Cameron McEwen's name for the discrete, gapped, on-off structure he takes to underlie human being as such — set against the analog, which works by closing the gap. It is the term he reaches for whenever Bob dates a media era, because on Cameron's account the digital is not an era: it is what language, perception and electricity have always run on, becoming conscious of itself only recently. The best entry point is dialogue 78, where the whole first hour is a sustained argument for it.
Across the dialogues
Promoted from one term among several into the frame the whole session is argued inside — Cameron makes it the standing counterweight to Bob's periodizing, so that every date Bob proposes has to answer to something that was never a period
The objection that reframes the session — raised within two minutes of Bob's periodization, it moves the question from when the digital arrived to what was underwriting the analog all along.
"But the enabling technology slash presupposition is digital, right?"Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 2:03
The physical warrant for refusing the dating — polarity, not circuitry, is what makes something digital, which puts the term in the world before any device implements it.
"electricity and magnetism are fundamentally digital. That is to say, they have north and south poles, and they only exist as resonance."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 12:06
The definition kept deliberately austere, so that it can be satisfied by a telegraph, a gene, or a syllable without stretching.
"The digital is the coding of information in terms of 01 and the use of 01 gates to reformulate all things."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 12:28
Cameron grounds his own usage in the Macy debates rather than in McLuhan, which is what lets him press a distinction McLuhan never phrased this way.
"they quite properly saw that analog is continuous and digital is discrete."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 22:48
The operative half of the distinction — the analog is characterized by what it tries to abolish, the digital by what it inhabits, which makes the gap and not the signal the real subject.
"So the analog attempts... to break down the gap, whereas the digital resides in the gap."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 22:56
The distinction turned on itself before Bob can use it as a periodizing tool — seeing two poles is already the digital operating, so the term cannot be held at arm's length as a neutral category.
"But notice the interesting thing about that for me is that analog-digital is itself a digital perception."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 22:14
The history Cameron substitutes for Bob's — not an arrival but a first noticing, which relocates the whole argument from media history into philosophy.
"I think the awareness of digitality emerges with Plato."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 39:52
Plato's child is read as the definition rather than the illustration — refusing to choose between the gods' invisible and the giants' tangible is the digital act.
"a true philosopher must be like a child begging for both, and that both is digitality."Plato, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 56:59
The term given an ethical charge it did not previously carry, which sets up the session's bleakest turn: the same structure, once machines learn it, is what war runs on.
"represents a tremendous opportunity for peace because peace is recognized as the fundamental reality of digitality and digitality is what is the ground of human being."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 54:01
The correction that keeps the pair from becoming a dualism — analog and digital are two treatments of one thing, so neither can be the other's era or its enemy.
"the analog is not the absence of the gap, it's a different modulation of the gap."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 57:42
Connections
The gap the digital resides in is the same gap tactility works; the analog is defined by the attempt to be rid of both.
Cameron reads Plato's child who begs for both — gods and giants together — as the first statement of digitality.
The analog/digital distinction Cameron uses is the one argued out at the Macy Conferences.