## 2 Information as a Variable in Media Ecology Analysis
### Analogical and Digital Codes  
From the perspective of [PERSON]'s information theory, the only variable that matters in regard to the code used to transmit information is quantitative, the number of units, possible messages, signals or symbols within the code [2]. This allows for the measurement of the information contained within a series of messages, based on the probability (the larger the number of units within a code, the less probable the message, the greater the amount of uncertainty reduced by the message, the more information that it carries). This in turn allows for a measurement of the degree of complexity within a given system, but provides no insight as to the meaning of whatever is being transmitted. Moreover, such measurement is only possible if the code is digital, that is, if it is made up of discrete units. It is difficult if not impossible, however, to apply any form of measurement to analogical communication, such as images. While it is possible to digitize images in order to store or disseminate them electronically, the digital file is not itself an image, and tells us nothing about the information associated with the image itself. The image, as a picture, cannot be broken down into discrete units, but must be understood as a continuous whole, based on its resemblance to what it represents. The fact that digital codes such as spoken language (for the most part), writing systems, and mathematical notation consist of discrete units whose meaning or value is more or less arbitrary, conventional, and clearly defined, while analogical codes such as images, most forms of nonverbal communication, and most forms of art and direct perception are relatively continuous and cannot be broken down into discrete units (in a picture, what line or bit of color constitutes one unit clearlyseparate from the next? ), is itself a significant different between different types of media. As [PERSON] notes, digital or as she terms it, _discursive_ forms, while being propositional in character (able to form statements that can evaluated as true or false, or at least open to falsification), make up a small portion of the symbolic forms used by human beings ([PERSON] does not use the term code herself, but the concept of code and symbol systems are essentially the same). Most of our codes, or more accurately, most of our art forms, are analogical in nature, or in [PERSON]'s terms _presentational_, and are associated with the inner world of feelings and emotion, rather than factual descriptions about the outer world [5]. Thus, as noted above, [PERSON] argues that when information is encoded in different symbolic forms, it will have different intellectual and emotional biases [6]. Although it is not possible to measure analogical form, [PERSON] intuits that much more information can be communicated by pictures than by words, and in a manner much less under the control of the information source (in this sense, control is related to measurement), and this has much to do with the disruptive impact of television [25]. The distinction between analogical representation and digital coding of information can be seen as rooted in the difference between nonverbal and verbal modes of communication, and between direct perception of reality and the use of symbols to mediate between thought and perception (this is, admittedly, an oversimplification of a complex process). Human communication is distinguished from that of all other species, more or less, by the use of symbols, as exemplified by language, and scholars such as [PERSON] consider symbolic communication to be the basis for all other digital coding that humans beings employ:  
Verbal language is almost (but not quite) purely digital. The word \"big\" is not bigger than the word \"little\"; and in general there is nothing in the pattern (_i.e._, the system of interrelated magnitudes) in the world \"table\" which would correspond to the system of interrelated magnitudes in the object denoted.