Analog universe
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...description leaves some details out. When you’re sitting at your breakfast table reading the morning paper, remember that the black and white of the page is just a little off. When you’re sitting in church, keep in mind that the building around you is more a work of faith than masonry.

You can admire computers because they don’t have the fuzz behind their descriptions, but the fact is that their data sets are only simulations of what the programmer feels. Even if they have their own sensory systems, how computers process input is, at best, a mock up of man’s own mind. The world isn’t written in computer code, the fundamental particles of physics aren’t ones and zeros. We can only describe the universe with slurred speech. We can only hear it in analog. r

illustration by joshua love