What you are reading is not words. It's a collection of one's and zero's that my computer sent to a server, which sent it to your computer, to put back together into a group of tiny dots of light that are meant to look like words to your brain.
The same is true of all digital media: print, music, film, art, whatever. It's all possible because of binary code, which at its most basic is millions and even billions of "yes" or "no" questions being asked and answered by computers. That's how digital photography works: the image the photographer's eye sees, gets recorded and taken apart into billions of little pieces, then put back together again on your computer. Same with CD's and MP3's: a singer sings into a microphone, and the actual voice of the singer gets taken apart into very tiny pieces. So tiny that you can't tell the difference and it sounds like one piece coming out of your computer speakers.
That's part of why I enjoy having inherited my parents' turntable. That is analog technology, which works differently. Instead of breaking up the sound wave, what happened was that back in the day, Dave Brubeck and his band made sound waves with their instruments, and the recording equipment did its best to actually capture their sound wave as a whole, then transfer it in one piece onto a physical object: a vinyl record. When the band played louder, the groove in the record is deeper, and when they quieted down, it gets shallow. an "A" note is a different physical shape in the groove than a "C" note. Quite literally, the aim was to create a one-to-one analogy (eh, see what I did there?) between actual event and physical object. Some people (including my dad) can hear the difference. They say even listening to the best digital recording is like watching the Mona Lisa on television rather than traveling to Paris to see it. I guess I didn't inherit the sound gene, but I do appreciate the difference on a philosophical level, and I love going down into my basement--a place set apart--to stop multitasking, and make time for music. (I am in fact going somewhere with this, so bear with me.)
It occurs to me that reality is not digital. It is analog. It is shapes and waves. It is light, at a particular frequency, with a particular wave length, hitting our rods and cones and being transferred by chemical reaction to our brain. It is sound waves of a particular frequency shaking the air and making our eardrums vibrate. It is not one or two, but millions of kinds of molecules, made from not one or two, but at least 92 naturally occurring elements. It is human beings: made of DNA, from not one or two but four base molecules, combined in not one or two but billions of possible combinations. Even at the subatomic level, there are more than 2 base particles. Even when we're asking about long stretches of space, and wondering if there's something there as opposed to nothing: Well, with the discovery of dark matter, we realize that even what we saw as "nothing" is yet another variety of "something." This can not be broken down into one's and zero's and remain intact. We can break it down into a million, a billion, a trillion yes or no questions, and the whole will still be more than the sum of its parts. Reality is analog, not digital. It's one piece, that can't be broken down. It's not black or white, but a whole spectrum of color. That's why they can build a computer that can beat the world's best chess player, but fifteen years later, they can not make Siri "get" you.
The reason this matters to me is that I believe God wants it this way. That's not to say I don't believe in computers. (I'm using one to type this, for goodness' sake!) It's to say that long before computers were around, we began a desperate effort to divide things up into a long series of yes or no questions--good or evil, black or white, saved or condemned--and by the nature of God's creation, it can't be done. What we'll come up with is a clumsy, pixelated version of reality. An Atari 2600 graphic rendering of Niagara Falls.
In the very beginning, there was only darkness and chaos, and nothing was any different from anything else, and the first thing God did was make something different: "let there be light." and on the second day there still wasn't enough difference, so the waters below and above the dome of sky got separated. Then land and sea, and plants, and sea and land creatures, etc., etc., etc., all the way to humankind, in not one but two genders at the same time, because diversity is how God works. God does not intend a creation, nor a humanity, that can be broken down into a series of "yes's" and "no's", and thus, I'd be very surprised indeed if God in Godself can be, either. Not in Megabytes, or Gigabytes or Terabytes. So I'd like to do a little theology in the weeks to come, based on the assumption that reality is analog, and so is God, and so our conversation has to get beyond one's and zero's, beyond "yes's" or "no's", into asking what shape our thoughts and words and actions might take, were they truly imprinted--albeit imperfectly--by the unified shape and image of the Lord of Hosts. I hope you'll join me.
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