this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
54 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
77608 readers
1637 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Read that sentence again. They didn't say bits represent 0s and 1s, they said bits are represented BY 0s and 1s, which is entirely correct.
Physically speaking, in a modern silicon based PC, bits are the presence or absence of electrons in an electron well. That presence or absence is often represented by binary numbers, because it makes the math easy, though it can also be represented in other ways, such as "HI" and "LO". Or in a Boolean mathematics the bits would represent the values "True" and "False".
The statement from the article is entirely correct.
A bit isn't represented by a one or a zero, that's nonsense. A bit can take the state of a one or a zero and is represented in various ways in digital circuitry.
A bit IS represented by one or zero. A bit can take the state of charged or not charged. That's what a bit physically is. In low level code, those states are represented by binary numbers.
Or do you think there's a actual physical numbers 0 and 1 floating around in your RAM ?
The states represent binary numbers, not the other way around.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/bit-communications
A bit is a binary digit. That's what "bit" is an abbreviation for. That is, it's either a 1 or a 0. It's a logical thing, not a physical thing. It's a unit of information.
The embodiment of that bit is the physical state of a certain tiny, addressable chunk of silicon. And there could be any of several other embodiments: the position of toggle switches, chalk marks on a board, pits on a metallic surface in a DVD, voltage in a wire at a particular time. The particular embodiment is an engineering choice that is distinct from the information itself.