jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>> There is no positive difference between "discrete values or objects"
>> and some subset (possibly the entire set) of any countable infinite
>> set, including the set of natural numbers.
>
> really? so there is no difference between an orange. and an orange
> section, each discrete and equal to one?
Oh, good god. There's no positive difference between "discrete values"
and numbers, and in the context of the actual discussion I was
responding to ("digital things are ... discrete values or objects"),
there's no positive difference between "discrete objects" and numbers.
Not, at any rate, if we understand "discrete objects" here as "digital
discrete objects" (as the context of the discussion and your own
sentence imply), specifically in the sense of digital media (which is
what we were discussing).
Of course there is still the question of semantics, as Evan pointed
out; or to put it another way, of the use-value of numbers under
various regimes of interpretation. Though this problem doesn't arise
with digital media; that the same integer may be a telephone number,
the combination to a safe, and a random value obviously does not mean
those three uses are identical.
But the specific point I was responding to - Flick's objection (as I
understood it) to the reduction of "digital" to "numbers" - lay
outside the domain of interpretation and use.
--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
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