CTO Articles
Published in IT World
February 28, 2006
From analog to digital and back to analog
When the phrase 'analog to digital conversion' is used, we tend to assume that the conversion is taking something continuous like sound or video and making it discrete so that digital computers can cope with it. How many shades of gray are there between white and black? Infinitely many. How many distinct notes are there in a pentatonic scale? Infinitely many. Computers don't do infinity. Hence, analog to digital conversion.
We tend to think of the real world as an analog environment that computers need to emulate through inferior, pragmatic digital simulations. If the digital simulation is good enough, we benefit from the incredible horsepower of the machine to cut through mountains of calculations. Digital technologies are fundamentally 'good enough' technologies. Digital photographs, MP3 audio and computer generated animation are all examples of 'good enough' emulations of an underlying analog perfection.
Maybe. Maybe not. This is the launching pad for a very intriguing debate but we are not going there today. If it piques your interest, I highly recommend "Information: The New Language of Science" by Hans Christian von Baeyer, ISBN 0-75381-782-9.
Today let's stick with the management accounts and the sales forecasts. Are these analog or digital phenomena? At first blush, these appear to be digital phenomena because they are nothing more than a fixed number of discrete values taken at discrete intervals such as daily, weekly, monthly and so on.
However, at second blush, things look a little bit more analog. Think of sales forecasting. Once a month or once a quarter you stick a probe into the business cycle and take a measurement. The sales forecast at that point in time. Perhaps you do it once a month because that is your business practice. You could just do it once a quarter or even once a year. Now let us move in the opposite direction. Could you update the sales forecast every week? How about every day? Every hour? Every second?
The answer to this question cuts to the heart of the analog/digital distinction. It seems to me that there are phenomena in business systems that are measured at discrete time intervals not because they are discrete phenomena but because there are practical/pragmatic limitations to how often you measure them.
This is where things get a little ironic. Ever since the start of the information age, computers have been put to use taking apparently discrete, digital business concepts such as annual, quarterly, monthly reporting and speeding them up. Things which used to be reported once a quarter can now - thanks to computerization - be reported once a week. Things which used to be reported once a day can now be reported every hour...and so on.
Digital technology is being brought to bear to turn these apparently digital phenomena into analog phenomena. In business terms, the whole concept of a 'reporting interval' is becoming somewhat dated. Why not have continuous reporting, of all interesting business-related phenomena, all the time?
I have used the term 'apparently digital' for these business phenomena because they are actually analog in nature. We humans have super-imposed a layer of discrete time intervals on top of them because of the time costs associated with performing the measurements. Shrink the time costs of performing the measurements closer and closer to zero and the analog truth underlying the digital facade manifests itself.
Maybe. Maybe not. There comes a point, down in the bowels of modern physics, were this argument begins to look very shaky but today, we are not going there...