As We Communicate

The Difference Between Analog and Digital Media

Carol Anne Ogdin
Founder, Deep Woods Technology, Inc.

How Words Mean

     The written word appears to raised to an extremely high level of respect in Western culture.  It is regarded as sacrosanct and preferred by academics, and often seems to be held in higher esteem than the spoken word in business. In scientific communities, the publication of a formal (written) "paper" is the mark of significance, while shared personal experiences are denigrated as being less significant. Witness the wrath of those dedicated to the written word when a scientist or experimenter deigns to announce some result in public, before publication of the formal "paper."  And, in business, we want "the documentation," the paperwork, the written memo.

     On the other hand, scientific communities still conduct meetings which emphasize personal, spoken exchanges of information.  And in business, we spend what seem to be interminable hours in face-to-face meetings.  There is something special about these interpersonal events.  It is in these dynamic, unpredictable environments where the seeds of new ideas are often synthesized, and the more obvious flaws of early ideas are exposed.

     The emergence of high-technology tools that facilitate communication is just in its infancy. Although the telephone is ubiquitous, the emergence of facsimile and e-mail and discussion databases are beginning to shape the ways we transact business.  But our personal communications skills have been honed by millennia of transactions through the spoken word and, more recently, the supposed "objectivity" of the written word.

Sensory Precision

     Sensory information and meta-communication are similar, but not quite identical.  In the written word, sensory information is often carefully inserted to help a reader arrive at the some conclusion the writer intends.  Good scientific papers are said to explain reproducible results; in order for those results to be reproduced, sufficient detail must be provided to allow the reader to independently duplicate the work.  That detail is inevitably provided in terms that are grounded in the five senses: We call for "5 mg Sodium Chloride," not "a pinch of Salt".  The latter is reserved for a recipe, where the artistry is in the reader's interpretation.

How We "Make Sense"

     That's a very provocative expression:  To "make sense" of something literally means that we can convert the symbols we see or hear into internal sensory experiences we can see, hear, feel, taste or smell.  We literally "make sense" of the stimuli we receive.

     Numbers and words are symbols that stand for some meaning that two commicators must agree upon.  If I utter a word for which you cannot create a representation in your mind, I am "not making sense."

"Ohaio gozaimasu."

If you speak Japanese, you'll recognize the familiar greeting, "Good morning."  And, if you don't, it didn't "make sense" to you.

     Because that interpretation is personal and unique, we use even more words in attempts to influence it.  For example, as you read the following words, you brain has to make the image to interpret the words; note the experience you have of "a green-and-blue elephant."   And, I'll bet your elephant is oriented a different direction, has a different size and is at a distance from you in your mind's eye that are different from mine as I wrote them.  If I were to attempt to describe exactly what sort of picture I have in my head it would likely take a few thousand words...and there's still no certainty that you'd be able to remember it all and construct the same image.

An Even Finer Distinction

     There's another way to distinguish between the sensory and the symbolic worlds:  It is the difference between digital and analog communications.  In the digital world of representation, the meanings and interpretations are derived from discrete symbols, while in the analog, meanings and interpretations are derived from continuously-variable properties of one thing that stands for (i.e., is symbolic of) another.

Digital Information

     In modern digital computers, a binary digit is either "0" or "1", and there are no valid values but those two legitimate values; the size of the container for that bit is irrelevant to its meaning or interpretation.  Making 0's and 1's bigger doesn't change the meaning one whit to a computer.  Changing the way a word is represented does not change it's value: A dog is still a DOG is still a DOG, irrespective of how the symbol is represented.

     This is the essence of a digital symbol:  The digit or character or word is a symbol that stands for the thing itself.  It's an efficient way to encode information, but it strips away certain information (for example, we don't write "carb" for a "car that is blue" and "carr" for a "car that is red").

     The digits and characters of our language are arbitrary symbols that are combined to form numbers and words.  If you doubt they're arbitrary, consider Russian; and, in the more generalized sense, the symbols that stand for words or concepts in ideographic languages like Chinese are also digital.

Analog Information

     Duration, loudness and tonality are examples of ways to represent analog information in speech:  There is a relationship between the thing being represented (e.g., an emotional state) and the symbol we use to convey it.  A good example of an analogy is the volume control on your stereo or radio:   The movement of the knob (rotation) or the slider (distance) is the analog of the desired volume at which we wish to hear.

     Analog information is conveyed in our five senses:  We can hear sounds softer or louder, rhythms as lower or faster; we can see things dimmer or brighter...we even see the sky as "blue" or "bluer."  When changing some characteristic that stands for another characteristic causes changes in both, we're dealing with analog information.

Advantages

     As a species, we've grown up with analog information; it's intrinsic to our natures.  That's the advantage of analogic communication:  It works with everybody.  As an infant, your full-time job was to explore and expand your senses.  And some of us grew up being more sensitive to sounds than sights, or touch than smell; we're all different, and we've collected an absolutely unique set of experiences that are all encoded in the five senses.

     The main advantage of analogic communication is it's universality:  Sneak up behind a Kalahari bushman (if you can) and shout, you'll elicit a reaction, just as you would a pedestrian on a New York street.

     As an advanced civilization, most of us learn to read and numerate; to recognize and process digital information, and to use it to communicate.   It took you a few years to get through "Dick and Jane," or "Green Eggs and Ham;" it's an acquired skill.

Medium Effectiveness

     It has been demonstrated¹ in a series of experiments that 78% of our communication is non-verbal (i.e., analog).

Coping with Digital Media

     The difficulty in the domain of the written word is the incorporation of that sensory-based meta-communication. In computer-mediated communications, like e-mail, bulletin board systems, shared text files and discussion databases, there are evolving customs and rituals.  People who regularly communicate through computers find that the paucity of meta-communication means that they must augment their words...much as I have done in this paper through the medium of italics, underscore and boldface typographics.  In computer communication, individuals generally have at their disposal only the linear representation of words on successive lines.   Because of the lack of standardization among computer systems from different vendors, message authors aren't even at liberty to use typographic conventions or colors to convey the meta-communications, because they cannot rely on the reader's ability to display the written message in the same way.

Footnotes