...And All We Ever Were, Just Zeros and Ones

Also sprach Trent Reznor*, just one example of how the idea is perpetuated that the building blocks of binary which form our empires of information completely overlook the emotional reality of what it is to be human. How could a computer possibly conceive of love and hate, joy and despair, fear and boredom, when all it knows is on and off, definitely yes or definitely no?

Oh, these "arts types" enjoy their computer/science bashing. Take Chris Martin of Coldplay, for example. He says of the naming of Coldplay's album, "X&Y", that X and Y are the variables one wants to find in (the sloppily defined) "science". (Incidentally, that's not what you want to find. You want to find Ψ and θ. And γ, λ, α, β, ω, ρ, μ, ε. Practically anything that's not in the roman alphabet.) In the hopes of seeming sagely he expresses bewilderment at not knowing these answers, a sense that somehow, poetically, science doesn't provide the meaning of life, or indeed any degree of emotional or spiritual significance. Just 0's and 1's, X's and Y's to be found.**

But here's the thing. How did Trent tell us about the impersonality of electronics? He sang it, with searing compassion, into a microphone which broke every nuance of his voice into myriads of 0's and 1's. These were burned onto a CD which, when placed in a CD player, sent the 0's and 1's through metal tracks and junctions of silicone to produce minute fluctuations of a speaker cone. And when we heard it we were moved, because it was beautiful.

What of pictures? In a digital age pictures are stored and reproduced, just as with music, by lots and lots of switches, on or off. And for the image having been subjected to this process, the kittens are no less cute and fluffy, and it is no less horrifying to see victims of war.

Literature of any kind is even easier to explain. Instead of an approximation, the case here is simply one of translating the lettering system of a language into another. The ASCII code uses just seven bits and can with that represent not only the alphabet in upper and lower case, but also an extensive array of other goodies like punctuation, the copyright and trademark symbols and all those other weird marks you don't have a clue about. Seven switches on and off in different combinations - enough combinations reproduces anything you have ever read.

It follows that binary must have some power beyond the merely computational. What the mechanisms of this are, I have no idea. Somewhere between the source and the observer is an emotional vacuum, and yet, if the source is poignant enough, the observer will feel it. What the implications of this are I have no idea either.

Am I even making any sense? I'll shut up now.


xkcd


* - Yes, I know I've been mentioning Nine Inch Nails an awful lot in this blog. I am not an obsessive compulsive nut, this is mere coincidence.
** - In the course of trying to clarify my meaning I may have twisted Chris Martin's words a bit out of shape. Perhaps he means something else, but I think this is what he means. I have never payed attention to Coldplay for long enough to find out anything about them, except what I write here, and I'm pretty sure that was by accident.