Great Idea I:

Binary Representation

I. Boole's & Shannon's Idea.

• Strictly speaking, these can be used to represent discrete things; continuous things can be approximated to any desired degree, however.

• For a literary and philosophical view of this, see:
  • Quine, Willard van Orman (1987), Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), "Universal Library", pp. 223-225;
    • very short and definitely worth reading!
    • And for a modern take on the same idea:
      "How many unique English tweets are possible?"

• For more on Boole, with a local slant, see:
  Roberts, Siobhan (2004), "The Isaac Newton of Logic", Toronto Globe and Mail (27 March).

1. Morse Code

2. Binary Codes

3. Interpreting (Binary) Codes

4. Propositional and Boolean Logic

5. Digital Representation of the Senses

6. Is the entire physical universe made of binary bits?
   • Hayes, Brian (2004), "It or Bit?", Natural History 113(8) (October): 60-63, 66.
     • Abstract: Many of the sciences--genetics, for instance--seem preoccupied with information, not matter. That raises a basic question: Is information, not stuff, the essence of the universe?
     • A review of:
       Von Baeyer, Hans Christian (2004), Information: The New Language of Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

7. "Under the Hood of a New System"
   • On Internet addresses, binary representation, and hexadecimal representation

8. Markoff, John (2009), "After the Transistor, a Leap into the Microcosm", New York Times/Science Times (September 1): D1,D4.
   • "…leaking electrons make it more difficult to know when a transistor is in an on or off state, the information that makes electronic computing possible. … The transistor is not just another element of the electronic world. It is the invention that made the computer revolution possible. In essence it is an on-off switch controlled by the flow of electricity. For the purposes of computing, when the switch is on it represents a one. When it is off it represents a zero. These zeros and ones are the most basic language of computers."

9. "Revolt of the Lab Rats", CarTalk Puzzler.
   • Answer

10. Bollacker, Kurt D. (2010), "Avoiding a Digital Dark Age", American Scientist 98 (March-April): 106–110.
    • "Data longevity depends on both the storage medium and the ability to decipher the information."

11. Church, George M.; Gao, Yuan; & Kosuri, Sriram (2012), "Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA", Science 337(6102) (28~September): 1628.