The Zombie Comeback of Analog Computing
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It's awesome to realize that stuff like cybernetics was ever conceived of before we ever went digital.
Maybe the best way to explain the difference is dedicated purpose-built analog circuits (like synths) vs analog computers that are more general and can be programmed.
'Beatles Moog Synthesizer' [1]
'"Heroes" (David Bowie)' [3]
Eno brought in his EMS Synthi AKS, a synthesiser built in a briefcase [4]
'Kraftwerk' [5]
- https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X42.79
Then over time digital synths became all dominating for a long time.
The main problem with a vast majority of digital synths was the lack of button and knobs to create new patches. Scrolling though a tiny 16x2 screen was a pain in the ass.
Then someone created UIs that ran on the computer and that was cool
Some digital synths got hardware extensions with knobs.
Then we started to get digital synths with lots of buttons.
The analog or hybrid analog synths started coming out again.
I personally would not wish to tour with some of those fun analog monsters. Well perhaps if I had one for each patch I needed and a tech who changed them out between songs.
Creating sound and sampling it is always an option with a steep price.
We can make things "better" in some specific tasks, but for something that do everything a natural design can do, we can't match evolution.
The brain is analog. And it is funny to me that just now we start to think maybe an analog computer is probably better than a digital one to emulate it.
That's a slight exaggeration, but I like the spirit. It shouldn't surprise, as nature has had many more optimization iterations, and doesn't worry about abstraction. The object code is being edited directly; any source code is long gone.
I was under the impression that there is in fact some abstraction in DNA and RNA. For instance genes, which can be thought of as code that generates proteins (thus, some form of abstraction).
DNA transcribes to RNA, except DNA is a molecule with molecular interactions and those interactions determine which DNA gets transcribed to RNA (plus there's the whole introns and extrons thing, which, good luck).
RNA transcribes to proteins, except that RNA is also a molecule, and has a tendency to fold into functional forms, including ribosomes which are involved in transcribing RNA.
The amino acid chains that become proteins are molecules - their interactions between each other and the surrounding environment are what cause them to fold into their effective forms (chemical function is determined by molecular form) - except they're not just produced all at once, they're chained one at a time, and it turns out that if you do just create that string of amino acids all in one go, it won't fold into the same shape as it does while being transcribed, so the informatics is interesting but the transcription process is also a factor, and transcription speed is affected by availability of both the amino acids and the TRNA, so even swapping one codon for another that represents the same amino acid can actually affect the protein structure and function.
So, Yes, there's some abstraction, but it'll lead you astray if you think you can ignore the actual physical reality, and it's definitely the case that nature is not ignoring the physical reality and is operating on molecules, not informatics.
Everyone always throws this out there, and I always think, "analogous to what?" But I think it must be in the meaning of continuous signal. But only at a macro or molecular scale could the brain be considered analog, because quantum mechanics is definitely not analog. "Quantum" implies "discrete" and is therefore digital. So the brain is digital at the quantum scale.
https://bellmar.medium.com/guess-what-analog-computing-may-b...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34585958 (99 points | 2 months ago | 84 comments)
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https://semiengineering.com/can-analog-make-a-comeback/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32106546 (130 points | 8 months ago | 125 comments)
Also noteworthy in this context: BEAM robots, which are mostly analog circuits that implement some behaviour like light-seeking with minimal components:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics
https://hackaday.com/tag/beam-robotics/
While BEAM has always been more of a soldering exercise and artform, many interesting principles applicable to general robotics are buried there.
The interesting part for analog is obviously going to be wear and repeatability, because the digital layer auto-corrects the errors until it becomes damaged and unusable clearly, while analog will slide off somewhat gracefully but you need a way to detect it happening multiple layers later.
AI is somewhat tolerant of errors since, the cumulative error across a lot of biases can approach zero if the errors are random.
Source: https://mythic.ai/whats-new/mythic-raises-13-million-to-brin...
EDIT: I see this was actually mentioned in the article. Well, the new CEO happens to be the former CTO and is quite talented.
- Limited state. That sundial has fixed storage requirements.
- Hard to hack. If it ain't got an IP address, the Elbonians can't tamper with it.
Analog Computer : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer
History of Computing Hardware § Analog Computers : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#...
Timeline of Computing Hardware before 1950 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_hardware...
(I was an Aegis guy back at the end of the Cold War)
I'm not a specialist but I once saw here an analog computer stimulating a black hole using sound waves. Making a digital simulation would probably be less precise or a lot more expensive.
The recent pass to the new generations, like gen-z, has cool things worth exploring or collecting. As an example I point to vinyl records. Vinyl records are being purchased more and more by the younger folk.
I further suspect, there could be a market for old tech that actually works and can be used, and not just collected. This is a bit hard for a rotary phone, since many houses no longer have land lines. I imagine there might be room for an RJ11 to USB adapter that you can hook up to your phone and connect a real genuine 40 year old rotary phone to it.