Announcements
Midterm on Monday: Chapters 1-5,7,8

Digital Representation
Everyone knows computers use  bits and bytes … but what are they?

Info Representation
Digitization: representing information by any fixed set of symbols

Creating Symbols
Usually there are not enough symbols
The solution is to create more symbols by composing patterns …
Three patterns alone could be symbols, but grouping them together makes 9 when they are pairs, 27 as triples, and ...

An Encoding
Encode the Latin alphabet

Info in the Physical World
Physical world:
The most fundamental representation of information is presence/absence of a phenomenon
matter, light, magnetism, flow, charge, …
detect: “Is the phenomenon present?”
set: make phenomenon present or absent

Info in the Logical World
Logical World:
Information, reasoning, computation are formulated by true/false and logic
All men are mortal
Aristotle is a man
Aristotle is mortal
True and false can be the patterns for encoding information

Connect Physical/Logical
The miracle of IT is that physical and logical worlds can be connected

Bits
PandA is a binary representation because it uses 2 patterns
Bit -- it’s a contraction for “binary digit”
-- a position in space/time capable of being set and detected in 2 patterns

Bytes
A byte is eight bits treated as a unit
Adopted by IBM in 1960s
A standard measure ever since
Bytes encode the Latin alphabet using ASCII -- the American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Demonstration
I need 8 volunteers, 4 women & 4 men

Encoding Information
Bits and bytes encode the information, but that’s not all
Tags encode format and some structure in word processors
Tags encode format and some structure in HTML
In the Oxford English Dictionary tags encode structure and some formatting

OED Entry For Byte

Summary
IT joins physical & logical domains so physical devices do our logical work
 Symbols represent things 1-to-1
Create symbols by grouping patterns
PandA representation is fundamental
Bit, a place where 2 patterns set/detect
ASCII is a byte encoding of Latin abet
In addition to content, encode structure