A crumpled fender left at the side of the road indexes an accident, a piece of sample merchandise in a store window indexes the stock inside, a working weathervane, a footprint. Analog, digital Signs may be analog or digital, a term we most often use to contrast two kinds of clocks. Digital divides reality into discrete units. Letters and numerals. The stripe down the center of the road.
Some signs are both.
A road map, for example, divides terrain into digital signs-a square represents a school, a red line represents an interstate, land is divided by property lines or by zip code lines or by jurisdiction. Fiske observes that one might define culture as the process of dividing up our analog existence life into digital forms so that we can better control and understand our lives. These will shift over time, and from subculture to subculture. However, connotative meanings may elude outsiders for a long time because they are embedded in experiences, and cannot easily be looked up in a dictionary. If they are below the waterline, local people may not be able to explain them to you.