{"id":18666,"date":"2022-10-17T15:02:35","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T13:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.teamnext.de\/blog\/what-are-digital-media-4-categories-to-know\/"},"modified":"2023-09-14T12:40:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T10:40:17","slug":"what-are-digital-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teamnext.de\/en\/blog\/what-are-digital-media\/","title":{"rendered":"What are digital media? 4 categories to know"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What are digital media? 4 categories to know<\/h1>\n

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Reading time:<\/span> 8<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n<\/div><\/section>
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Table of contents<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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What are digital media? This question sounds like it would be easy to answer. On closer look, however, the answer is anything but trivial. It is true that digital media includes those media that have been digitally encoded. However, if one wants to escape a circular definition, this finding needs further explanation. So before we get to the different categories and list the most important examples, let’s briefly clarify what a medium is and what digital encoding means. Ready? Here we go.<\/p>\n

The conceptual history of “medium” is so complex that we will limit ourselves here to the fact that the word originally comes from Latin and meant something like “middle”. “Mediate” is not far away and so the function of a medium can also be remembered well:<\/p>\n

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A medium stores and conveys<\/strong> information.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This can be done analog or digital. If you want to know exactly what the fundamental difference is, then read on here<\/a>, for example. We content ourselves with the statement that with digital information we are dealing with discrete values that can be represented (coded) with zeros and ones, while analog information is always continuous and cannot be coded in this form.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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The material of the carrier media<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/section>
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Before the invention of the computer, of course, there were only analog media. Remember back. Was it not the case that almost every medium consisted of its own characteristic material? Books were made of paper, records of shellac or vinyl, photo negatives of celluloid, cassettes of magnetic tape, etc.
\nWith digital media, on the other hand, the material of the storage medium is irrelevant. If you digitize books, pieces of music or photos, they can all be on the same data carrier, e.g. all on one hard disk or all on one DVD or all on one USB stick. So there are digital carrier media of different material, but each carrier medium is universal<\/strong>. With analog storage media, on the other hand, this universality does not exist. For example, a sound recording cannot be stored on paper, a video cannot be stored on a record, etc.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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From byte to zettabyte
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The first digital computer existed with the Zuse Z3 since 1941. The computer weighed about a ton and had a memory capacity of 176 bytes. But the road to the digital age<\/a> was arduous. Although the first digital photo was taken in 1957 (see figure), even in 1986 it is estimated that less than 1% of global storage capacity was digital.<\/p>\n

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First digital photo. Scan of an analog photo by Russel Kirsch<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now, of course, the ratio has reversed and more than 99% of the world’s storage capacity is digital, with data volumes growing rapidly at a doubling rate of about two years. In 2025, according to current projections, the total amount of digital data will be around 175 zettabytes (one zettabyte corresponds to one trillion bytes). Incidentally, the phase since the zettabyte mark was exceeded (around 2012) is called the zettabyte era<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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What digital media are available? 4 categories and 16 examples<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/section>
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1. Media content<\/h3>\n<\/div><\/section>
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We have already named a few media contents<\/strong>, and we will also expand the list, but of course we can only list the most important ones, because in principle any content that has been digitally encoded falls under this, including multimedia files of course.<\/p>\n

We have thus:<\/p>\n