Differences and the Digital

The distinction between the analog and the digital has long served as a fundamental differentiation in understanding the evolution of technology and media. Initially, this binary distinction provided a clear framework: analog represented continuous signals, while digital referred to discrete, numerical information. In its technical sense, digitality involves encoding information into binary formats that can be processed, stored, and transmitted by computers. This process can be understood as producing differences through transcoding (Manovich 2001), as the analog can never be fully subsumed by the digital—there always remains a part that cannot be readily translated into code. The digital computer is regarded as the preeminent medium of digitality: Originating and proliferating during global conflicts such as the Second World War and the Cold War and within the paradigm of cybernetics as a form of control, it is frequently understood by media historians as a technology of wartime rationality (Galison 1994; Franklin 2015, p. 39–81). This narrative draws parallels between the duality of binary computing and global systemic conflicts. Consequently, friend/enemy distinctions were among the first differences enacted by digital computers. It is not uncommon to find interpretations of the more generalized concept of “digital transformation” that more or less align with this idea of control by proposing digitalization as a “becoming-digital” of culture and society, often referred to with a particular focus on economic benefits and institutional efficiency (Hinings, Gegenhuber & Greenwood 2018; Subramaniam 2021). In these almost teleological narratives, the digital becomes the goal of institutional transformations, as it is associated with progress, efficiency, and economic growth. The dichotomy between digital and analog is frequently interpreted as the difference between progress and stagnation. Consequently, the aim of digital transformation appears to be the elimination of the analog altogether. These projects often posit the digital as an equalizer that overcomes differences, following the media-historical logic of the computer as a universal machine capable of hypothetically simulating all other machines. However, the clear-cut distinction between the digital and the analog has increasingly been criticized and reconsidered. The boundaries between analog and digital, as well as offline and online or real and fictional, are commonly seen as intertwined in virtual media technologies rather than strictly separate (Esposito 1997; Kember & Zylinska 2012; Stalder 2018; Romele 2019). On this basis, digital technologies and their interactional affordances are “introducing a field of possibilities” (Esposito 1997, p. 13). This interconnection is evident in everyday use, where digital technologies frequently simulate analog experiences and vice versa. The notion that digital and analog realms are constitutively related reflects a more nuanced understanding of how they function in tandem rather than in isolation or opposition. Therefore, the often-cited binary difference fundamental to the digital computer is not at the core of this special issue.