Digitization: all the advantages and disadvantages of development

Digitization is a development that has many advantages and disadvantages. Digitization affects all of life and affects the economy, society, education and culture. We weigh some advantages and disadvantages of this change for you.

What is digitization?

Digital media represent the world with numbers, mostly binary. Analog media, on the other hand, try to recreate the properties, states and changes in the state of the world in a continuous way.

• Conditions in the world often change almost continuously.
• Analog media are also quasi-continuous, such as tapes, photographic films and the AC voltage in many electronic circuits. A sound signal, for example, is mapped as a continuous groove in a record, analogous to the sound pressure in the air.
• In fact, even analog data carriers are often discrete or fuzzy on a molecular basis, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
• Analog transmission is also quasi-continuous, like many AC voltages in power lines and amplitude or frequency-modulated radio waves.
• Digital media mostly sample continuous signals, i.e. convert a course into a series of states. Each state is a binary code consisting of ones and zeros.
• Digital media are discrete, so they are always a countable sequence of values ​​or expressions. Digital data carriers are, for example, HDD and SSD hard drives and Blu Ray discs.
• Digital transmission takes place in a similar way to analog transmission. But instead of continuous courses, only two states are transferred. This binary data encodes individual states.
• If these depict individual states of a quasi-continuous signal, an analog signal was digitized.

benefits

However, digitization is more than gray theory. Digital media have changed our lives forever.

• The digital generation of media is usually easier and cheaper than using analogue means: Music production and composition on the computer are often easier and cheaper than in an analogue recording studio, digital cameras no longer require film development, blogs, YouTube channels and websites can be operated much more easily than Print media and television channels.
• The distribution of digital media, such as e-books, MP3 files, online magazines and digital photos, is usually much easier and cheaper.
• This way, more content can be created, because everyone can create and distribute content with little effort.
• This enables underdogs to attract the interest of the whole world, and a hardworking artist and businessman can compose, produce, market and sell music on his own without subordinating himself to the political and economic interests of labels or advertising media.
• Internet content has spread to almost the entire planet, while paintings, books, newspapers and magazines are less likely to penetrate poor regions and households.
• This way information, education, art and culture can quickly reach the whole world.
• Information on the Internet is not only constantly available, but can be updated regularly without a new edition.
• Since today's digital data carriers are extremely compact and can be reproduced without loss, digitization ensures that more information is generated, stored and processed than ever before. This leads to faster development of research and technology and thus a better standard of living.
• By the way: Many analog data carriers have their own charm, while digital data carriers are considered sterile. However, this charm is often the result of inaccurate storage, as you can see in our comparison of vinyl and audio CD. Digital data carriers are often subject to less interference than analog data carriers.

disadvantage

Of course, digitization also has its downsides.

• In order to digitize an analog recording without loss, spatial and temporal signal resolution must be as good as the original. This sometimes leads to huge files.
• Lossy compression is therefore often accepted during digitization. Then spatial and temporal resolution are hardly noticeably worse, although there are strong physical differences from the analogue original, such as with JPEG images as well as AAC and MP3 files.
• With lossy compression, a large part of the signal information from the original is lost. Although this is hardly noticeable, it is a noticeable deficit, for example, with slower playback, with zooming with many analysis methods and signal processing steps.
• In addition to professionals, laypersons and beginners are increasingly creating and distributing content in the digital age. As a result, there is more choice, but also a significant increase in poor quality content. In short: mass instead of class.
• Due to the oversupply of content, consumers often take their chance to quickly skip to other offers.
• Established print media are also increasingly relying on their online readership. In addition to the "analog" CHIP magazine, there is also the CHIP website with many other practical tips. The articles on the web are often shorter.
• One reason for the less in-depth online articles is the more difficult financing of digital media: Few Internet users want to pay for a service and instead look for free alternatives, digital pirated copies are easier to generate, online advertising revenues are significantly lower than in print media, and media consumption is lower more short-lived and superficial.