Analog vs Digital and semantic drift
I recently saw someone defending the erroneous use of the term "analog" to describe an iPod solely for the fact that it's not a smart device, in other words, old tech = analog. This isn't true, and I object to their defence of misappropriating the term. Another misconception I noticed is that some think physical media is synonymous with analog, which is also untrue. CDs and DVDs, while physical, are digital formats.
If you don't actually know already, the term "analog" refers to an electrical signal that is analagous (meaning similar, or more precisely, corresponding) to the physical quantity that it's representing. For example, an analog audio signal's voltage takes the shape of the pressure variations in the air captured by the microphone (major simplification of the actual process). Digital, in contrast, deals with encoded signals represented as discrete values. A common example being binary bits, as in 1 representing an ON state, and 0 being OFF, which I'm sure you're at least vaguely familiar with if you're interested in computers.
My main point, however, is not about the distinction between digital and analog, but about semantic drift and its consequences. The person I saw defending the aforementioned iPod example, that the use of "analog" in a non technical sense was fine, was doing so from the descriptivist position, saying that "words change meaning all the time, that's just how language works". And it's true, but we should be more careful with the words that we redefine. Semantic drift is often presented as an unstoppable force that we should just accept. This is largely true but not strictly true. Do I care about semantic drift in general? Not really, but when it emerges in a way that leads to scientific misinformation, I believe that it's much wiser to resist it than to just accept it, because scientific literacy is important. I also believe that people should make an effort to actually understand the technology that they use.
It's great to see consumer trends that push towards a less smartphone-oriented lifestyle, even if many are just doing it for the 'Y2K aesthetic' and don't have any deeper philosophical objections to smartphone technology, but that doesn't mean we should start blurring the meanings of technical terms. I don't know, am I making a big deal out of nothing or is my concern reasonable? If sunbathing became extremely trendy and people started calling it "photosynthesis", should a biologist just accept that as language evolving or should they point out how absurd it is? The consequences of a scientific term becoming diluted seem a lot more serious than a word like "literally" losing its meaning. We've already seen plenty of non-AI programs widely described as AI by people who don't know what theyre talking about, and this just further contributes to the uninformed consumers misunderstanding of what AI really is, but anyways idk, I'm not a linguistics expert so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about either
Go Back