A day in the life of a bit

Designed by pikisuperstar / Freepik

My Life as a Bit: Work and Travel
You may remember me from my previous story An Autobiography of a Bit. I am a bit, a tiny unit of data that can be either 0 or 1. I have a lot of stories to tell you about my life as a bit.

In this story, I will tell you about my work and travel. I work in a computer, where I help to perform calculations and operations. I also travel inside the computer and sometimes outside the computer through networks.

You can imagine that the hard disk of the computer is like a city where I live. It has many houses where bits like me live. Each house has 8 rooms, one for each bit. We call a group of 8 bits a byte.

Each house has a unique address, just like your houses. The address tells us where the house is located in the hard disk.

Sometimes, the CPU (the brain of the computer) needs some bits to do some work. It sends a request with the address of the house where the bits are. When we receive the request, we don’t leave our house. Instead, we make copies of ourselves and send them to the CPU through data buses (the roads of the computer).

When our copies reach the CPU, the CPU does some magic on them. Sometimes, the magic changes our values from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0. This magic is called computation.

I will tell you more about this magic in another story “Byte and the secrets of CPU”.

After the magic, the CPU sends our copies back to the hard disk with an address. The address can be the same as our original house or a different one.

If it is the same address, our copies replace us in our house. We disappear and no one remembers us. That’s how it works in the computer world.

If it is a different address, our copies move to a new house and meet new bits. They start living there as a new byte.

Sometimes, after the magic, the CPU doesn’t send our copies back to the hard disk. Instead, it sends them to another device or another computer through networks (the highways of the computer).

This is when we have bigger adventures in our travel. We meet different kinds of bits and bytes along the way. We face challenges and dangers from hackers and viruses.

I will tell you more about these adventures in another story “Adventure in the highway”.

This is how I work and travel as a bit in the computer world. I hope you enjoyed this story and learned something new.