The Problem

“Whereas analog data is a varying and continuous stream, digital data is only a sampling of the original data that is then encoded into the 1s and 0s that a computer understands” (Cohen).”

Above is in a nutshell what faces today’s digital historians. Since the data historians receive from analog has no breaks in it any document they use would be complete when they finished. However, since digital has breaks, it is quite easy to incompletely digitize a document. This could be a major problem for any archivist.

Possible Solution and Reason For Interest

The major problem with digitizing a document is that, depending on the time spent and the amount of storage, the document could lose a key element. This is thankfully becoming rectified with the introduction of more advanced digital technology. This section interested me because, since my goal is to become an archivist, I want to be able to properly store historical documents in their entirety. If even one element was lost, the context of the document would be lost to the ages.

My Alchemic Research Question

What was it that made the practitioners of Alchemy and Astrology different from their folk magic counterparts?

~ by graham19 on September 10, 2012 .