If you've read Harry Potter, you might find yourself asking, "What is dark about the dark arts? How are the other spells any better than the dark arts?". Similarly, the Warcraft novels raise the question, "What is wrong about sorcery? How is druidry any better?" Well, I've been long plagued by the same doubts too. But finally, age and maturity have taken their toll. Now, I understand.

Dark magic is not just about uttering some evil sounding word. The hatred, the cruelty and the malice must come from within the heart. So, by training in the dark arts, one immerses oneself more and more in the malevolence, ultimately becoming possessed by it. A similar explanation would suit Warcraft's druidry-sorcery problem.

It may sound rather strange but I do find a peculiar correlation between the fantasy concepts discussed above and my own field of electronics. I'm of course referring to the analog electronics-digital electronics problem. Once people study digital circuits and see how they appear to operate "more elegantly" and "more logically", they lose interest in analog circuits and even tend to show a measure of disrespect for the same. The underlying attitude is that analog electronics is primitive and digital electronics is more sophisticated and advanced. Plus, the standardized design methods and procedures in digital electronics add to its seductive lure. And consequently, there is this tendency to extend digital electronics to every application, even where an analog circuit would serve better. The result is that we have a whole host of digital electronics engineers working on huge, supposedly "sophisticated", consumer-friendly (in my opinion, idiot friendly) systems, motivated by the capitalistic drive for profit.

But where is all this taking us? The engineering world would laugh at me, but I shall dare to ask, "Are we better off as people with this explosion in digital electronics? Is it advancing us as humans? Is it advancing our self?" Digital electronics, just like the dark arts provide the all so enticing immediate results. But then again, just as the dark arts corrupt you with the evil that is their property, the drive for more and more digital circuits motivated by the aim to make quick and easy profits, curtails the development of the self making us the civilized savages that we are today.

This is not to say that digital electronics should be totally abolished. There are instances (such as in a calculator) where operating digitally is the elegant way of doing things. But to abuse the beautiful concept of boolean algebra and to contort and twist it to fit every application is injustice to the analog world that we live in.

The general feeling is that analog design is tedious and not worth the effort. But personally, I would say that analog circuits have an element of beauty, rather lacking in digital circuits. And as a human, I find it is a lot more emotionally satisfying to deal with continuously varying quantities rather than two discrete states. And that emotional fulfilment is indeed worth anything.