(Descartes; 02-03; p.4)

Image-giving procedures

With the development of ever more powerful chips and ever more detailed steerable programmes, fields of applications had been opened up that before were thought not to be realisable.

Be it magnetically or electronically created images of processes in the brain, be it images of the atomic structure of materials' surfaces or be it satellite images of the earth of a preciseness never seen before.
- Digital cameras for consumers with levels of quality that are scarcely different from optical devices are perhaps the most obvious example of this enormous technical developments.

Alas, by such digitalisation once again manipulations become possible that were at least more difficult to realise in the age of celluloid.
While celluloid depicts exactly the differences of light that it has been exposed to, digital images consist of chains of symbols or (binary) numbers. With it comes that in the former case the pictured original itself has to be manipulated - think of the ever re-occurring photographs of UFOs.
With digital "pictures" however, it does not make any difference, if chains of numbers are filled in or removed afterwards. A Descartesian scepticism seems at least appropriate in any of such image ...

(end of article)