«
»

Overlooking Analog would be a Bad Idea

Now I'm going analog, even when I'm doing digital.  Analog is friendly, like the iVinyl app.

You see, I had it all wrong.

I thought the world was analog and digital was an imperfect representation of it.  Digital, I thought, was a human friendly approximation of reality.  I made a simple mistake.

I had it all backwards.  Probably.

The Universe is Binary

Everything, it seems, at it's fantastically lowest level is probably binary.  Everything has to choose a state, e.g. quantum particles have to "choose" a spin (right or left).  You have to decide to read on, or not.  (Hint: read on)

If we could dig deep enough, everything is in a binary state, 1 or 0.

Humans are not Equipped for Binary Reality

Everything being binary is not very helpful to you and I.

MP3's and the Internet are great, but do you really think you can make love while considering the binary state of each subatomic particle around you?

I bought a new watch this week after a decade refusing to wear a watch in stubborn resistance to the tyranny of time.  I decided not having a close enough grasp on time was holding me back from things I wanted to do.

My new watch is a digital device, very accurate, but it has the old school analog minute and hour sweep hands, which is very friendly.

While I can easily read big digits on a digital display, those digitals only provide a single data point, 10:55 AM.  When I look at the analog hands on my new watch I instantly get a graphical depiction that tells me:
  • the minute hand has moved a 1/3 pie slice since I last looked
  • the minute hands have progressed much faster than my task
  • I need a new plan
It's all instantly obvious without having to go through a quick mental calculation on how many minutes I have left and how much I can get done in them.  The hands show me; they give me a picture, a graph of the passage of time.  Very human friendly.

And whatever the nature of reality, I am human, after all.

More to read on the nature of reality, including whether it is binary:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Really Bad Ideas

This entry was posted on August 21, 2009 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a comment