Well, I mean dualistic things like the "binary oppositions" of Levi-Strauss' structuralism. Or Pythagoras' Table of Opposites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab

Well, I mean dualistic things like the "binary oppositions" of Levi-Strauss' structuralism. Or Pythagoras' Table of Opposites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Opposites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Opposites Of course in the hard sciences you have electric charge, matter/antimatter, and I guess the spatial directions (up/down) and the more formal things like inside/outside. At that point I reckon we start slipping into philosophy. Philosophers are aware that "inside/outside" is sometimes a vague distinction for objects of interest like humans and they now know better than to intentionally pursue a strong programme of dualism. See e.g. https://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/DualFFem.html https://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/DualFFem.html for comments on the kind of cultural ideas I'm referring to. My point is not that opposites/oppositions don't occur in technology, but that they are rampant in much cultural production. I know a lot of artists who think the fact that computers use binary code validates some complex (or reductive) dualistic picture of the world. George Boole himself apparently had some funny dualistic ideas, of the kind later promulgated in "Laws of Form" by Spencer-Brown. Dualism is seductive and gets elaborated into huge (and often prejudiced) systems of values. The reality is that most of what computers do is necessarily digital, but not necessarily binary. The bits are down there but they don't totally determine the nature of the software. Yes, bits correspond to on/off. Would you also say that "nut" and "bolt" are binary opposites? That's where I draw the line. Neil Gershenfeld makes the non-centrality of binary pretty clear in his Edge interview/monologue: https://edge.org/conversation/neil_gershenfeld-digital-reality https://edge.org/conversation/neil_gershenfeld-digital-reali...