Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,612
edits
Zeroes and Ones: Difference between revisions
markup, edits
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (Copyedit (minor)) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (markup, edits) |
||
Line 12:
This can be meant to imply several things: a computer is not capable of abstract thought; a computer can deal only with certainties, not probabilities or shades of gray; a computer cannot lie; a computer must behave logically; a computer can be programmed by tapping in binary instructions morse-code-like by shorting across a circuit, among others. Most, if not all, of these things aren't actually true.
"A computer sees everything as a series of zeroes and ones." is true, but only in the same way as "a human sees everything as a matrix of hues and intensities" or "a dog is composed entirely of protons, neutrons, and electrons": it's [[Mathematician's Answer|technically correct, but not really meaningful]] in terms of interacting with the computer. The level at which a computer deals with "zeroes and ones" is the level of digital electronics, a level which is so far below the level at which you operate on the computer that it's actually comparatively ''difficult'' to deal with zeroes and ones directly . Even the most fundamental operations on a computer almost always deal with blocks of 8, 16, 32, or 64 of these zeroes and ones at a time. A simple computer circuit that adds two numbers and shows the result in two displays, will involve at least 7 basic integrated circuits and an insane amount of wiring. Modern circuitry is billions of times more complex, and the industry uses special hardware-description languages, such as VHDL, to automate the daunting task of designing such integrated circuits from scratch.
One common manifestation is that the writers treat binary as a ''language'', when it's actually just a number format (also called base-2). A series of binary numbers has no implicit meaning unless you know exactly how its been encoded: what binary format is being used (is it 8
A computer manipulates data according to a set of rules. The way that data is represented has no meaningful impact on the "philosophy" of a computer beyond the difference between digital and analog—which becomes [[wikipedia:Nyquist theorem|completely academic]] if you toss enough bits at a problem.
Line 21:
== Anime & Manga ==
* Seen at end of ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'': {{spoiler|After being [[Never Say "Die"|"deleted"]] by Apocalymon, the Digidestined are in a blank world (possibly the recycling bin of the Digital World) where the only data there are zeroes and ones}}.
** In ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'', a lot of computer code is shown in binary but this is fact a subversion; what is shown is either ASCII (which is so ancient even Yamaki finds it insulting it is being used as a direct means of communication), or it was actually directly written in machine language (from a programmer that started in the 80's).
== Films -- Animation ==
Line 34 ⟶ 35:
== Literature ==
* Neal Stephenson's ''[[Snow Crash]]'' has the similar mind-control system to "Whackets". A specifically crafted image can [[Brown Note|crash the brains]] of humans, but since the image is black and white and based on binary, it only works on computer programmers (as they have knowledge of binary ingrained into their brain).
* Likewise, the 1966 short story
Line 51 ⟶ 52:
* Referenced/spoofed in the [[Flight of the Conchords]] song "The Humans are Dead". It contains a "binary solo," which consists of Bret reciting sequences of ones and zeros out loud.
* [[Rush]]: "One zero zero, one zero zero, one, SOS. One zero zero, one zero zero, one, in distress!"
* In the song "Fibonacci Sequence" by the net-famous musician [[Dr. Steel]]. "All our gods and heroes / are only ones and zeroes."
* "And all we ever were, just zeroes and ones" from "Zero-Sum" by [[Nine Inch Nails]].
* The trope name itself is the very last line in [[Rilo Kiley]]'s "Science vs. Romance".
Line 61 ⟶ 62:
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' had Virtual Adepts' trinary decks. They were described as the next step in the technomagic, and able to say, here I quote "In a stiff computer world of "yes" or "no", trinary decks are able to say "Well... maybe".".
** This has a vague resemblance to the boolean logic concept called "null". True and false basically boil down to yes and no, while null pretty much means "not applicable" or "no value" or "unknown". This corresponds a bit to the Chinese zen concept of wú, a.k.a. mu.
** It also resembles fuzzy logic, which pretty much corresponds to shades of gray.
Line 88 ⟶ 89:
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[
* Similarly spoofed by Bender in ''[[Futurama]]''.
** "Hell Is Other Robots" has Bender giving a Robotology prayer in all zeroes and ones (though, oddly enough, it ends with "2").
| |||