ones and zeroes

alternative ones and zeros

1. informalpluralplural onlycomputingBinary code; on and off bits.

   Now one must also: [...] be able to discern or possess a device that is able to discern the ones and zeroes on the storage medium, [...]

   1998, Doug Carlston, “Storing Knowledge”, in Margaret MacLean, Ben H. Davis, editors, Time & Bits: Managing Digital Continuity, Los Angeles, Calif.: Getty Conservation Institute, →ISBN, page 24

   5 more examples

   The incoming signals were broken down into digital code—ones and zeroes—by a relatively simple computer and downlinked to Fort Huachuca, where another computer of vastly greater power examined the bits of raw information and tried to make sense of them.

   1989 August 17, Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN; Berkley premium tie-in edition, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, November 2018, →ISBN, page 360

   The so-called higher level programming languages, like the various dialects of BASIC and PASCAL familiar to students in the 1980s, greatly simplified the business of programming, since it is no longer necessary—at least for certain purposes—to do what is now called "machine language programming," or what in earlier days was programming, i.e., employing the ones and zeroes now frequently viewed as rather tedious and theoretical [...]

   1990, G. E. Scott, “Malleable Persons”, in Moral Personhood: An Essay in the Philosophy of Moral Psychology (SUNY Series in Ethical Theory), Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 40

   Hiro Protagonist [in Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson] must win, one might say, on both Surf and Turf against the wonderfully evil Evangelist Minister R. Bob Riff and his allies, both in the world of violence, swordplay, and aircraft carriers and in the world of ones and zeros.

   1996, R[obert] James Woolsey [Jr.], “Resilience and Vulnerability in the Digital Age”, in Stuart J. D. Schwartzstein, editor, The Information Revolution and National Security: Dimensions and Directions (Significant Issues Series; vol. XVIII, no. 3), Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 79

   But suppose there is a special and universal and innate language for thinking. Suppose, in particular, that just as computers have a language of ones and zeroes that underlies all of their programs and applications, there is an equally fundamental language shared by all humans: a language of thought (lot) [...].

   2001, Andrew Brook, Robert J. Stainton, “Knowledge of Language”, in Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (A Bradford Book), 1st paperback edition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, →ISBN, pages 54–55

   You once said that the "ones and zeros" in the world's computers were demons that could trick the human race into losing all its history.

   2007, Henning Mankell, chapter 8, in Laurie Thompson, transl., Kennedy’s Brain: Translated from the Swedish, New York, N.Y.: The New Press, →ISBN, part 1 (Christ’s Cul-de-sac), page 83