“The forbidden zone”: A psychological reading of the analog-digital difference

The difference between analog and digital technology is often viewed as one between energy-based material content and information-based abstract patterns. This distinction has inherent psycho-physical implications, as our digital landscape appears to move away from embodied media towards code stored somewhere in a cloud, ultimately suggesting a notion of bodiless intelligence. This article seeks to reframe the transition from analog to digital, shifting the focus from the body-mind relationship to an exploration of internal psychological dynamics. Reading the foundational discussions from the seventh Macy Conference on Cybernetics reveals that recourse to a notion of psychical apparatus was essential to delineating this distinction. What will be presented is not only a description of our inner structure as both analog and digital but a reading of analogy and digitality as concepts dependent on the structure and dynamics of the human psyche as described by psychoanalysis. Those two concepts were articulated in a particular cybernetic historical moment that took psychanalysis as a model of their joint double-coded action. • This study offers a new reading of the 7th Macy Conference as a unified theory event. • It reveals the inner logic linking the analog-digital divide to psychical structure. • Connects Shannon's theory with Licklider's study of speech intelligibility. • Shows how psychoanalytic thought shaped and guided early cybernetic discourse.