Digital - Definition and Condition

Author: Prof. Giuseppe Torre (University of Limerick, Ireland)

2026

We live surrounded by digital things, yet we do not know what digital means. Binary, discrete, data, information—every definition we rely on is either misleading or imprecise. The result is a cognitive fog that haunts our discourse, from philosophy to daily life, with consequences we are only beginning to grasp. 

In Digital: Definition and Condition,  I strip away the confusion to isolate a single, rigorous definition. 

This is done in two decisive moves:

1) It demonstrates that the only technology that represents is digital technology. Analogue technology does not; it becomes!

2) It provides a precise description of how digital technology is able to represent at the physical root level. Essentially, it shows how logic is engineered to control the silent flow of reality.

From this foundation, I dismantle the myths we live by—the illusion of digital intelligence, the anonymity imposed by the count, the fragility of our digital ecosystem, the poverty of experience behind seamless interfaces. Across telephony, vinyl, maps, art, and online meetings, I reconstruct an onto-phenomenology of the digital that exposes both the power and the precarity of the world we have built. 
In doing so, the book uncovers the profound reality of what it is like to inhabit a world (our digital world) built entirely on its representation—a world as representation.

Analogue is; Digital wants to be.

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This work was completed during my academic sabbatical in 2025–2026.

Comments, editors queries, counterarguments etc.are welcome at:

giuseppe.torre@ul.ie