Norman Klein and I have been frequently discussing how to define the technological era we have at present. It’s something everyone talks about, maybe because we share some distaste for the amount of surrender we have given to the digital domain. Many continue to debate between digital and analog, a longstanding feud. However, Norman recently described a way of clarifying the argument that I feel is both satisfying and crucial to my thesis pursuits.
Analog. Have we given the word more than it deserves? The original definition of the word implies an analogous relationship. Some thing 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 cross roads between a loss of trust for 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 is a hybrid of the two. Pervasive computation, the network cloud, and sensory everything will take us to a more familiar, amalgamated existence. At least we hope.
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Defining Technological Eras
Pre–Analog + Post–Digital
