analog or analogue

   Something that bears an analogy to something else. A photograph records the image of something, while an analog computer (also analogue computer) represents numerical data with measurable physical variables, such as electrical signals. Standard audiotape and videotape recordings are produced by an analog process, as a continuous wave, rather than digitally in a binary form. Digital recording is now crowding out analog recording technology, just as digital computing has triumphed over analog computing. To those immersed in the virtual worlds of computer activities (to "geeks" including you dear reader?!), analog may broadly refer to things in the "real world" — to that which cannot be accessed via a keyboard, indeed to anything messy! (Geek-speak is variously scary and amusing. Its terms for humans, for instance, include wetware and meatbots.) Analog is a variant of analogue. (pr. AN-?-LAWG) Also see analog-to-digital conversion, chaos, order, and sequence.