Ok, so I know that the alphabet of computers consists of only two symbols, or states: zero and one.
I also seem to understand how computers count beyond one even though they don’t have symbols for anything above one.
What I do NOT understand is how a computer knows* that a particular string of ones and zeros refers to a number, or a letter, or a pixel, or an RGB color, and all the other types of data that computers are able to render.
*EDIT: A lot of you guys hang up on the word “know”, emphasing that a computer does not know anything. Of course, I do not attribute any real awareness or understanding to a computer. I’m using the verb “know” only figuratively, folks ;).
I think that somewhere under the hood there must be a physical element–like a table, a maze, a system of levers, a punchcard, etc.–that breaks up the single, continuous stream of ones and zeros into rivulets and routes them into–for lack of a better word–different tunnels? One for letters, another for numbers, yet another for pixels, and so on?
I can’t make do with just the information that computers speak in ones and zeros because it’s like dumbing down the process human communication to the mere fact of relying on an alphabet.
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Imagine a treasure hunt in a city. You are the processor which needs to do something to obtain a result. Throughout the city there are seemingly random post-it notes with words written on them. Those are all the words in the dictionary, and may mean different things. For example, ‘left’ may mean move left, lift your left arm, or just the word ‘left’. You start at your home and see what’s written outside your door, and you just know that you have to keep going forward and execute everything you find on your path as a command. You read the first note. It says “LEFT”. What is it, a direction to remember, an instruction to turn left right now or just a word? Well you know that you don’t have any instructions up to now, so it must be the new instruction. You turn left. You keep going and find another note: “SHOUT”. It must be another command, but you don’t know what to shout, so you keep it in mind and keep on going. Next note: “LEFT” again. What do you do now? You may say you should turn left, but you still have to complete the previous command, so you cannot start another. You then shout “left!”. Both notes with the word left are indistinguishable, but the word means different things depending on your current state. That’s how computers know which meaning a datum has: data doesn’t mean anything by itself, for it to have a meaning you have to take into account the current state of the machine.
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