Digital systems (continued from front page)
The alphabet, the genetic code, and all of our human languages and computer systems have something in common: They all are examples of digital systems. Digital systems are everywhere, no matter where we look. Yet, let us go beyond enumerating examples. Can we explain in just a few words what digital systems really are? Their main property is that they use only a small number of symbols to create open-ended worlds of possibilities.
For example, only using the fingers on one hand, digital systems can encode for all of the natural numbers up to infinity. The name “digit” actually comes from the latin word for “finger,” and many human cultures have base-10 numerical systems because people used their 10 fingers to express a cornucopia of natural numbers. Digital systems use just a handful of symbols to do many more things. For example, they can encode for any genetic information, any computer data, or any other yet unknown digital information. Because of this property, digital systems everywhere teach us one and the same important lesson. They teach us something about exploring open-ended worlds of possibilities. In digital systems, exploration occurs through creativity and diversification. Only through creativity and diversification, it is possible to thoroughly explore something that opens up as many possibilities as a digital system. Through creativity and diversification, the open-ended possibilities opened up by digital systems can be explored broadly and efficiently—and the digital codes that are found during this broad and efficient exploration can then be employed to dramatically change the physical world. I believe that everyone can learn from this lesson. May they be humanists, geneticists, data scientists, or physicists, they likely admit that creativity and diversity are everywhere. Creativity and diversity fill literary works, show up under microscopes, hide in data-driven algorithms, and transpire from quantitative studies of transportation systems. This makes me think that, when learning our lessons from digital systems, we better actively look for creativity and diversification.
What digitization is: What digital systems teach? (3-page research article)