Warning! The lightning bugs are going off in my head!
I have a very creative mind that is very limited technically. I can see something small in nature like a leaf or a bug on the ground and my brain synapses start sparking. A million different lightning bugs go off in my head. I can immediately think of a hundred different metaphor’s on how a tiny little bug applies to hundreds of different little applications. If I was a dynamic person, that wasn’t lazy or had a voice that didn’t put people to sleep, I could be a motivational speaker.
On the other hand, you can ask me to do my 4th grader’s math and explain to him how a stupid number works with another and my brain shuts down like a teenager being told they have to, like you know, do stuff. My brain turns into a vampire who has seen a little too much light. It goes and hides in it’s coffin.
The other day my mind was little Red Riding Hood. It was skipping along a little path to go to Grandmother’s house, you know, wandering, and it came upon a little question.
1 and 0’s…and maybe the other numbers too.
How did we as a society go from two numbers, 1 and 0 specifically, to where graphics and movies and all these amazing things computers do today? Like honestly, today we have video games and movies and graphics that boggle the mind. I don’t quite have a 4K TV yet (it’s coming though, I can feel it), but the amazing amount of graphical power that a TV, movie, or video game boggles the mind.
60 or 70 years ago, computers didn’t even exist. In the 60’s people were watching TV, but only in black and white. Along comes some lazy genius in that time period, who decided that he or she didn’t want to do things by hand anymore and wanted to make a machine do it. So he or she saw that two numbers in succession could do things for them. So he or she invented a machine with 1 or 0’s to do things for him or her.
All of a sudden, the lazy people of the world united. They also wanted things to be done for them, so they looked at the 1’s and 0’s and decided they wanted those numbers to do more things for them. I’m sure there are many steps that got us here, but essentially every word you type, every graphic you make, every movie you watch involves some sort of combination of 1’s and 0’s. It is a little mind blowing that that is the case.
It makes my brain explode to think of all the lazy geniuses it took to get us to a place where my kids can play games, watch movies, get make up tutorials from some little punk kid from a state 100’s of miles away, or two dinkazoids spazes named Logan and Jake Paul can make millions of dollars by yelling into a camera and doing made up World’s Records with more of their punk friends.
Uhhh….
My tiny little mostly unused brain just wants to know how these amazing inventions went from 1’s and 0’s to the mighty graphics that can revolutionize the world. I can’t even imagine how a stupid text message that I make can magically appears on my wife’s phone. I just can’t comprehend how 20 years ago I thought that it wasn’t even possible that I could type my idiotic thoughts and somehow someone from India could read about it.
Does anyone else ever think how 1’s and 0’s have taken us so far in this world? Or am I the only one that thinks that?
ARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH
Bitter 10010101011101 Ben
Ben's Bitter Blog 
There are 10 types of people. Those who get this and those who don’t.
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I am pretty much the one that never gets anything, so I’m in that group.
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I’ve thought about all of this, too!
But with the mind I have I’m not sure you should feel good about that. Ha! 😀
Anyways…I can’t figure any of this out…like how my smart-phone works (which I was surprised they gave to pea-brained ME! 😛 ), but I sure do enjoy all of it! 🙂
HUGS!!! 🙂
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I guess I should watch the emoji movie and see how those little emoji’s live in a town and only come out when our fingers press them. That seems like the only explanation for how things work. Little people and letters live inside computers.
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Yes. It is all very magical! 😉 😀
I have a friend and his mom (she’s in her 90’s) refers to the computer as “that magical machine”. 🙂
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I’m kind of a bridge between the divide. I didn’t grow up with computers, but was young enough when the internet was a thing that I could figure it out. On the other hand, my kids don’t think of it as magic, they just think of it as another way to play a game or watch a video.
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Yep, just a part of their life. 🙂
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They just assume they should always work and that no work should go into them expect pushing power and play.
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Ha! I was just thinking how the Emoji movie could help us understand. And how The Santa Cause movie and Toy Story movie explained a lot of things I wondered about. 😛
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Yeah, thank goodness for movies and their ingenious ways of explaining things. How about the Matrix. They explained a lot of things like how computers work too and how many and machine are connected.
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I gave up trying to figure out how telephones and records work. Now I just place a plate of 1s and 0s on my hearth each Christmas to thank the tech gods that made it possible. Oh, wait. Maybe that’s Santa Claus…
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Man do I want a TV that does 4000 of those little 1’s and 0’s to put in my TV room. But first I need to get a TV room. And a house to put them in. I guess I need to do things in order.
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This reminds me of a math joke that I pretended to understand for several years. I sort of get it now, which means I tell it to people in the hopes that it will make me look smart and catapult me to the top of the social ladder (hasn’t happened yet).
Anyway, here’s the “joke”: There are only 10 types of people in the world–those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
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Very nice. I though it was going to be “Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9! I think yours is much smarter and worthy of making me smarter. Which is why I will probably never use it, or remember it.
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Numbers… shiny things….
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You get distracted by shiny things huh? Well, do I have just the thing for you. BRIGHT LIGHTS! Right in your face!
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This blows my mind as well.
I find it sooo cool that music, or intricate photos, or well anything can be reduced into 1s and 0s. It might as well be magic for all that I understand of it.
If I went back in time, I wouldn’t be able to pretend to be a genius and invent the computer or microchips etc. I’d know they’d be possible, without knowing how to make them/become super rich. Doh.
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I know. That is the most bitter part. In fact, if I was like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, I would have got that sports book thing and probably not been able to figure out how the scores worked and screwed it all up.
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Or if you had to explain electricity further back in time. “It’s like magic power that come from plus in the walls.” Argh!!
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Yeah, that would confuse people sufficiently. I am so okay with that.
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I will text you with an answer when I find my phone…
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I will respond to that remark as soon as I get to a computer.
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Ben, I have spent too much time in my life trying to figure out how the hell tvs work and especially how radios and cellphones work. I just don’t understand how my sound wave can travel oceans and end up perfectly in someone else’s ear. That shit is scary and confusing. You are not alone.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one that is clueless how the things we use every day works. I guess you could say that I would be one of those people from the 60’s that was like “No one will ever have use for a device that helps you communicate across the ocean.”
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There’s always gotta be ‘that guy’ so you might as well be him. 😃
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Sometimes “that guy” is Bill Gates. He said something about how we would never need more that 256 K in a computer ever. Now we fill our phones with more Gigs than that.
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What’s also crazy is how those 1s and 0s are floating all around us in the air, traveling from one point to another. We are literally surrounded by 1s and 0s.
Also: “every word you type, every graphic you make, every movie you watch…” reminds me of Sting’s famous stalker song.
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That part was meant to remind you of Sting song. I almost mentioned it, but I figured most people would figure it out.
And you are right about all the 1’s and 0’s floating around, except it is called matter instead of the numbers.
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Huh. Ok, well, I was thinking radio waves, but I guess matter will do. 😉
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I’m not sure what exactly permeates all of existence, but I’m sure it is something really universal. Get it, universal?
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This is amazing. I think about this regularly. My husband is a tech enthusiast, and he wrote a dissertation for his Masters which detailed the history of technology from binary digits all the way to the complex graphics it is comprised of today – I mention this because I had to edit the document, him being dyslexic and me being an editor by profession – and while I barely remember any of the detailed technicalities (like you, I am more creative than mathematical – although I am sure those ‘lazy geniuses’ had to be both mathematical AND creative in order to connect those dots and make something tremendous out of 0s and 1s…), I do remember feeling flabbergasted and quite out of my depth thinking about how far the world has come. I know it was a collective of minds, but it is still flabbergasting, and shocking, and makes one feel confused and small in the grander scheme of things.
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Absolutely. I’m sure there are like 5 people out there that have the unique ability to be both creative and technical (and ambitious enough to make something world changing) that were able to make this happen. I just wish I were one of those people, so I could get accolades, money and no time to myself. Actually, just kidding. I prefer my laziness.
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Thanks for the chuckle. I have a background in science and my brain still aches.
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I feel for you, man. Actually, I don’t. You probably have what us creative types call a job, that produces what we lack, called money.
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Nope, worse. Retired.
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Retirement is my dream. All I need is a place to crash, a large tv and a comfortable couch. I will be laziest ever retired guy.
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Worse…retired.
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Oh no you aren’t alone. We had a long discussion about coding and 0’s and 1’s at my house yesterday.
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That sounds like a fascinating discussion. My brain just went into vampire mode.
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Okay it wasn’t a discussion. It was me telling the hubby all about it and him pretending to listen!
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Wow, he sounds strikingly familiar to me. I am always really good at pretending to listen.
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Nice y’all have a skill!
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Yeah. Now I just need to figure out how to use it to make some money.
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I can relate to the math situation…the new math was invented to embarrass parents! grrr, bitter!
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I know. The whole way they do it is so different than it used to be and that is just not right. It’s like we can’t help them, because they do it a whole other way.
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I know. It’s senseless.
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And math is totally useless too, right?
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Totally
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I’m glad you agree. Time to take it out of the high school curriculum. And also spelling. Because spell chekc.
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I love spell ck, it says just what I would have said if I were as smart as spell ck. bitter!
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I know right? Who needs to spell those ridiculous words in the spelling bee anyways. No one uses them and they thing that kids should get a scholarship for being able to spell things?
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It’s not like we can’t just use emo’s now.
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I mean my text messages autocorrect themselves for me. I can’t even write a word without it suggesting a new one for me.
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You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve said…I didn’t even believe it.
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I would probably believe it, cause I’m bitter.
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Helping my kids with math is like an exercise in not having a meltdown. I have no clue what, how, or why they’ve made so many damn changes to math the way we did it.
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Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. Right? 🙂
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Right. I have a hard enough time fixing what is already broke. Don’t make me fix what isn’t.
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I love this!! But now my brain hurts! Thanks. Ha!!!!
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Yeah, mine is pretty much done for the day. It doesn’t have much space left to think.
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