whats the big deal with binary. why does a computer need binary to read stuff. cant it just speak englin?

Question

cant it just speak english

Answer 1

I believe this is one of the more insightful questions on Y/A. It is worth a detailed explanation, which I am not qualified to give, but I will try anyway. Please forgive any confusion I may cause due to my poor understanding of these topics.

First, though, a comment. If you can think of a way to get computers to use natural language DIRECTLY to communicate with people, you will win Nobel Prizes and become more rich and famous than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs combined. This would be the greatest breakthrough in computer science since the invention of the transistor. I encourage you to build on your interest, natural curiosity and persistence to pursue this area.

(As I am sure you know computers can today be programmed to speak and to understand language, but these tasks are always translated into some kind of programming language which is itself compiled into a machine language that consists of binary code. They do not understand or speak English DIRECTLY as you would like.)

The model of computer operation was built on the pioneering work of Alan Turing in the late 1930's, among others. His Turing Machine envisioned a single element positioned on a strip of tape that could move based on the binary code it read off the tape. All computers and computer languages derive from this model. It is a binary (base 2) model. Others have tried to extend Turing's work to base 3, base 10, base 16, etc. arithmetic so as to make faster computers but this work has largely been unsuccessful. And, besides, this would not satisfy your criterion for DIRECT communication in natural language.

Much early work was also done on creating analog computers, that is, computers that operated with continuously varying voltages rather than binary voltages. Analog computers were used in WWII as calculators for torpedo trajectories, gun control, etc. There is a large body of work in an area called control theory that is based on analog computing. Analog computers can work very quickly. But again, they do not satisfy your criterion for DIRECT natural language communication.

Much work has been done on creating biological computers, and some interesting outcomes have resulted. For example, scientists can now place biological elements on silicon chips to test for different chemicals. These biochips are used in pollution control and testing for bacteria. These can be defined as computer functions- the chip must detect a material and then communicate with the outside world. Always, however, the communication is translated somewhere into binary code so computers can process the data.

If we approach your question from another angle, however, we begin to see the magnitude of the problem you have posed. For how do humans speak and understand language? There is a tremendous amount of work in this area that has gone on for centuries. Eventually, though, to my knowledge, this research must focus on how the brain works to generate and to understand speech. And brain research is some of the most tricky and complicated work you will find. As you know the brain is made up of neurons. These neurons communicate with each other in several ways. First, they communicate digitally (YES! LIKE COMPUTERS!) by firing and stimulating other neurons to fire in patterns that have some meaning, using the binary language of 1's and 0's. Second, they communicate in an analog fashion by influencing neighboring neurons with the frequency of their firing and therefore their influence on the analog voltage potentials in their immediate environments. Third they communicate hormonally, that is, electrical stimulation of neurons causes them to release chemicals into their immediate environment that influence neighboring neurons. There may be other communication modalities we do not yet understand between neurons, for example, genetic expression.

It is time to conclude. I think you see that your question becomes more and more of a philosophical one rather than a direct inquiry. For people are digital-analog-hormonal-genetic computers, in one sense. And as computers become more complex they will become more like people. My guess is that in several hundred years or so, people and computers will become indistinguishable.

Answer 2

A computer is only capable of dealing with two states: a low-voltage state and a high-voltage state. For convenience, we refer to those states as 0 and 1. Binary is a number system, just like decimal. With decimal, you have 10 possible digits : 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9. In a number, the right-most digit is the (10^0) column (1s), the second right-most digit is 10^1, or 10s. The 3rd column is 10^2 = 100s, and so on. With binary, you only have the two states, 0 and 1. So the first column is the ones, the second column is the 2s, the 3rd column is the 4s (2^2), and so on. So for instance, the number 10010 = (1*2^4) + (0*2^3) + (0*2^2)+(1*2^1) + (0*2^0) = 16 + 2 = 18. That's all binary is. With computers, the trick is to make these numbers become commands. What people did is give each instruction a number, so let's pretend adding two numbers is command 20 (I'm just making this up- no one programs in binary any more so there's no reason to memorize the operator codes). The binary code for that is 10100. So if you wanted to add 12 (1100) and 3 (11), you would call the command 10100 1100 11. Text is also stored as numbers too. A=65 = b1000001, B=66, C=67 and so on.

Answer 3

Binary language is the basis of all computer data, including the use of the English language. A computer "reads" data through milllions/billions of switches, which only have two options: on or off, 1 or 0. It's the combination of these switches which makes up the information.

With 2 switches (bits) you have 4 possible values:
00 01 10 11

With 3 bits you have 9 possible values:
000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111

With 8 you have 256
With 16 you have 65536

and so on and so forth.

To state that a computer can't speak English, because it uses binary data is a severe misconception. What do you think a CD or DVD is written in???

All the sound you hear and images you see from A CD or DVD is all burnt into those discs in 1's and 0's.

With the right kind of software a computer can speak, in fact, every possible language known to man

Answer 4

Binary is how computers actually read anything really. Basically binary is the low level language that computers use to send/receive data for any purpose (that is the 1's and 0's). As computers can not directly read any other language, but it must be converted into binary for the computer to work with it. Computers use a simple on/off sequence (1's and 0's) to dictate what it is putting out or to read what is coming in. A certain sequence of on/off equals a certain word in our language, like 10010001100101110110011011001101111 means hello, splitting the number into 7 digit sections you get one section for each letter of hello.

Answer 5

Binary works like a light switch in that is either on or off, so suits the electricity that the computer runs on

Answer 6

Okay. With computing, ALL is based upon a simple thing : is the electric current in the processor ON or OFF ? When ON, it tells an instruction to the machine . When OFF, nothing happens. For us humans, it is sipler to replace "current off" by a single "0", and "Current on" by "1". Then, the combination of "0" and "1" makes bigger and more sophisticated instructions, almost "words" and "sentences" the comuter can understand.

Answer 7

They do speak english through translation.

Do a little research. It has to do with the charge property of electrons. + or -, on or off, 0 or 1!

Answer 8

it uses binary to communicate between the componants, wat u c on the screen is what ur software translates the binary into,
so in short yes a pc/computer does need binary
and no it cant communicate (to the best of my knoledge) in english to its own components

Answer 9

It's the simplest way to tell the electric components some info, if there is electricity flowing ( about 5v) then it's one , if there is no electricity (0 v ) then it's 0 ...

Answer 10

Why don't you learn binary instead. It's a lot easier. 1100101011101 10101000011 000110 11 11