The Analog to Digital Converter

When I left university back in the early 1980s, my first job was as Materials Manager in the Computer Department of Siemens London. I know! We Cupcakes are full of surprises.

Actually Siemens London was nowhere near London but in Sunbury in Middlesex. Also I had never been technical in my entire life and had studied mainly politics and history at university, but I had also studied German and apparently that qualified me for a job in this multinational German technology company.

One thing that I didn't mention at the interview but which probably really did qualify me for the job was that all through my childhood, I had spent most evenings sitting with my Dad in the workshop he had made in our garage. We didn't have a car, so my Dad, who was a hobby carpenter among other things, filled our garage with wood, formica (formica is the material of the future, my Dad said) and a workbench that he himself had constructed from pinewood with various interesting technical gadgets attached. He went to carpentry evening classes once a week and learned how to make all kinds of furniture, with which he proceeded to fill our house.

Now my Dad was a bit of a dreamer, not so much of an organizer or a manager type. So mostly he spent his spare time designing furniture with his propelling pencil (in the future there will only be propelling pencils, said my Dad) on pieces of spare paper and explaining to me precisely how he was going to implement the construction and make all the parts fit together. He was very heavy on the details and spent ages perfecting his dovetail joints, which merged together like those of a master craftsman. The only trouble was that a lot of his furniture remained unfinished - unpainted, uncovered, just the - often cheap - bare wood. It didn't bother my Dad. I think he looked at it and simply saw the perfect beauty of the design and the construction (especially the perfect dovetail joints), not how it looked to the consumer (me), who wanted it to look pretty as well. He was a real technician.

So when I started at Siemens Sunbury, I guess that was mainly why I just fitted in with all the technician guys I worked together with. I was way younger than most of them, but I suppose that made it seem more normal for me, like they were kind of Dad figures for me. The technicians' workshop was in the room right next to my office, and I had to go through it to visit the bathroom, as well as to get to the stores where all my technical parts were located, plus the big Siemens Sunbury stores, which was like walking through a portal into a huge new magical universe when you opened the door behind the bathroom. Opening the door into the Siemens Sunbury stores from our offices was a bit like walking into Narnia from the back of the magic wardrobe.

So anyway, I would often take the guys a cup of tea or coffee and sit with them for a few minutes while they repaired parts, just like I had sat with my Dad. And just like my Dad, they would explain to me what they were doing and what that particular part that they were working on did. And that helped me understand technical stuff that I would never have known about otherwise.

Another thing I was responsible for was making sure parts were sent for repair, as well as ordering new parts. So I would often come into work to find defective technical bits on my desk with a note from the technician. We had CPUs, PSUs, LEDs, PCBs, EPROMS, EEPROMS, D/As and A/Ds and fax bits. We had all kinds of cables and motherboards and timers and keyboards and monitors. We had cards and units and printers of all types. Point was, I needed to be able to recognize what all these bits were. And with time, I got really good at that.

The D/A and A/D were the digital to analog and analog to digital converter modules. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand back then what they did. But now I really do. And here's the thing, I've been thinking about these analog to digital and digital to analog converters a lot recently and wishing that we had kind of virtual parts like them in our lives today.

These days, you hear a lot about digital natives (basically young people) and people who are really analog (basically old people). Apparently, digital tools make more sense to young people than members of older generations. That's not true of course. We oldies can also understand digital stuff! I'm not that old but I guess I fall into the category of old because I was born in the last century. Oh who am I kidding! If I were a vase I would practically be called mid-century in antique dealer terms and as far as Coronavirus goes I'm in the endangered species group.

But enough of that. I had the Internet at home back in 1996 (for what it was worth) and I had an email address back then as well. So I guess it's just about the attitude - people, even oldies, had the chance to access the digital world at that time and it was their choice to accept it or not. Some of us did and some of us didn't.

I know many people of my age - even people I studied with - who struggle with the digital world. Their life is mostly analog and they have difficulties understanding why, in particular, they should change it. Then again, I know people twenty-five years older than me who have a computer, email and smartphone and with whom I communicate via WhatsApp, for example. Their life is pretty much digital and they embrace it without complaint or prejudice. Probably, most people over the age of around 50 have a mixture of the two worlds. There exist, of course, people in this older age group who are completely analog and who are simply not prepared to accept the "new world". And that sometimes leads to misunderstandings and complications.

Thinking back to our analog to digital converter module, I wonder whether two worlds would be allowed to exist simultaneously in the technical environment. I sometimes ask myself if the existence of both worlds is even really plausible in the actual environment. Knowing people who conduct their lives mostly in the analog world, I concluded that as long as your entire life is lived in the analog environment, you will have few problems. You will see no value in the Internet, in the smartphone world, in the world where instant response and information is crucial. You will simply not understand why it is necessary. You will write letters on paper (possibly by typewriter) and send them by post. You will use the landline to make phone calls and you will have your phone number published in the (online) phone book. As a result, you will not understand that your phone number is visible to the world. You will not grasp why anyone needs to check their phone every 20 minutes - are they expecting some terribly important information? As long as you have no interface - another technical word - with the digital world, you will not be faced with digital issues (another 21st century word).

The digital beings, on the other hand, will live entirely in the digital world although unlike the "analog natives", they will understand, to a certain extent, the counterpart, in this case the analog scenario. And they are also prepared to accept it. Their parents/grandparents are "not great with technology". They are sympathetic. They are used to having to "explain stuff". Seriously folks, their analog natives did have the opportunity to do so when it came out. They chose not to though. Not that I wish to judge, just point out a fact.

So how would the analog to digital converter module work if it were available in virtual form for people? Maybe it could be in the form of evening classes like my Dad's carpentry class, teaching analog natives how to convert their lives into digital formats. Maybe it could be in the form of individual training courses with a personal trainer. Probably the biggest challenge (21st century word) or hurdle (20th century word) is the actual attitude of the analog natives to be dragged into the 21st century, whether they want to be or not, and do they really need to be? For as long as many analog natives are around (and they are a heck of a robust bunch), it is still possible, in these times, for them to continue life quite happily and relatively easily without the digital world, provided that they live entirely in the analog world.

These two worlds thus seem to exist in parallel, and the analog natives do not seem to be negatively impacted by the lack of digital environment. And sometimes this makes you wonder, do we as digital inhabitants, really need it?