The basic unit of digital communications is the bit, short for binary digit. By binary, we mean a unit of information that comes in one of two states—on or off, current or no current, power up and power down.
This dual language emerged in a world fond of opposites and machines. Instead of the 26 letters of the English alphabet or the thousands of Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics, binary only needs different combinations of ones and zeros representing a switch flipped one way or the other.
It’s less complicated, less susceptible to noise and interference, but also less capable of gradation and subtlety. It creates a false metaphor that everything can be broken down to a yes or no answer.
To enter the binary digital world, we universally press “the power symbol,” a binary “one” tucked into a binary “zero.” The power symbol also looks like an incomplete circuit. It glows on the front of our PC towers and appears when we shut down our iPhones.
The icon combines the 1 and 0 rather than just switch between them. Our devices are regularly on standby, partly on and partly off.
My last module for The Interactive Voice has always suggested the end is just a beginning. The course completes only a rough draft of your work, and the final assignment presents a chance to either continue or start over—to write or rewrite. Because I teach the course so frequently now, its final and first weeks often run into one another or overlap.
End/begin, write/rewrite, on/off, I/O—the power symbol represents the in-beta state of the world. Everything is unfinished, ongoing work. Everything is a draft. Take a break, but there’s more to do.
The Interactive Voice is an exercise drill to “write-through” and test our ideas through repeated drafting.
I give different themes to my semesters to emphasize where I want my next draft of the course to go. There was last year’s #allaudiences winter when I expanded the types of students who took the course and this past #doublefeature summer when I reduced the 14-week Quinnipiac course to 7 weeks and taught it twice, back-to-back.
This semester is the 25th semester of The Interactive Voice. I just expanded the book version with a new appendix of alternative prompts for each module. I did a TEDx Talk about the course. I’ve blogged about the course here for over a year now and started writing on Medium too.
I want to expand the profile of the course. It’s mostly a secret of my former students. For this spring 2019, I will expand the course material, expand the online audience, bring back former students to try the course again, and take the course myself.
The Interactive Voice also has a simple brand logo. I call it The Individual. It’s a combination of a lower case i for interactive, an individual stick figure, and the wireless connection symbol. It looks like a person speaking (or thinking) with a strong message under a rainfall of other messages.
For this unique promotional semester, I’m combining The Individual with the binary “end/begin” power symbol to symbolize a return to the drawing board.
I blogged recently about how our nightmares about our own inventions help us successfully pilot them towards a better future. For the past few years now, it seems like our nightmares have taken over our imaginations and the fear of what lies ahead for the world is all we can see, when we have faced similar armageddons before.
It’s time to wake up the sleep cycle. It’s time to give the Internet another shot. It’s time for everyone who’s taken the course to take it again.
It’s time to #startover.