ABSTRACT
In a 1969 report, in their description of how an information system for American museums might be visualised, IBM’s Federal Systems Division had made clear the premise that computers worked with code: ‘a system of symbols and signs used to represent words or concepts’, and that in computer processing, all codes must be translated to a numeric code in order to be interpreted by the machine itself (IBM and Ellin 1969). What IBM were attempting to convey to this new constituency of museum computing professionals was the same key point that Manovich (2001) would later include in his fi ve principles of ‘new media’. That is, that digital media are intrinsically numerical. Within computers our multi-dimensional, analogue world is distilled to an unambiguous string of 1s and 0s. Aided by its ability to see statements as true or false, to answer logical questions with logical answers of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and to set switches as either ‘on’ or ‘off’ within its circuit of semi-conductors, the processing at the very heart of the computer is of numbers. Figuratively speaking, at an ‘atomic level’ computing is a black and white world of binary oppositions.
