Digitalisation

Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal (usually an analog signal) by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. Strictly speaking, digitizing means simply capturing an analog signal in digital form. For a document the term means to trace the document image or capture the “corners” where the lines end or change direction. McQuail identifies the process of digitization has immense significance to the computing ideals as it “allows information of all kinds in all formats to be carried with the same efficiency and also intermingled”. (2000:28)