The first one is “byte”. We’ve all seen it. “Transmission speed: 500 Kilobytes per second”. “Storage capacity: 500 Gigabytes”. Or perhaps “Oh yeah? Mega-byte me!” 🙂

So what is a byte, in terms of computers and telecommunications? The simplest answer: A unit of information. It consists of 8 of the most basic units of information: The bit. Why 8 and not 7 or 9? That’s irrelevant to the scope of this article, so we’ll leave that at that.

OK So what the hell is a bit then? the term is a contraction of BInary digiT. Or maybe Binary digIT. Anyways, “binary” refers to the numerical system, based on 2 and only 2 possible values: 0 and 1, or false and true, yes and no, on and off, positive and negative, yin and yang… you get the idea. “Digit” is a symbol that represents a number. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 are, in current Western culture, the ten digits.

So a bit can only have two possible values: 0 or 1. That sort of explains the idea that computers can only think in terms of numbers. And only two numbers at that. No matter what you see your computer doing, whether you are composing an email, watching a video, reading this, all the computer is doing is thinking “0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1” and so forth.

Getting a headache from so much significance? For a graphic representation of a bit, watch the movie TRON. Or, for fast forwarding to the good part, watch this video clip of the TRON scene where the bit is introduced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fGujzulsas

Have fun!