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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You are making a mistake we all make as humans.
Humanizing.
You watch an octopus “grab” something, and you think he is grabbing it with his “tentacle HAND”.
Actually what the octopus is doing is leagues further from what we do when we grab something with our hands.
Same with the computer. You wonder how does it “know” what 1 and 0 means, when actually it’s just electricity impulses navigating circuits and unthinkable speeds.
It’s simply wired to process impulses and lack of impulses, it doesn’t KNOW shit.
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