Analog Is Digital (Discrete)?

Question

As I started reading a bit about analog vs digital signals, I keep returning to this thought. This could be something pretty obvious to the pros out there, but is it safe to assume that underneath it all, the dichotomy between analog and digital is a false one?

That analog is digital, with a high enough resolution. I am not talking about the technology involved, but the nature of the signal, itself.

To put it yet another way, every signal is digital, we just perceive the world as analog, which has got more to do with the bounds within which our perception/consciousness/senses (or extensions thereof) operate?! Perceptual latency. A hypothetical digital signal, with infinitesimal sampling-rate, and infinite bit-rate -- although, that would somewhat defeat some purpose behind digitization--would be it's analog counterpart.

Answer 1

The difference between analogue and digital devices is more around the way they are built than the precision of the output. A digital device will either only accept digital input or it will convert analogue input to a digital signal at a very early stage in its processing. An analogue device will process an analogue input as an analogue signal all the way through to its output.

For example, the sequence and timing of operations in a washing machine program used to be controlled by cams rotating slowly on a shaft. Although this produced a discrete signal, in the sense that it switched parts of the machine on and off, this was still an analogue device. In a modern washing machine the same job is done entirely digitally by a microprocessor.

Fifty years ago television, radio, listening to music, taking a photograph, watching a film, telling the time and making a phone call all involved analogue devices. Today they are all digital.

Whether reality itself, at its most detailed level, is continuous or discrete is still unknown.