ABSTRACT

The movement of digital technology into many realms of life, at least in the developed world and increasingly beyond, means that our experience is populated by ‘virtual’ objects of all sorts: virtual books, virtual organizations, virtual realities, virtual memory and more. This chapter examines a series of problems that occur in the production of an effective emulation. The notion of emulation runs right to the heart and the origins of computer science as a discipline. Emulation speaks to a broad cultural logic, the logic of the virtual. Invocation of the virtual is the central discursive move of digitality. The chapter discusses three considerations here: instructions, timing, and input/output. The essence of emulation is the creation of an environment that can run specific pieces of software. Perhaps one of the most complicated areas of challenge that emulation throws up is the problem of input and output – recreating and emulating aspects of how graphics and perhaps especially sound work.