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Going Digital
A by-product of the computer revolution is a. trend toward "going digital" whenever possible. For example, the movement in the recording industry has been away from analog recording on records and toward digital recording on CD. One reason for this move is that analog signals cannot be reproduced exactly. If you have ever duplicated an analog audiotape, you know that the copy is never as good as the source tape. In contrast, digital CDs can be copied onto other CDs over and over without deterioration. When CDs are duplicated, each is an exact copy of the original.
So how do you go digital? You simply need to digitize your material. To digitize means to convert data, analog signals, images, and so on into the discrete format (Is and Os) that can be interpreted by computers. For example, Figure 2-1 shows how music can be digitized. Once digitized, the music recording, data, image, shape, and so on can be manipulated by the computer. For example, old recordings of artists from Enrico Caruso to the Beatles have been digitized and then digitally reconstructed on computers to eliminate unwanted distortion and static. Some of these reconstructed CDs are actually better than the originals!
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