Everything you’re doing right now—reading this, the slight hum of your laptop, the way your phone’s screen dims when you look away—boils down to a single, repetitive choice. On or off. Yes or no. 0 and 1 in binary. It’s honestly kind of a miracle that we’ve built an entire civilization on top of two digits that don't actually exist in the physical world.
They aren't numbers. Not really.
When you strip away the sleek glass and the marketing jargon of Silicon Valley, a computer is just a massive collection of microscopic switches. These switches, called transistors, don't know what a "7" is. They don't know your name. They only understand the presence or absence of electrical charge. We call that presence a "1" and that absence a "0." It’s a shorthand we created to make sense of the chaos of electricity.
The weird truth about 0 and 1 in binary
Most people think binary is a math problem. It’s not. It’s an engineering solution. Back in the early days of computing, legends like Claude Shannon—the guy basically responsible for the Information Age—realized that if you want to send information reliably, you need to make it as simple as possible.
Imagine trying to send a message using ten different levels of voltage to represent the digits 0 through 9. If a tiny bit of static gets on the line, your "7" might look like a "6" or an "8." Everything breaks. But if you only have two states—either there's power or there isn't—the system becomes incredibly robust. A little noise doesn't matter. It’s either on, or it’s off. That’s why 0 and 1 in binary became the bedrock of everything.
Claude Shannon's 1937 master's thesis, A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, is arguably the most important thesis ever written. He proved that Boolean logic (the stuff of "And," "Or," and "Not") could be mapped directly onto electrical circuits. He bridged the gap between philosophy and hardware.
Why not three numbers? Or ten?
You might wonder why we don’t use "ternary" computers. People have tried! The Soviet Union actually built a ternary computer called the Setun in 1958. It used three states: -1, 0, and 1. On paper, it was actually more efficient than binary. It could process information faster with fewer components. But the world had already started leaning into binary mass production. Binary won because it was easier to manufacture, not necessarily because it was the only "right" way to do it.
How your photos are just a bunch of 1s
Let's look at a JPEG. When you take a photo of your lunch, your phone isn't storing "colors." It’s measuring light intensity through a grid of sensors and assigning a number to that intensity.
👉 See also: How to Copy and Paste on MacBook Like a Pro Even If You Are a Beginner
If a pixel is bright red, the phone might represent that red value as 255. In the world of 0 and 1 in binary, 255 looks like 11111111. That’s eight bits. We call that a byte. If you have a 12-megapixel photo, you’re looking at millions of these bytes, all lined up in a specific order that tells your screen exactly which microscopic LEDs to fire up.
It’s just math at a scale that human brains weren't designed to comprehend.
- Your phone sees light.
- It converts that light into a voltage.
- A converter turns that voltage into a binary string.
- That string is stored in a chip where billions of electrons are trapped in tiny "buckets."
If those electrons are there, it’s a 1. If they aren't, it’s a 0. That’s it. That’s your entire digital life.
The logic of the "Bit"
A "bit" is the smallest unit of information. It's a portmanteau of "binary digit." John Tukey, a statistician at Bell Labs, coined the term in 1947. He was a guy who liked to shorten things. He’s also the one who gave us the word "software."
Think about a bit like a coin flip. One flip gives you two possibilities (Heads or Tails). Two flips give you four ($HH, HT, TH, TT$). By the time you get to 8 bits (a byte), you have 256 different combinations. That’s enough to represent every letter in the English alphabet, plus numbers and some funky symbols.
Real-world hardware: Where the magic happens
Inside your CPU, there are billions of transistors. These are essentially gates. Some gates are "AND" gates. They only let a 1 through if both inputs are 1. Some are "OR" gates. They let a 1 through if either input is 1.
By layering these gates, we can do math. We can add, subtract, and eventually, we can run Minecraft.
It’s worth mentioning the Intel 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor from 1971. It had about 2,300 transistors. Your modern iPhone has somewhere around 15 to 20 billion. The fundamental logic—the 0 and 1 in binary—hasn't changed one bit (pun intended). We’ve just gotten incredibly good at making the switches smaller.
✨ Don't miss: How to Cut a Song Without Making It Sound Like a Total Mess
Is binary going away?
Kind of. But also no.
Quantum computing is the big "disruptor" here. Instead of bits, quantum computers use qubits. A qubit can be a 0, a 1, or both at the same time (superposition). This allows them to perform certain types of calculations—like breaking encryption or simulating new drugs—thousands of times faster than any binary computer.
But here’s the thing: you’re never going to have a quantum computer in your pocket. They have to be kept at temperatures colder than outer space to work. For checking your email or watching Netflix, the old-fashioned 0 and 1 in binary system is perfectly fine. It’s reliable. It’s cheap. It’s the language of the universe as far as our gadgets are concerned.
Surprising places you’ll find binary
You probably think binary is just for computers. But it’s everywhere.
- Barcodes: Those black and white stripes on your cereal box? Binary. The thick and thin lines represent 0s and 1s that a laser reads.
- CDs and DVDs: If you still have those, look at the bottom. The "pits" and "lands" (the flat parts) are physical 0s and 1s. A laser bounces off them and interprets the reflection.
- Braille: It’s essentially a 6-bit binary system. A dot is either raised or it isn't.
- The I Ching: This ancient Chinese text, thousands of years old, uses a system of solid and broken lines. Many mathematicians, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (the guy who "invented" modern binary), were obsessed with how it mirrored the binary system.
Leibniz actually thought binary was a proof of God. He believed 1 represented God and 0 represented the void, and that God created everything out of nothing. It sounds a bit "out there," but he was the first person to formally document the binary system in his paper Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire in 1703. He saw the beauty in its simplicity long before there was a computer to run it.
The misconception of "Digital"
We use the word "digital" to mean "high-tech," but the word actually comes from digitus, the Latin word for finger. Because we count on our fingers.
Most people think digital means "perfect." It doesn't. Digital means "discrete."
When you listen to a vinyl record, the sound is a continuous wave. It’s "analog." When you listen to Spotify, that wave has been chopped up into millions of tiny pieces. Each piece is assigned a value using 0 and 1 in binary. If the "sampling rate" is high enough, your ear can't tell the difference. But at its core, it’s just a staircase of numbers trying to look like a smooth curve.
Sometimes, things get lost. "Bit rot" is a real thing. Over time, the physical medium storing those 0s and 1s (like a hard drive or a flash drive) can degrade. A 1 might accidentally flip to a 0. Usually, we have error-correction code that fixes it, but occasionally, a file just dies. That's the vulnerability of a binary world.
Actionable Insights: Understanding the machine
Knowing about 0 and 1 in binary isn't just for trivia night. It changes how you interact with tech.
Watch your storage
Remember that everything you save—every blurry screenshot and every "just in case" video—is taking up physical space. Billions of tiny transistors are working to hold those 1s in place. If you want your devices to last longer and run faster, keep your "binary footprint" small. Delete the junk.
Respect the hardware
Understand that your computer isn't "thinking." It’s calculating. If a program freezes, it’s usually because a logic gate got stuck in an infinite loop of 0s and 1s. Force quitting isn't just a suggestion; it’s a physical reset of those gates.
Learn the basics of logic
If you ever want to learn to code, don't start with a language like Python or Java. Start by understanding Boolean logic. Understanding how an "IF" statement works at the binary level makes you a much better problem solver.
💡 You might also like: itunes customer support telephone number: Why You Can Never Find It (and How to Get a Human)
Check your cables
Since binary is just electricity, a bad cable can introduce "noise" that flips your 1s to 0s. If your external monitor is flickering or your data transfer is slow, it’s rarely a software "bug." It’s usually a physical interruption of the binary stream. Replace the cable before you buy a new computer.
Binary is the ultimate proof that complexity comes from simplicity. We’ve built the internet, artificial intelligence, and global financial systems on the back of a single switch. It’s just 0. It’s just 1. And somehow, it’s everything else, too.