History Main / ZeroesAndOnes

-->'''Mia:''' The World [the name of the MMO this takes place in] is made of more than ones and zeros; there are more options than "yes" and "no".

* The ''MurderSheWrote'' episode "A Virtual Murder" used the same concept as the TNG episode above, only instead of computer-like aliens, it's apparently regular human computer programmers who think like this. "One or zero", [[MotiveRant the murderer says at the end]], "I swore a long time ago I'd never live in that grey world in between. It's got to be all, or nothing!"

* Joe on ''NewsRadio'' once claimed to be able to read binary. In one episode, he reads Dave's letter on his computer, which had broken and was only showing things in binary format.

* "And all we ever were, just zeroes and ones" from "Zero-Sum" by NineInchNails.

* [[http://www.philosophicalturn.net/Cartoons/Foxtrot_binary.jpg This]] ''FoxTrot'' comic.

* Wally from ''Comics/{{Dilbert}}'' invoked this when he was accused of abusing the company Internet to look at porn. He responded that all he downloaded was a series of harmless zeroes and ones -- the people at IT who intercepted his traffic were the ones who "activated" those zeroes and ones and turned them into naughty pictures, so ''they'' should be fired. Needless to say, nobody was fooled.

* Wally from ''Comics/{{Dilbert}}'' invoked this when he was accused of abusing the company Internet to look at porn. He responded that all he downloaded was a series of harmless zeroes and ones -- the people at IT who intercepted his traffic were the ones
who "activated" those zeroes and ones and turned them into naughty pictures, so ''they'' should be fired. Needless to say, nobody was fooled.

* Wally from ''Comics/{{Dilbert}}'' invoked this when he was accused of abusing the company Internet to look at porn. He responded that all he downloaded was a series of harmless zeroes and ones -- the people at IT who intercepted his traffic were the ones who "activated" those zeroes and ones and turned them into naughty pictures, so ''they'' should be fired. Needless to say, nobody was fooled.

** In Anime/DigimonTamers, a lot of computer code is shown in binary but this is fact a subversion; what is shown is either ASCII (which is so ancient even Yamaki finds it insulting it is being used as a direct means of communication), or it was actually directly written in machine language (from a programmer that started in the 80's).

One common manifestation is that the writers treat binary as a ''language'', when it's actually just a number format (also called base-2). A series of binary numbers has no implicit meaning unless you know exactly how its been encoded: what binary format is being used (is it 8 bit? big-endian? how are negative numbers handled?) and what the data is supposed to represent (ASCII text?color values? hit points?). Consider that the letter-sequence PAIN means different things to speakers of English and French (it's French for "bread"). A MinusWorld is an example of what may happen when a program interprets data in the way it's not meant to.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' did a first-season episode in which the computer-like Bynars race steals the ''Enterprise'' to save their homeworld. At the end, they claim that [[CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot they didn't just ask]] because "You might have said no". Riker concludes that, as the Binars think like computers, it all comes down to zeroes and ones to them: yes vs. no, take the ship vs. don't take the ship. And if you think this metaphor doesn't make sense, that's because the plot of this episode [[GrowingTheBeard wasn't very good]]. The title of said episode is "[[http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/11001001_%28episode%29 11001001]]", of course.

* Music/{{Rush}}: "One zero zero, one zero zero, one, SOS. One zero zero, one zero zero, one, in distress!"[[note]]1001001 is binary for the ASCII code for uppercase 'I' (the song is allegedly about a machine mind achieving individual self-awareness)[[/note]]

* A [[HomestarRunner Strong Bad Email]] segment has Strong Bad spout a list of zeroes and ones in a robotic voice and then claim he was "speaking technology". To be fair, Strong Bad's knowledge of technology is stuck in the eighties.

* In ''CodeLyoko'', zeroes and ones are constantly filling up blue squares inside the Lyoko Towers, within the tunnels between the sectors, or over the surface of the Celestial Dome in Sector 5.

-->-- '''Joel''', ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', episode 410: ''Hercules Against the Moon Men''

* Described as the foundation of the Digimon World in ''Manga/{{Digimon V-Tamer 01}}'' and something of an arc number, first brought up by Lord [=HolyAngemon=] when Taichi and Zero explain their combination and 100% win record to him. Well actually first brought up in the work's title. The guardian of the net Ocean and the Jijimon from Hospitown can analyze and make sense of any given object's 0-1 arrangement, Demon can manipulate the arrangements to inconsistent degrees, Arkadimon breaks them apart then eats them and so on.

* In the song "Fibonacci Sequence" by the net-famous musician Dr. Steel. "All our gods and heroes / are only ones and zeroes."

* The first set of ''DotHack'' games has one character expressing:

* Music/{{Rush}}: "One zero zero, one zero zero, one, SOS. One zero zero, one zero zero, one, in distress!"[[note]]1001001 is binary for the ASCII code for uppercase 'I' (the song is allegedly about a machine mind acheiving individual self-awareness)[[/note]]

* {{Rush}}: "One zero zero, one zero zero, one, SOS. One zero zero, one zero zero, one, in distress!"

This can be meant to imply several things: a computer is not capable of abstract thought; a computer can deal only with certainties, not probabilities or shades of gray; a computer cannot lie; a computer must behave logically; a computer can be programmed by tapping in binary instructions Morse Code-like by shorting across a circuit, among others. Most, if not all, of these things aren't actually true.

** And in "A Head in the Polls", he has a dream that turns into a nightmare when Bender thinks he saw a 2 (incidentally, there is one [[FreezeFrameBonus in the flash of 1s and 0s]] of his dream; it's visible just at the bottom as it ends).

One common manifestation is that the writers treat binary as a ''language'', when it's actually just a number format (also called base-2). A series of binary numbers has no implicit meaning unless you know exactly how its been encoded: what binary format is being used (is it 8 bit? big-endian? how are negative numbers handled?) and what the data is supposed to represent (ASCII text?color values? hit points?). Consider that the letter-sequence PAIN means different things to speakers of English and French (it's French for "bread").

* A [[HomestarRunner Strong Bad Email]] segment has Strong Bad spout a list of zeroes and ones in a robotic voice and then claim he was "speaking technology".

* One of the better scenes in ''BattleForTerra'' is Mala talking Giddy into helping the Tarren forces by explaining the logic of his own orders to him.