
foil can degrade significantly without losing anything at all -- insta-
lossiness is not a fundamental characteristic of degrading digitally encoded
media.

The signals in your _digital_ computer are electrical, and thus _analog_. You
can't just say on:off::1:0 -- how would you handle disconnected circuits? So
represent signals as 'high' and 'low' -- but then you have to deal with the
gray area between high and low -- you don't want to have weird bugs because of
a cutoff point. So you end up with a minimum of 4 'binary' states!

Then the _analog_ electricity in the wires is composed of discrete electrons
slowly progressing around the circuit -- _digital_ strikes again! It's turtles
all the way down, I tell you.

It's like Cocoa vs. Carbon in terms of bullshit dichotomies that get brought
up constantly by otherwise intelligent people. You can _cross the streams_
guys, and guess what? They already are in almost any case you care to look at
closely.

~~~
eru
> [...] discrete electrons [...]

May I add that quantum mechanics blurs the distinction further?

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metamemetics
Reminds me of Civilization and its Discontents by Freud (1928), where he
treats technology and tools the expand man's ability to perceive the world
(telephones, long distance prothetic ear, telescopes are prosthetic eye
enhancement) or interact with the world (ships, travel aid, prosthetic feet,
etc.)... aka man evolves through technology.

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human_v2
I think you're close, but not quite there yet. "We" (or 'you' and 'I') exist
as thoughts in our own head. Not only do we have analog bodies that are
trapped in the digital world, we are voices trapped in the outdated hardware
of our bodies. When can I get a full body transplant?

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J3nnings
Woops, submitted it with an anchor. Scroll up, the introduction is worth
reading.

