Inspired by **Zeldar’s **response in this thread - what do you see as the downside to digital technology? My immediate example is digital TV with questionable signal quality - instead of a slightly worse analog image, we now get pixalized images, or nothing.
To be clear - lots of really, really, really neat things are possible because of digital technology. I design cell phones for a living, and wouldn’t have a job if we were still in analog-only land. I find it interesting, from an engineering perspective, to look at the trade-offs.
One of the biggest downsides to digital text is the rapid obsolescence of digital storage media.
If you wrote your memoirs on paper today, they’d still be readable 100 years from now (assuming some basic storage practices are followed).
If, in 1986, you stored them on a 5 1/4" floppy, you’ll have a pretty hard time reading them today. Not to mention whether the app you wrote them in still exists.
There is alot of stuff we really dont need to live our lives, cell phone service, gps, netflix, DVD players, Xbox, 52" 3d tv, cable, high speed internet service.
Sure they make life easier and more interesting, but they do add significantly to our cost of living.
When technology turns it’s Sauron-like eye on something, the end result is always a race to the bottom. The results, while lovely and cheap and bountiful, are always at the expense of craft. Someone who could make a living as a cobbler, making shoes that are an artistic expression, as well as a custom fit, and a very long life with the ability to do things like re-sole, is replaced by a Big Box Store that sells Shoes that, while a quarter the price, will last 6 months, and are made for pennies by folks living in squalor.
When technology takes over, you have a loss of artistry and personality for adequate, cheap, and plenty. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE having a phone that’s a music player, internet access point, movie studio, and GPS, but I wonder if eventually there will be a desire to have one or two-off handcrafted things, even IF they could be pooped out for pennies and shipped on a slow boat from china.
It’s very easy for people to lose large quantities of text or images than if it were stored as hard copies.
Sure it’s easy to take lots of decent, affordable photographs today.
It’s also easy to lose years’ worth of them in a blink of an eye.
I sometimes fear these kinds of losses of government records and other information that may never have existed in hard copy at all–electronically filed forms, stored digitally. . .
As an amateur photographer, this is something I’ve thought a lot about. The ease of taking, processing and storing digital photos is wonderful, not to mention the money saved in film and developing fees, but there are real downsides to this, too.
As mentioned above, the rapid obsolescence of storage media is a real concern and one failed hard drive could prove disastrous if proper backups aren’t made. However, there’s another mostly overlooked problem: it’s just too damn easy to delete your shots.
With film, you’d have to wait for the negatives to come back or, at least, develop everything yourself before you could decide if a shot was good or not. With digital cameras you can just take a quick look at the lcd screen delete away if you don’t like it. Yes, that is also a great convenience, especially if you’re running out of room on your memory card, but what potentially valuable shots are getting deleted?
Unfortunately, I can’t think of any specific cases but I remember reading at least a few articles where researchers or librarians have gone through photo archives and found pictures of then-unknown but now-important people or events which would have seemed totally inconsequential at the time they were taken. Then, it was simple to file these negatives away and forget about them. Nowadays, more likely than not, they’re probably consigned to the trash bin before their true historical significance is realized. How many hidden or accidental gems will future generations be deprived of?
I think one thing is also the overabundance of material. If you have a 1tb hard drive, (now I see them on sale for $70.00) you can take 2,000 pictures of your trip. Are you ever gonna look at 2000 pics? Probably not, but with that much space you never erase them.
I too detest DTV simply cause I can’t get the signals in my flat. And I’m only 3 miles NW of Willis (Sears) Tower, whereas analog TV brought in 16 channels very clear.
I also don’t like the CGI animation. I grew up with Looney Toons and I’m not saying the CGI isn’t impressive but it’s not what I like
digital devices can still be controlled by knobs. size consideration of the final product often leads to button controls with multiple functions.
digital tv is a good thing most of the time though fringe people might have needed larger antennas. people in cities, where the stations are, might also have troubles; cure sometimes is less of an antenna or making it more directional (even maybe aiming for a reflection). sometimes tricks and techniques need to be resorted to.
Stuff is harder to repair. Analog circuits could usually be fixed with commodity parts and a knowledgable technician. If a digital chip of some sort breaks and isn’t made anymore, you’re screwed and you have to throw away the device.
My phone company is switching people to fiber-optics for phone service as well as TV & internet. It isn’t as robust as copper wire was. First of all, it doesn’t transmit power like old phone lines did. If the power goes out, there’s an 8-hour (dunno if that’s talk or standby time) battery backup. After that, you’re on your own and you can’t call the utility companies or 911. Also, in the event of an apocalypse, a copper system could still be used. Phones aren’t very hi-tech to repair or build, and you could jerry-rig some sort of switching system. As long as you’ve got those wires in the ground, you’ve got something. If all you have is fiber, it will be useless sooner or later. The whole infrastructure depends on chips from a handful of very high-tech and expensive plants scattered around the world.
The fact that storage devices are fragile and become obsolete quickly. Most of the CDs I burned in the late 90s are now unreadable in any CD player. Floppy disks really can’t be read anymore. I don’t know what the life span of hard drives is, but I assume it is only 5-10 years. So the devices break, and as they become obsolete the devices that read them become harder and harder to find.
Written records, microfilm, microfiche, etc. will be around for a long time and still be readable. Right now most of the info stored on digital records will either be broken or hard(er) to read within 20 years IMO.
In sound reproduction if the waveform is unintentionally clipped the resulting distortion is obvious and unmusical. With analogue devices the onset of distortion is more subtle and in some cases can even be desirable.
True, but I think especially in this case, the benefits vastly outweigh the disadvantages. It is now possible to record, store and transmit music with a fidelity unknown 30 years ago, with equipment that costs a fraction of yesterday’s technology. Show me an analogue system with a dynamic range >100dB, and that piece of equipment will be very expensive. You can record and edit music in professional quality on any computer with hardware for a couple of hundred $ - that, to me, is huge.
And this development still continues - Pro Tools systems that used to start at $10000 are now natively available for anyone around $600.
If you prefer the sound of overdriven analogue technology, there are machines that replicate that effect perfectly, still at a fraction of the price of the original gadget that didn’t give you the option to record without those distortions.
I get that people love the haptic quality of vinyl, but if anyone tells me that its sound is superior, I will refer them to physics.
I don’t disagree at all and personally I will happily listen to CDs and MP3s and whatever else is around. It is just a limitation of digital that had to be worked around, and you can still run into problems if you overdrive a digital unit in a part that is not designed to be overdriven. Where I notice it most is when doing amateur music recording; I have to be very careful not to let the signal clip at any stage where as if I was recording to tape it would be less of an issue.
Edit: In short, analogue is more forgiving. This is probably true of many analogue/digital comparisons, e.g. TV reception.
I love computer games, but now that we all play on our computers, it’s harder to get the group together for a game involving people sitting around a table.
I’ve been bouncing from place to place, often with very little warning, for the last 8 years. I love being able to read stories I get from the internet, but there are places where a paper book is more appropriate than a computer. Yes, yes, there’s kindles now, but I can’t pass the pages :p, I’m not allowed to have one switched on while the stewards go through their moving-mummy-routine, and I’m not too keen on the notion of reading from one while watching the kiddie pool out of the corner of my eye. Paperbacks can survive falling onto half an inch of superchlorinated water or into a bubble bath (which would not involve the kiddie pool, or any kiddies), I’m not so sure about kindles.