And digital computer models? In principle, said Lick, they combine the best of both worlds by being both static and dynamic—and more. Indeed, he argued, it is this characteristic that gives software its unique power as a modeling medium. A model sculpted from software is static when it exists as binary code on a disk or a tape. As such, it can be stored, transmitted, archived, and retrieved, just as ordinary text can be. It in fact is a kind of text. Like ordinary text, moreover—and unlike the balsa wood of a model airplane, or the electrical circuits of an analog computer, or any other
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