Radio/World/Discrete/Split by Alan Sondheim

Radio, the World, the Discrete


Not only is radio tremulous in its reception of the stars themselves; it 
is also analogic, requiring no decoding; what you hear, what you record, 
is what there is. The opposite holds for online radio, packet-protocol 
radio, no matter how shipped; like a jpg image, it requires specific 
constructs to make sense of it all. And such constructs tie into very 
notions of software coding, intellectual property, corporate and personal 
privacy. What the antenna registers, what the wires contact, may be 
contacted by all; they are primordial, inert. Give a wavelength or wave- 
length bundle, give a direction or directions or omni-directions, and what 
comes in, comes in to any living creature, ready for the interpretation or 
not, Rosset's idiocy, or the muteness of the world. Move to the Net, Net 
radio, already the raster is at work; there is a fineness, an absolute 
floor and absolute ceiling, of the recording/playback - of the apparatus 
itself - that cannot be bypassed; extrapolation is trusting at best - that 
nothing in-between, no out-of-packet information, exists to trouble the 
rest. This is the differend at work, surely, and it is the differend that 
characterizes the digital - what is not permitted to speak, what is 
literally circumlocuted.

Radio brings the unknown to bear; the Net brings the known to the 
bearable. Given a text/image/audio/whatever file - that is all there is, 
nothing more; it exhausts itself and is exhausted and the play of content, 
the semiosis, exists in the perceiver, not 'out there.' This is secondary 
narcissism, looping through the machine; primary narcissism is the realm 
of the analogic, our cosmological identification.

===

The history of radio is merged with the history of the electromagnetic, 
and given the movement towards packet and protocol, it is interesting to 
observe a movement from externality to internality, from brass spheres 
through the Wimhurst generator, from the crystal detector through the 
audion. Within the audion, and early triode, the filament glow was 
visible, an electronic hearth boiling off electrons. This was the analogic 
pulse of vacuum-tube radio, a pulse of light and heat and the quietest of 
sounds still sought by rock guitarists and audiophiles alike. Transistors 
internalized current into the literal black-box, and integrated circuits 
and circuit boards eliminated almost all of the hand-wiring. With the 
digital, the unit becomes tight, compact, although as always, still hack- 
able; repairs are another matter. The analog was a transitive filter, 
passing along the cosmos within rough bandwidth; the digital is active 
sampling. The transparency of the analog was reflected in the transparency 
of the radios themselves (capacitors and transformers etc. notwithstand- 
ing); the opaqueness of the digital, the complexity of the protocols and 
their arbitrariness, is reflected in the opaqueness of CPUs. It's both 
ironic and fascinating that mod cases now bring the hearth-glow back into 
the heart of the machine, with lights that do nothing but illuminate 
silent circuitry. We still believe we are among beings; we always will, 
and that is part and parcel of our cosmic reach, no matter how mediated it 
becomes. The mistake is to take the mediation and machinic for things 
themselves; certainly, on the level of _object,_ and certainly not on the 
level of _function._ We design within the imminence of potential wells, 
both analog and digital; otherwise we would never hear a thing.


_



Confusion of the Split


I keep searching for the _split_ everywhere, the appearance of the 
discrete which can, but must not, be rendered impotent / futile. There are 
dyadic theories - Laing, some communications theory, but these specify 
resonances among entities that need not be clearly defined. There is the 
ontological theory of quantum mechanics, in which electrons _are_ 
particles, in which the real is relatively grounded. There are theories 
beyond theories, theories I can't hope to understand, matrices of 
theories. There is everyday behavior among the signs and sign-systems of 
the world, and all of the sign-systems are far more culturally ideogram- 
matic, non-system / culturally founded, than first appearance indicates.

The digital lies _either_ in fabrication or one-on-one codes, or deeper, 
on the quantum level. 

Let us at least momentarily call it the discrete. Perhaps a distinction 
can be made - _digital_ technology, but _discrete_ as epistemological (and 
perhaps ontological) split.

The discrete is characterized by its lack of continuity with the analog.
A spike, fold catastrophe, wave function collapse, are, perhaps discrete.

A digital recording, for example, a CD, is discrete only in relation to 
the potential wells of conventionally-bound domains. A CD is analogic as 
an object; the 0s and 1s _resolve._ However, given a decoding/playback, 
the hills and valleys _register_ as 0s and 1s. The sound transforms back 
into the analogic through the playback system (speaker, earphone, etc.).

The registration of the 0s and 1s are dependent upon an conventionally- 
adopted _protocol._ We've been over this territory. The protocol appears 
_real_ although it functions only in relation to specific technology.

The coding is discrete on an ideal level; the signals themselves have 
onset and trailing. But within the given potential well of the technology, 
they _read_ as discrete.

Your money or your life: discrete, yes, or no; it veers. -money = +life, 
but (+money = -life) = -money. Life is an _entanglement._

All choices are braided, contingent, contiguous. The the discrete is 
always a barrier.

A vast distinction must be made between discrete _codes_ which are 
designed conventionally systemic, and what might be termed the _external 
discrete,_ i.e. stochastic, an appearance, unplanned-for. The difference 
between a digital CD and particle decay. This is the fundamental 
difference; one we construct with what is given to us, the other is given
to us.

I would think that the digital/constructed barrier can always be circum- 
vented; the discrete of the world, however, like the analogic, is _just 
that._

==

(In relation to _ideality,_ the discrete is simpler; any given integer, 
for example is E or -E, even or not-even. If the integer ends on {02468}, 
it's even. The sets E and -E are complementary, discrete; their inter- 
section is the null set, and their union constitutes the set of all 
integers. On the other hand, in non-ideal life, the life-forms of the 
every-day world, there may be for example a number of plums which are 
neither odd nor even - for example, pluots may or may not be included, 
hybrids may veer off, partially-eaten plums, seeds, etc., all form fuzzy 
cases.

(Now with the plums, let us open a distribution center: It is then 
economically necessary to count plums. The raster/protocol is created, the 
result is a digital screening.))

Discrete < on and off | 0 and 1 | other sign and other sign > Digital 
implementation.

In this scheme, the protocol is scheme / noise within the system:

[Referent | operative field] < Implementation > Digital mapping
....^..............^..................^.................^..........
0-resonance|boundary delineation|protocol-parasite|machinic-display
(idiotic)   (circumscription)   (cultural convention)  (economy)

(On and on and on... stumbling into science, realms of ignorance.)