A group of researchers are claiming that analog computers are potentially more powerful than digital ones. For me this is obvious. Digital means dealing in zeros and ones. Analog means smooth variation from zero to one and all the values in between. In digital, things are true or false, in analog things are all shades of gray. An analog computer can be programmed to provide a solution, but can also provide a range or a class of solutions.

In audio, I prefer vacuum tubes to transistors. The tubes provide a natural low noise level and pleasing harmonics, adding to the richness of music. Music played on a vacuum tube amp sound smoother and more realistic. Music from a digital amplifier sounds sterile and cold. This is not just my opinion, but that of thousands of retro audiophiles who collect old equipment and design new applications using a new generation of tubes and transformers.

I prefer vinyl records to CDs for the same reason. In spite of the tendency for records to accumulate pops, hiss and dirt, they almost always sound better than a CD. The CD digital signal loses some of the subtlety of the original analog recordings and sounds flat and antiseptic compared to the organic feeling you get from vinyl.

Analog devices have played a part in some of my stories. I am currently about half way through a story called The End of the Digital Era. It is a little derivative of a story I once listened to called The Anarchist’s Convention, by John Sayles (Read by Jerry Stiller – great!). It was a very funny story about a gang of anarchists holding a convention. They are pushed around by the hotel management and so start a revolution. I thought that aging hackers would be an interesting topic and started writing a story about a Hacker convention in 2035. It features very old hackers who refuse to give up their digital tools in an age when analog devices are coming into their own. The advantage of digital is that building blocks can be created that will fit together easily to make things like CD players or telephones or computers. At some time in the future, MOD (manufacturing on demand) will replace mass production and it will be just as easy to make an analog device as a digital one.

The human brain is analog, not digital. Our senses are analog, not digital. Our world is analog, not digital. I think the digital era is just a phase that will soon fade away, only to remembered by a few die-hard hackers.

EETimes.com – Analog computer trumps Turing model: HAIFA, Israel — Recent developments in computing theory challenge longstanding assumption about digital and analog computing, and suggest that analog computations are more powerful than digital ones.