Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 360.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-12-30 08:14:04+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: where the all-or-none matters, and will in 2024

Back in mid December, specifically in Humanist 37.340-343, we tossed
around the question of whether, and if so when, the all-or-none nature
of the binary signal matters, or when we make it matter. Perhaps this
bundle of questions has faded from our minds, but I'm still teased by
it, and so would like to ask for specific instances in which it does. An 
enormous amount of effort and ingenuity goes into making clean bunary 
signals; see (as I've mentioned) Lex Fridman's interview with the 
microelectronic chip designer Jim Keller on Youtube.

Consider the following, if you would.

We say that we turn a tap (faucet) on or off, and so make in language 
and thought binary that which is not in the kinaesthetics of the
operation. An electrical switch has two states, though again the
kinaesthetics is non-binary, like the momentary mechanics inside the
switch. So we conceptualise a non-binary experience and so render it
binary. Such plays out through many life-experiences. What about
listening to digitally reproduced music? Some persist in hearing the
difference between that and music experienced through analog equipment.
The concert hall raises other questions. And so on and so forth.

In research, however, when do we make something out of the binary/analog
difference? Text encoding is, I'd think, an obvious example, or can be.
Like the light switch we in some instances studiously overlook some or
many of the qualities of a word, phrase or page-design when adding
metatext, once again rendering binary that which is not, and in doing so
operate like the digital machine. Indeed, do we not when considering an
object of research in some computational aspect or other, move towards
becoming machine-like?

Comments and arguments welcome, as always. And a Happy New Year to everyone!

Cheers,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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