[TheForge] Re:analog vs digital

[Andy Vida]

Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> Since I currently gainfully employed designing analog chips, I'll have
> to stick my oar in here.
> 
> Some things are just easier and cheaper to do analog, such as the
> megahertz video filters I've been working on lately. Note, however, that
> the signal fed to these chips comes from a digital to analog converter...
> 
> Digital does not work directly with the real world. In most cases there
> needs to be some analog piece as the interface. The more digital there
> is, the more need for analog. Cell phones are largely digital, until you
> get to the two ends of the phone, antenna and speaker. Those bits are
> analog (and the antenna end is pretty non-trivial). There are many other
> examples.
> 
> Steve Smith

	Very true.  If one wishes to get down to real nitty gritty,
	there is no such thing as a purely digital anything.  It's
	all analog.  A CPU is actually an analog simulation of an 
	truely digital device, which is to say there is a homoporphic
	mapping between the theoretical device and the real one.

	I used to laugh when during the dot.com spoogefest the
	ignorant but very velvety-toungued CEOs and other such 
	dullards were proclaiming how the great digital revolution
	was going to make all analog devices disappear from our
	world.  I'm not joking, I used to hear this fairly often
	from people that, taking their titles at face value, should
	have known so much better.  Then again, these were the same
	fops that were busily convincing their investors that everyone
	was going to become trillionaires in under 27 minutes and
	that the "product" was going to miraculously pop into 
	existence and find its way onto retail shelves without anyone
	ever having to raise a finger.  What was so staggering about
	this lay in the sheer numbers of people who swallowed it,
	hook, line, and sinker.  I'm not sure even Voltaire would
	not have been moved had he borne witness to it, and he
	had pretty well written humanity off as hopelessly stupid.