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.
In: 264
[nandgame.com](https://nandgame.com) guides you through building a computer from transistors and logic-gates all the way up to software-coding. Highly recommended, as reading the theory is one thing and doing it yourself just gives you a whole new level of understanding!
BUT, a quick and dirty explanation is that 1 & 0 is just how WE HUMANS visualise it for ourselves. The reality is that it is POWER & NO-POWER (similar to morse-code’s short-and-long notes), and that is basically all that a computer “knows”.
Latest Answers