đ Pulse Fiction
On a dusty shelf in the library of mind sits a book not very wide. Its title is short fiction, and every bookâs inside. When you open up the pages it presents a strange surprise: that every letterâs different, these stories seem disguised.
To the untrained eye or those without time itâs a random stream of glyphs, but if you learn or make a language, you can map a story onto this. If you shared this tongue with others, then they can understand; they can 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 donât - and they wonât - well, itâs a point to be told. Itâs a statement by its maker: that words arenât ink or paper. Theyâre heard in your head, as theyâre seen and theyâre read. As to read, interact is a physical act, it stirs us; it moves us.
Binaryâs look is a lot like this book, without a language map itâs a long stream
of crap - and it looks like random bits. Itâs not a story for us humans, itâs
for computer chips. A machineâs codes are the words that it knows, and itâs a
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 moves 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. Itâs one it has no language for, âcause logic is enough. Our words could never move it, it just doesnât have the kit. As meaning to computers is ons and offs of bits.
Screens canât feel the smiles they show, we canât feel the light they throw, and 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 couldnât 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, theyâre an us thing, our ballad of the bits. While clattering gates in silicon just switch vibrate and hiss. By the click of the clock it is trapped to the track, itâs a physical act, and that feelingâs all there is.