The Meaning of "Digital"

The meaning of the word "digital" can be a tricky one to nail down. It is often thrown around rather haphazardly, to the point where it's almost been abused. Things get especially confusing when people start talking about "electronic", rather than "digital".

I recently had such an experience. While speaking with some archivists, both the terms "electronic" and "digital" came up in relation to records the archive had to deal with. Several faces became clouded in confusion before one brave soul came out and asked, "what do you mean by electronic?"

For one camp of archivists, digital records were records which had been digitized. That is, they had started their lives off in the physical realm. Photograph collections, in particular, are coming to occupy this in-between space more and more. For these archivists, the term "electronic" referred specifically to records which had been born digital. My camp did not make this distinction, and hence the confusion.

But wait! There's more!

If we are specifically talking about audio-visual content, things become even murkier. In this context, digital refers to sound or images that are represented as numbers. Unfortunately, some people assume that all digital content is in files, and some even assume that digital means 'on the web'. Indeed, I have heard the verb "digitize" used to mean "making content suitable for use on the web" - that is, making web-quality proxies.

Under this meaning, millions of hours of audio-visual material would not be considered "digital". This is because those millions of hours of material sit on shelves on digital carriers, such as Digibeta, DV, Audio CD, DAT, and more.

So to clarify, when speaking/writing about digital records or digital objects or electronic materials I am referring to content which - at its most basic level - is represented by 0s or 1s. I don't care if it was born that way or not. I don't care if it's on a computer or on a minidisc. I love it all equally and I refuse to play favourites.