The Third Revolution of the Digital Age

by Dr Elwyn Jenkins, 1999.

Perhaps more impressive than the Internet Revolution, the Digital Revolution has changed the way we live and what it is we expect from life. We cannot disregard the Internet Revolution because it has been the Internet Revolution that has made it possible for the Digital Revolution to expand at such a pace. However, it is the Digital Revolution that has changed the value systems we have had in place when appraising, handling, using and collecting a wide range of "things" we have in our lives. This may include the film we watch on Saturday afternoon, the photographs of the grandchildren displayed on the Internet, the way we design a home, to just about every facet of our lives. The Digital Revolution has brought about the Third Revolution -- the revolution of Random Access.

The key principle of the Digital Revolution is that something in our lives can be created and recorded through the use of millions of numeric representations. By using an interpretation system, those digits can be brought back to life to display that which was created and recorded. This is a remarkable of achievement of mankind, but it is not the principle of digitization that has altered our lives so dramatically. It is what digitization has now enabled us to do now do. Digits when stored on a device form patterns and it is those patterns that make it possible for our lives to be transformed. Digital patterns are relatively easy to identify using computing devices, so much so that searching for a pattern and retrieving everything of that pattern and thereafter is a matter of just a minute amount of time to accomplish. Thus has been borne the possibility of random access to a created or recorded work. This revolution of random access that the Digital Revolution has allowed us need further examination and understanding to show how this has transformed our lives so completely.

On a Saturday afternoon in the darkened theatres across the country films flicker messages, like lights in the darkness of the night sending more code signals. The film rolling across the warm drum of the projector is sequential, displaying one frame at a time 20 or more times a second to provide for us the illusion of moving pictures. The bathroom calls in the middle of the passing scenes causing the fifty year-old some embarrassment while exiting the theatre. The scenery continues on the screen simultaneously to the bathroom visit. And five minutes later upon entering the theatre again our lady of the theatre re-seats having missed the most critical part of that sequential display of more code in the darkness. Digitization has changed that scene. Alex has bought a new TiVo and should a bathroom call be necessary, the film is put on hold as it is broadcast across the cable, and upon his return Alex can take up where he left off. But there is more. Alex can search for the scene where James Bond is in bed with the pretty lady. In fact, Alex can send a message to the cable company that he wants to locate every scene in every James Bond movies where James is participating in the mandatory caressing of the beautiful lady of the day. There is more. Alex can have this show of caressing from film to film in a matter of seconds thus creating his own film, a sequence of caressings that are exciting, titillating taking James Bond from being a serial thriller to a serial lover. Alex can take his film making a step further. He can compose the James Bond caressings into a sequence adding text before and after and he has now become from his own home a movie maker.

If this were the extent of random access, creation and re-creation, there would be no revolution. The fact that makes this revolution so utterly expansive is the fact that digitization has now touched nearly every aspect of our breathing lives. Our telephone conversations are digitized, voice response mechanisms have digitized human voice creators and responders. Photographs are digitized and placed on the Internet for digital viewing across the street or across the world. Data is gleaned from the operating motor of your automobile and is calculated, stored and further re-calibration of your auto is made possible while it is screaming down the freeway. Washing machine control mechanisms are digitized so that a pattern of washing can be recalled at a moment's notice - and through sampling performance of the washing tub the machine can alter it washing cycle to reflect the sensor's indication that the clothes do not need the amount of agitation being delivered. News papers are delivered to printing factories in a street near you so that the newspaper does not need to take a plane ride at 3:00am to arrive at your doorstep by 6:00am. It can be printed by the printing press in your town, or printed from your very own digital printer in your own home. Hearts are controlled by way of a digitized pacemaker, and elderly are monitored so that they can live in their own home longer by way of a digitized monitoring system. The list is indeed so long that this paragraph could be the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica and still not capture the transforming power that digitization has brought us.

Francis Bacon once suggested that "Knowledge is power". If Mr Bacon had lived in this age, there would be some certainty that he may have re-quoted himself to now say, "Random access is power". With the capability of random access of a digitized work, and the right computer tool, it is possible to edit any knowledge or artistic work there has ever been created. Blueprints for the construction of the largest buildings in the world can be altered in a matter of minutes, a music composition can be created on the fly as it is needed using music generation tools. The power that a single person can now hold through being able to control creation or recording of an activity is enormous. A single person can control an entire steel making factory through digitized controls, sensors and robotic arms controlled by digital signals.

Even money is digitized so that its value can be spend or accumulated using digital control mechanisms. Gold itself is now more commonly traded digitally than it is traded as solid bars. I can pay you clear across the world through digital money for a purchase of digital goods, such as a digitized photograph or a digitized book and receive that book from you some 12,000 miles away but be reading it and using it in seconds. What used to take months now takes seconds to accomplish, and what used to take seconds to accomplish does not even exist any more.

We must be in awe of the Digital Revolution because of its transforming power, and because of the power it gives us to created, record and replay. But it is the Digital Revolution that has brought with it potential to destroy our lives. Privacy is at stake as every digit that is transferred from our computers to the world and from the world to our computers can be captured and stored leaving traces of everything we are on the great blotting paper of the Internet. Digital money can be lost so easily, digital identities faked, digital images re-created so that it is hardly possible to distinguish the real photograph from the fake. The Government can know more about me as an individual in this age that in any other age ever simply by searching the net and compiling a record of what is found.

The Digital Revolution has happened and we cannot retrace out steps to backwardness of the totally analogue world. So, as with all of life, it is what we make of it that counts. Emphasize the good and manage the evils and the transformation of digitization will be good for society. Allow individuals to obtain the power digitization has created but at the same time we must all actively take part in the power of controlling digitization for the good of humanity. Celebrate digitization, use digitized money, watch digitized films, but at the same time never erase the memory of the bad digitization can wreak in our lives so that we guard against digitization controlling us.