A “digital revolution” in the twentieth century is said to have ushered in an era of new media and rapid globalization, with changes in manufacture, communication, and subjectivity. How are changes at the level of signals related to changes in politics and culture? This course surveys characterizations of “the analog” and “the digital” in the literatures of engineering, history of technology, and media studies. We will examine archival and published sources, as well as artifacts, to compare the analog and digital forms of several technologies, including film, the telephone, sound recording and computing.