Digital/Analog Technology
- A form of representation in which discrete (separate) objects (digits) are used to stand for something so that counting and other operations can be performed precisely. Information represented digitally can be manipulated to produce a calculation, a sort, or some other computation. In an abacus,for example, quantities are represented by positioning beads on a wire. A trained abacus operator can perform calculations at high rates of speed by following an algorithm, a recipe for solving the problem. In digital electronic computers, two electrical states correspond to the 1s and 0s of binary numbers, and the algorithm is embodied in a computer program. (QCUS+Pf-90)