Bit and Byte go to the country-side
Posted on April 5, 2005
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Today was the first day of my introductory course of IT for the Worker’s Landless Movement. And so, in honour of my father and my uncle Massimo, I explained what “bits” and “bytes” are. In 1979, when I was just 9 years old, my father said to me with a serious air: “Computers are becoming more important every day and I want you to understand how they work”. We were in Naples at the time, in the old house of my grandmother on the coast of Chiaia. My uncle Massimo was chosen as the teacher. He was a young engineer who had graduated at the top of his class. Sitting at the old marble table with the legs in wrought iron (at least that’s how I remember it), I listened carefully as my uncle explained to me the base two computation. I remember perfectly that he translated from 0 to 10 in binary code. After which the said “That’s how computers work, with ZEROs and ONEs”. I looked at my father: he had a serious expression on his face with one eyebrow raised and a quizzical look. Had I understood? Of course. I had absolutely no idea what link there was between a nice mathematical trick and computers but then again, I had never seen a computer… so I couldn’t care less.
At the age of 25, I went to CERN to prepare my graduation thesis. Some weeks after my arrival, Wolfgang, an Austrian colleague who was some years older than me, explained to me that I had to read binary files where the experimental data was stored. This paralyzed me: I had to enter the computer and read the ZERO’s and the ONE’s? They were still like metaphysical entities to me, nobody could read the ZERO’s and the ONE’s. They were the primary forces from which all electronic calculation originated. Who was I to violate this sacred Olympus? Wolfang did not understand such awestruck terror. He looked down on me from his great height and clearly could not understand my mumblings “ZERO, ONE? Read? Impossible! Only the Computer can!”. I was literally a savage, paralysed in front of the coloniser’s machine. He patiently explained to me how I had to do my job. For some months afterwards I looked at him as though he were a wizard who had materialized fairies and pixies out of thin air.
However, the link was still not clear to me. What did it mean that “computers work only with ZEROs and ONEs?” Some months later, in the CERN canteen at lunchtime, I raised the issue (I already felt more self-confident: ZEROs and ONEs existed and I knew how to write and read them). What was the story about these ZEROs and ONEs? If I write in machine language, what I do then? Do I write only 0’s and 1’s? Giovanni hypothized a possible keyboard for computer programmers: two keys, one for the 0 and one for the 1. The issue was resolved by Andrea “the Candle”: “And then, in addition, there is the clock…”. Later Cathia stated: “The Candle is a genius. If someone else had said the same thing it would go unnoticed. But because he said it, it’s now the saying of the week”.
Coming back to today… the students of the introductory course have learned what a bit and a byte are, and what Kilo, Mega, Giga and Tera mean. Nobody liked Tera with a single “r”: they wanted the biggest measurement to be Terra, Earth. They also learnt about RAM Memory and mass memory, how to dismount a computer and how to reassemble it… The only computer which did not work after reassembly was mine. Thank goodness KDE’s standard is a single click on the icon: the mouse is pretty hard to use for people not used to it. They move it by taking it with two fingers until the pointer is in the right position, then leave it and finally, without handling it, click on the bottom. Windows confuse, hide and disappear. But by the end of the day everybody has written one web page, with two links, and the first ready rural site is online.
The greatest problem in using the interface is the difference between those who have studied and those who have not.
The greatest satisfaction is Cida who, with her one-year-old child on her lap, insists that I
explain to her why a byte can take 256 various combinations (had I counted them all? how do I remember number 25?). And so, I represent the numbers from 0 to 10 in binary code as my uncle Massimo did for me many years ago.
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