Digital objects have characteristics, or unique features, based on their creator and function. For example, the characteristics of a hard disk sector will be different when it is used to store the contents of an ASCII text document versus a JPEG image. We can use the characteristics to identify the data. The state of an object is the value of its characteristics. If a letter were changed in an ASCII text document, then the object corresponding to the file would have a new state. Similarly, the state of a running computer process changes every time data is written to its memory
