It's a bit odd to intermingle talk of a written symbol for zero with the use of binary by computers. If I chisel open my Xeon, I don't think I'm going to find 1

It's a bit odd to intermingle talk of a written symbol for zero with the use of binary by computers. If I chisel open my Xeon, I don't think I'm going to find 1 and 0 symbols, and likewise the vast majority of the source code for what's running on it won't contain binary literals either. The "ones and zeros" way of talking about computers to a general audience is a bit of a cliche at this point IMHO. The squirrelly nature of zero in a purely physical sense is interesting to focus on. e.g. if you use the fingers on your hand to count, then zero can be represented by either a closed fist, or by the absence of the hand altogether (unary numbers). No need to involve bleep-bloop-computers or even a sheet of paper. I'm coining a phrase: "Unary is the native number system of the eyeball."