I went to a website run by Whatis.com to figure out what the difference between digital and analog is. They're 2 terms that I always hear in reference to cable tv, cell phone service, and music recording techniques, but I've never fully comprehended the difference between the 2. For me, digital is new and analog is old.
But! According to the website, digital is technology that transmits data in terms of positive or negative. These polarities are represented by a string of 1's and 0's, which goes back to the difference between bits and bytes. Each of these individual digits is a bit, but a string of them together used to convey information is a byte.
Analog is the older medium for processing information. Instead of the string of information conveyed in 1's and 0's, analog sends information by electric signals that have different frequencies and amplitudes.
Digital is the technology used in satellite communication, new cell phones, and fiber optics. The change over to strictly digital TV happened June 12th, but was supposed to happen much earlier. The government was handing out coupons in order to aid people who wanted to purchase a digital box. If a person used to use an antennae on top of his house to get tv, he would be using analog signals, while anyone watching FiOs tv is in the new era of digital technology.
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Interesting that you refer to digital and analog as media. There's nothing wrong with that, but more often they're seen as codes or modes of communication, transmission, storage, or representation.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between analog and digital technology is also very important when referring to sound recording. Analog recordings play back sounds that are analogous to the original sound, where as digital recordings convert the sound into numbers to be reproduced later back into sound.
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