Paper or Digital?

[loftar]

That is also digital.

My point precisely. "Paper" and "digital" are not mutually exclusive. Every digital signal needs an analog representation to exist in the real world. To treat them as a dichotomy confuses the discussion.

[trungdle]

That is also digital.

My point precisely. "Paper" and "digital" are not mutually exclusive. Every digital signal needs an analog representation to exist in the real world. To treat them as a dichotomy confuses the discussion.

But paper can't be the way you present digital data. It's pointless to do. You probably need too much paper for a small ammount of data and even so you still need a nerds or a machine to translate it.

[loftar]

You probably need too much paper for a small ammount of data

Untrue. One could certainly imagine a paper engineered to be smooth enough to be printed upon with super-fine toner, or even with fibers fine enough to be possible to use as a light-transmission medium, similar to a CD (except with transmission rather than reflection -- a high-density punchcard, if you will). They probably even exist.

and even so you still need a nerds or a machine to translate it.

Irrelevant. "Paper" doesn't have to mean "human readable". Neither does "digital" have to mean "non-human readable". The alphabet is a perfectly digital representation of data.

[MagicManICT]

Speaking of the merging of paper and digital.... we're forgetting that Thomas Edison invention of circa 1890s, the punch card! (no it wasn't digital then, but was adapted to digital by early computer systems.)

As far as music goes, we've had ways of expressing music on paper since the Ancient Greeks, and videos are nothing but a way of recording live action. We've also been recording that for millennia. You're arguments, sir, fail.

[trungdle]

Speaking of the merging of paper and digital.... we're forgetting that Thomas Edison invention of circa 1890s, the punch card! (no it wasn't digital then, but was adapted to digital by early computer systems.)

As far as music goes, we've had ways of expressing music on paper since the Ancient Greeks, and videos are nothing but a way of recording live action. We've also been recording that for millennia. You're arguments, sir, fail.

I beg to differ. First off, sound is not only music. Secondly, video is not a way of recording live action. I pretty much think it is the ONLY way... fundamentally, because that is how you define a video: a record of live actions.
So, to record a natural sound, an accent, a bird, etc. And to capture moving video we still need digital devices.
I do however agree that the data can be stored on pretty much all material, provided it is hard enough to keep the data.

[loftar]

(no it wasn't digital then, but was adapted to digital by early computer systems.)

Punch cards are intrinsically digital in all forms they have taken. "Digital" does not mean "electrical", if you were under that impression.

I also don't know of any significant involvement Edison has had with them. Punch cards have been around since at least the early 18th century, for that matter. If there was anything famous that happened with punch cards in 1890, I think that would have been the US census, but it was Hollerith, not Edison, who enabled that.

[HolyLight]

Speaking of the merging of paper and digital.... we're forgetting that Thomas Edison invention of circa 1890s, the punch card! (no it wasn't digital then, but was adapted to digital by early computer systems.)

As far as music goes, we've had ways of expressing music on paper since the Ancient Greeks, and videos are nothing but a way of recording live action. We've also been recording that for millennia. You're arguments, sir, fail.

I beg to differ. First off, sound is not only music. Secondly, video is not a way of recording live action. I pretty much think it is the ONLY way... fundamentally, because that is how you define a video: a record of live actions.
So, to record a natural sound, an accent, a bird, etc. And to capture moving video we still need digital devices.
I do however agree that the data can be stored on pretty much all material, provided it is hard enough to keep the data.

If you think you need digital devices to record sound, you really really should stop trying to argue a point.

Well unless the digital age started in the 1850's lol

[Mr_Bellflower]

We could call paper the world's biggest data-holder simply based off a single sheet.

...given that we could re-arrange the atomic structure into a binary code and could read it line by line within seconds. Trillions upon trillions of terabytes in one sheet!

Oh wait quantum **** is still complicated. Never-mind people; move along. No quantum data-storage here.

[loftar]

[trungdle]

If you think you need digital devices to record sound, you really really should stop trying to argue a point.
Well unless the digital age started in the 1850's lol

Wait... what? So how do you record a sound and store it?
I'm asking for real.