5 ms·

Yeah, the circle represents a zero - but it isn't a zeno, and the line represents a one - but it isn't a one. They're graphics that seem removed from the meanin

Yeah, the circle represents a zero - but it isn't a zeno, and the line represents a one - but it isn't a one. They're graphics that seem removed from the meanings they represent. Semantically they're removed too, since turning a device on seems to have complex, multi-byte significance. And as graphics, the zero seems to represent "circuit connected" and the one seems to represent "circuit disconnected". Yet they have the exact opposite meanings! They're meant for public consumption after all.

ckrailo 7y ago
I did an image search on a few search engines to make sure "on off switch" still returned the same ⏽/⭘ switches I've seen forever. Pretty sure the back of your printer probably has one. Where are these switches uncommon? Where are they flipped to the opposite meaning as you described? Where has the circle ever represented a connected circuit? Most circuit diagrams are squared off, so which one was circular? I'm so confused.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  It's clearly supposed to be a metaphor for genitalia - with the line suggesting 'presence', and the circle suggesting absence. (Note the latin 'vagina', literally means sheath). It works better in the case of the numeral 1, which even has a glans.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Whoever downvoted this was apparently offended by the association. However, there is insight in the point you raised, and you stated it intellectually - not in a juvenile sense, which was in the eye of the beholder. In anthropology and psychology, primitive symbols like a vertical line or a circle are often found to represent the male and female dichotomy. In fact, it's quite prevalent cross-culturally as basics of a visual language. [citation needed]
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      Insight? It's false. The symbol for zero originated as a dot, indicating an unfilled place in the place value system, and evolved from there. [0] [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147450-history-of-zero-pushed-back-500-years-by-ancient-indian-text/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147450-history-of-zero...
      - pasabagi 7y ago
        Obviously, your source doesn't support your argument. Just because something once had one shape doesn't mean a new shape can't have new connotations. You're jumping from 'the zero was not always a hole', to 'the zero can never symbolize a hole'. Which is pretty strange. This 1/0 man/woman white/black kind of binary is so ubiquitous in our culture it's kind of redundant to go and find examples - but it is in itself interesting that when you mention stuff like this, some people will always find a way to claim it is nonsense. I think it's a desire for security amongst political turbulence - you say, this stuff is abstract and clean and without cultural baggage, so I can hide in it from the world, which is ugly and ambiguous and provokes uncomfortable reactions. It's a kind of desire that's really common around engineering, mathsy people - I mean, part of the attraction of these subjects is you don't have to navigate anything sticky. So that's why it usually provokes a pretty extreme reaction if you profane the temple by bringing cultural stuff in.
        whatshisface 7y ago
        A word or symbol does not represent every single thing that can be free-associated with it. If you want to show that "1" represents the Washington Monument, it is not sufficient (or even necessary) to point out that they're the same shape, you have to show some evidence that there once was a culture that used the symbol "1" whenever they wanted to say "2 15th St NW, Washington, DC."
        pasabagi 7y ago
        Using '1' to symbolise the washington monument would be reasonable, if the washington monument was something people very commonly referred to. It would also be reasonable to describe that as phallic. It wouldn't be reasonable to use 1 to refer to an address in DC, because you're jumping from three obviously formally similar things, to the street address of one of those things. It's a pretty good example of what people mean by free association - and why what I'm(1) doing isn't. 1- I mean, obviously I'm about the millionth person to make this particular observation.
JasonFruit 7y ago
I have always seen it this way too: a broken or completed circuit. But I've accepted that my initial understanding of the visual metaphor doesn't match its intent. I think misunderstandings like these result when we abandon written language to point and grunt at tiny pictures.
- jaywalk 7y ago
  I've always looked at the line as a connection and the open circle as no connection. It's just what I came up with when I was young as a way to make sense of the markings.
derefr 7y ago
To be extremely pedantic, I think they’re correct at an implementation level: for most chips, as long as they’re receiving power at all from a power supply, they’ll run, unless a reset line is being held high. In most consumer electronics, that reset line is held high by default (by power coming off the wall or from the battery), unless power is supplied to a NAND gate coming from (a flip-flop in front of) the power switch on the front of the computer. To “turn on” a computer (using the push-button at the front, rather than by flipping a power-supply toggle-switch) is, then, actually to SET that flip-flop, feeding a high input to the NAND gate, which in turn will turn off the reset line to the CPU. (And, vice-versa, if your computer has a “reset button” on the front like some old computers do, that one throws the flip-flop back to its RESET state, which puts the NAND gate back low, which brings the reset line to the CPU back high. Wiring for push-button toggles is weird!)
- LolWolf 7y ago
  Hmm, in most embedded processors I know (e.g., the ESP8266/32 [0], RPi's BMC2835 [1], or Ti's MSP430 [2]), you send the line down for reset but hold it high for running (either by internal pull-up or by actually holding the line). --- [0] https://tttapa.github.io/ESP8266/Chap06%20-%20Uploading.html https://tttapa.github.io/ESP8266/Chap06%20-%20Uploading.html [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/app/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi-Schematics-R1.0.pdf https://www.raspberrypi.org/app/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi... In particular, see first page, D15 [2] https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/t/328821?Pullup-resistor-on-RESET-pin https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/t/3...
nirvdrum 7y ago
Interesting. I always took ⭘ to be an open circuit and ⏽ to be a closed circuit, using the symbol for a switch as the rough guide. Perhaps they're poor symbols if people can look at them and come up with rational reasons for each interpretation to be correct.

ckrailo 7y ago

I did an image search on a few search engines to make sure "on off switch" still returned the same ⏽/⭘ switches I've seen forever. Pretty sure the back of your printer probably has one. Where are these switches uncommon? Where are they flipped to the opposite meaning as you described? Where has the circle ever represented a connected circuit? Most circuit diagrams are squared off, so which one was circular? I'm so confused.

pasabagi 7y ago
It's clearly supposed to be a metaphor for genitalia - with the line suggesting 'presence', and the circle suggesting absence. (Note the latin 'vagina', literally means sheath). It works better in the case of the numeral 1, which even has a glans.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Whoever downvoted this was apparently offended by the association. However, there is insight in the point you raised, and you stated it intellectually - not in a juvenile sense, which was in the eye of the beholder. In anthropology and psychology, primitive symbols like a vertical line or a circle are often found to represent the male and female dichotomy. In fact, it's quite prevalent cross-culturally as basics of a visual language. [citation needed]
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Insight? It's false. The symbol for zero originated as a dot, indicating an unfilled place in the place value system, and evolved from there. [0] [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147450-history-of-zero-pushed-back-500-years-by-ancient-indian-text/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147450-history-of-zero...
    - pasabagi 7y ago
      Obviously, your source doesn't support your argument. Just because something once had one shape doesn't mean a new shape can't have new connotations. You're jumping from 'the zero was not always a hole', to 'the zero can never symbolize a hole'. Which is pretty strange. This 1/0 man/woman white/black kind of binary is so ubiquitous in our culture it's kind of redundant to go and find examples - but it is in itself interesting that when you mention stuff like this, some people will always find a way to claim it is nonsense. I think it's a desire for security amongst political turbulence - you say, this stuff is abstract and clean and without cultural baggage, so I can hide in it from the world, which is ugly and ambiguous and provokes uncomfortable reactions. It's a kind of desire that's really common around engineering, mathsy people - I mean, part of the attraction of these subjects is you don't have to navigate anything sticky. So that's why it usually provokes a pretty extreme reaction if you profane the temple by bringing cultural stuff in.
      - whatshisface 7y ago
        A word or symbol does not represent every single thing that can be free-associated with it. If you want to show that "1" represents the Washington Monument, it is not sufficient (or even necessary) to point out that they're the same shape, you have to show some evidence that there once was a culture that used the symbol "1" whenever they wanted to say "2 15th St NW, Washington, DC."
        pasabagi 7y ago
        Using '1' to symbolise the washington monument would be reasonable, if the washington monument was something people very commonly referred to. It would also be reasonable to describe that as phallic. It wouldn't be reasonable to use 1 to refer to an address in DC, because you're jumping from three obviously formally similar things, to the street address of one of those things. It's a pretty good example of what people mean by free association - and why what I'm(1) doing isn't. 1- I mean, obviously I'm about the millionth person to make this particular observation.

JasonFruit 7y ago

I have always seen it this way too: a broken or completed circuit. But I've accepted that my initial understanding of the visual metaphor doesn't match its intent. I think misunderstandings like these result when we abandon written language to point and grunt at tiny pictures.

jaywalk 7y ago
I've always looked at the line as a connection and the open circle as no connection. It's just what I came up with when I was young as a way to make sense of the markings.

derefr 7y ago

To be extremely pedantic, I think they’re correct at an implementation level: for most chips, as long as they’re receiving power at all from a power supply, they’ll run, unless a reset line is being held high. In most consumer electronics, that reset line is held high by default (by power coming off the wall or from the battery), unless power is supplied to a NAND gate coming from (a flip-flop in front of) the power switch on the front of the computer. To “turn on” a computer (using the push-button at the front, rather than by flipping a power-supply toggle-switch) is, then, actually to SET that flip-flop, feeding a high input to the NAND gate, which in turn will turn off the reset line to the CPU. (And, vice-versa, if your computer has a “reset button” on the front like some old computers do, that one throws the flip-flop back to its RESET state, which puts the NAND gate back low, which brings the reset line to the CPU back high. Wiring for push-button toggles is weird!)

LolWolf 7y ago
Hmm, in most embedded processors I know (e.g., the ESP8266/32 [0], RPi's BMC2835 [1], or Ti's MSP430 [2]), you send the line down for reset but hold it high for running (either by internal pull-up or by actually holding the line). --- [0] https://tttapa.github.io/ESP8266/Chap06%20-%20Uploading.html https://tttapa.github.io/ESP8266/Chap06%20-%20Uploading.html [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/app/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi-Schematics-R1.0.pdf https://www.raspberrypi.org/app/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi... In particular, see first page, D15 [2] https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/t/328821?Pullup-resistor-on-RESET-pin https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/t/3...

nirvdrum 7y ago

Interesting. I always took ⭘ to be an open circuit and ⏽ to be a closed circuit, using the symbol for a switch as the rough guide. Perhaps they're poor symbols if people can look at them and come up with rational reasons for each interpretation to be correct.