This study originally arose out of an e-mail exchange with Rafael Capurro at artefactphil in 1999. I am therefore indebted to him for important impulses. Cf. Rafael Capurro’s analogous study Beiträge zu einer digitalen Ontologie (Contribution to a Digital Ontology) at www.capurro.de, from which the present study deviates considerably in both content and scope of presentation. The English Versions 2.0 and 3.0 are thoroughly and multiply revised, reworked, extended, deepened and retitled compared to 2001. The old German version from January 2001 is thus superseded and has been withdrawn.
To take up again theses on a digital casting of the world from some years ago,1 the question concerning digital being is posed, for its origin, which lies ultimately in Western metaphysics, is by no means clarified in a philosophical sense. What is digital is usually counterposed to what is analogue. This amounts to a technical definition. Nowadays, this distinction relates primarily to the difference in electromagnetic signals of all kinds, whether it be in telecommunications, electronic music or in computer data processing. Digital beings are characterized by the fact that they are composed of binary digits or bits. Signals in telecommunications, for instance, are transmitted in a digital or binary form through a medium (cables of many different kinds, the air, space). Basically, an ordered sequence of zeroes and ones (nothing and something, pure difference) is transmitted which at the other, recipient’s end can be and must be recomposed in such a way that the appropriate result (a voice, a text, an image, a sound, a TV spot, a control command, etc.) is brought about. The difference between 0 and 1 may be any arbitrary difference in physical beings such as transmitting a signal with two different frequencies or two arbitrarily different energetic states of an electromagnetic system such as the orientation of iron molecules. The difference as a difference is something that we humans understand, i.e. we are able to understand (binary) difference as such and thus to bring forth digital effects. Already in Greek metaphysics, the category of τό έτερον (the other) vis-a-vis τό αυτό (the same, identical), the difference of the one from the other, plays an important role in the thinking of being and non-being, especially in Plato’s dialectic.
LEIA MAIS: SITE DO AUTOR
Cf. thoughts presented at a colloquium in Stuttgart in November 1996 (M. Eldred 11 Thesen zum heutigen digitalen Entwurf des Seins at www. artefact, org) convened by Rafael Capurro. Cf. R. Capurro Digitaler Weltentwurf at www.capurro.de. ↩