Digital ideas are around us everyday
Most people upon hearing the word digital will think of their IPhone, computer, or the internet. Although these are digital items, the term “digital” goes much deeper. Before 2009, everything had to be analog which meant there were no fixed number of possibilities on information
Being digital means that all information was represented in values of 1’s and 0’s. This means that an analog sound would be smooth and continuous whereas a digital sound would be dissected down into a particular code of 1’s and 0’s that would represent these sounds. This does not sound as natural, but the invention of digital can be used to manipulate data and transfer it across long distances without noise interruptions.
Being Digital can apply to various things in everyday life. An example of this is sheet music. An orchestra reads sheet music all the same because it is a fixed number of notes. This contrasts the performance of that sheet music which is analog. It is analog because it can be performed an infinite number of ways if you think of a 6th grade band playing against the top orchestra in the world.
Another example of how everyday items are digital is an alarm clock with digital numbers. This works by an internal mechanism clocking every second that goes by and then converting that into a code that is then used to produce lettering that is displayed. This differs from a big ben clock in your grandma’s house. That works by a continuous second hand spinning that triggers a the minute and hour hand to move. It is then up to the person to view the hands and tell the time.
In essence, to be digital is to turn the complexity of the real world into data that can be stored, processed, and shared across systems while avoiding the noise.