Alexander Galloway: What is the Digital?

What is the digital? As our notions of what reality is undergo fundamental transformation due to advances in technology, how might concepts of the digital and the analog be applied philosophically to descriptions of reality? Introduced by the Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures Director Debjani Ganguly at a talk held at IHGC in UVA’s Wilson Hall, NYU Steinhardt Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication Alexander Galloway tackled these questions and other topics at the intersection of technology and mediation in an IHGC-sponsored talk on Monday, March 18, 2019. Galloway foregrounded his discussion with a sweeping history of theorists who have previously grappled with technology and mediation.

Situating current discourse about networks in a poststructuralist context, Galloway pondered the question of where the analog fits in a theoretical space that over time has come to be dominated by the digital. To address this issue, Galloway drew upon mathematical concepts, philology and etymology, and intellectual history. Meditating on the meanings of the terms logos and analogos and mapping them on to the digital-analog dichotomy, Galloway claimed that the digital is a close cousin to quantification. Galloway’s most recent books include “Laruelle: Against the Digital” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) and “The Interface Effect” (Wiley, 2012).