On a dusty shelf in the library of mind
sits a book not very wide.
Its title is short fiction,
and every book's inside.
When you open up the pages
it presents a strange surprise:
every letter's different,
they're stories in disguise.
To the untrained eye
or those without time
it's a random stream of glyphs,
but if you learn (or make) a language,
you could map a story onto this.
If you shared this tongue with others,
they too could understand;
they could read your story
by proxy of your hand.
This impractical tome
allows a tale to be known
by those who share this code,
but they don't
and they won't
well
it's just a point to be told.
It's a statement by its maker:
words aren't ink or paper.
They're heard in your head,
as they're seen and they're read.
As to read, interact,
is a physical act.
It stirs us.
It moves us.
Binary's look is a lot like this book,
without a language map it's a long stream of crap
and it looks like random bits.
Its story's not for humans,
it's for computer chips.
A machine's codes
are the words that it knows,
and it's this tongue of circuit wires.
Where we see jumbled digits,
it feels `mov eax, 5`.
It reads and it makes sense of it
which shakes it deep inside.
It knows, interacts,
in a physical act.
This whirs it.
It MOVs it.
To you or I its outputs
these words or sights or sounds.
We feel and hear and see them,
but no matter how profound,
these concepts are *our* story,
one a chip knows nothing of.
It's one it has no language for
'cause logic is enough.
Our words could never move it,
it just doesn't have the kit.
As meaning to computers
is ons and offs of bits.
Screens can't feel the smiles they show,
we can't feel the light they throw,
speakers they push to and fro,
to music they could never know.
A mic beside the tree that fell,
it felt it hit the ground.
But felt electric signals,
and couldn't hear a sound.
When a program outputs tales of thoughts,
they exist in us not it.
Stories heard in human words
live in apes but not in chips.
Even programs - they're an us thing,
*our* ballad of the bits.
While clattering gates in silicon
just switch vibrate and hiss.
By the click of the clock
they are trapped to a track,
it's a physical act.
And that feeling's all there is.