ARCHIVE (originally posted on Revue Aug 26 2022). High-grade loot area. Edge food for thought. Biased takes on what we refer to as “real life”.

Sup gees? It has been quite some time since the last ration dropped! I’m too proud to apologize for the radio silence so deal with it. >.<

This one’s gonna be short but highly worth it. 🤔💰

We’re going through Bytes, you know MB, GB, etc. as virtual storage units, digital space, data and intelligence warehousing, internet access, and even as money. If you think about it even BTC is stored in bytes, and it shall be more apparent in the future, even for 22 IQ organic processors.

Issue #6: Byte

According to Wiki the byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures.

Since bytes were essentially bundles of 8 bits, the Internet Protocol (RFC 791) refers to an 8-bit byte as an octet. The ingredients of an octet are usually counted from 0 to 7 or vice versa depending on the bit endianness, where 0=1, and 7=8.

The size of the byte has been always hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Today different standards address bytes in various manners, eg. the ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993 uses the power of two permitting the binary-encoded values from 0 to 255 for one byte (2 to the power of 8 is 256, and again 0=1, and 255=256), the MIDI music machine interface standard does this with 127 for 128 bits and yata yata yata.

A good example in practice would be looking at your analog music devices that usually measure min-max values from 0 to 127. Eg. the Max volume would be 127 and not 100.

The Only Real Virtual Currency Was Always The Byte

So why the byte is so important although highly undervalued if even relevant nowadays?

Thinking of data storage when I was young, I was trying to understand, why do hard drives have limits. (eg. 10GB). What does that even mean? Does it mean that it really has some physical boundaries that won’t allow for more information to be stored in the relevant unit? Or is it a trick companies use to make you buy more storage over time? 🤔

The reasoning behind this thought was silly, but it goes something like this: when you store a picture of a car in your hard drive, you don’t store the actual car in it - which would obviously not fit into the physical drive - but you change some numbers in terms of 0s and 1s that represent that car. So whether you store an entire planet or a fly in the hard drive, it’s gonna pretty much take up the same space and NOT the space you would expect each info piece to accumulate when analogizing its magnitude under physical circumstances.

That made me think that digital storage is infinite, or tends to infinity. As time passes and while we are getting the same hard drives in terms of physical space consumption, their power doubles, or quadruples in terms of digital space over time (somewhat correlated to Moore’s law) - meaning at some point we could fit an entire planet’s information in a hard drive future generations could hold in their hands.

Why bytes are so important? Well, just look around. You are using a smart hand-held device, a laptop, or a desktop computing machine that uses bytes to temporarily store this publication so you can make sense of it. The same devices use bytes to store local intel, such as photos, videos, audio recordings, etc. they use bytes to transfer information across the internet and connect to other devices and gate points. They use bytes to perform complex computations that are needed for you or the issuer of the device.

Considering we’re not bailing out the digitalization orbit we’ve been following for decades, one can only assume that in the future, no matter who’s the president, what form money occupies (probably digital), or where do you work, who do you talk to, what are you consuming, etc. we would definitely have more bytes.

Your smart devices will have better cameras, better microphones, and better storage. In the past, and I mean like 20 years ago, a relevant device would have its entire system relying on 1MB. Nowadays, a Karen’s selfie spree can cost anything between 10MB and 100MB, and that’s just a photo, not the entire system of the device, which comes with 500GB or 1TB for everything. That would be like 1 Billion bytes.

You also need bytes to connect to the internet. They call them browsing data, eg. you’re saying I have 10GB of internet, or I spent 1GB watching this movie. Now, this storage is not local, meaning it’s not in your device, but it is measured in the ability to connect to cloud services and storage units from where you are eligible to temporarily transfer/stream information and use it as your own. You have to pay in bytes for that as well.

If you zoom out for a brief moment and take a look ahead, you can see that people could be easily using bytes as the main currency for obvious reasons attached to their everyday lives and operations.

You could be paid in bytes, pay someone else in bytes, send bytes to friends or family, or rent bytes for a living. Why? because (already happening but..) in the future there will be no single unit, organic, or mechanic that has no need of bytes. No matter who you are, where you work, or what you’re up to, you need bytes. Otherwise, how are you doing anything? No bytes? no data, no internet, no communication, no job, no payments, nothing.

It is very hard to comprehend the exact gluing point today, but I trust If you’re not sheep you’ll get it fast. Just think of the fact they won’t let you accumulate your bytes for future use. Like it’s a taxation or banking scheme. They tell you “you have 100GB” but just for this month. You can’t let’s say spend 10 GB and leave 90GB for next month. That would be catastrophic for the industry.

If I personally got to keep all my unspent bytes I would be a byte trillionaire by now. Why do they do that if bytes are not money and bear no monetary value? Why do they let you get credit extensions in terms of bytes eg. “no bytes? no problem, get $10 worth of bytes now and pay us $12 back next time you top up your balance” - pretty similar if not identical to the old dirty credit system if you ask me.

Another sushi bit for thought is African economies, where the unbanked use bytes, SMS, and internet credits as means of payments, knowing for a fact that no matter who you are, you are going to need some internet, some storage, some voice data, or whatever, so let me give you $1 worth of bytes and you give me a loaf of bread. Does this sound more relevant?

🐍🧬♾

There’s not much to say here, than BUY fucking storage! Or, if you’re already loaded, try to create your own digital storage out of thin air like big corps already do :)

It doesn’t really matter if you think Bitcoin, or video games, or the metaverse, or the government, or influencers, or whatever is the next big thing. The only way for them to succeed is to rely on bytes. I mean Bitcoin has to be stored in some server, or drive. Rihana’s new music video has to be stored in a cloud, the next big virtual estate race for the metaverse, IN FACT, takes place in bytes and consumes digital storage. And of course, all of that has to be communicated, transferred, and stored in terms of bytes.

That was it, folks. ✨😎

The next one will be dropping mid-Sept and it will elaborate on data storage, who owns the monopoly, and what are our options as users seeking independence from authoritarian pimps.

Don’t be stupid, be a real man with his own self-sovereignty and capability to think. Catch you in the zettabyte era ;)