[IP] Reclaiming the flip-flop
Begin forwarded message:
From: Lee Felsenstein <lee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 9, 2004 4:04:42 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Reclaiming the flip-flop
Dave,
(Here's some thoughts for the IP list on reclaiming some
language in this political season.)
Here’s to the Flip-Flop
By Lee Felsenstein and Lena Diethelm
In the current presidential campaign much has been said about
“flip-flops”, with jeering partisans waving rubber beach sandals to
curse the challenger for having seemed to change some position or other
over the years. The incumbent counters with his image of steely,
unflinching resolve. “FLIP-FLOP! FLIP-FLOP!” shout the accusing
supporters at the right moments in the speech.
But there’s a serious problem – a “flip-flop” is more than a rubber
sandal. The original flip-flop is a humble but universally employed
technological building block whose characteristics illustrate an
important divide within politics today.
Invented by Eccles and Jordan in 1919, the “bi-stable latch circuit”
came to be called the “flip-flop” at the very beginning of the computer
age, in the 1940’s, when beach sandals were just beach sandals. The
flip-flop circuit has an output that maintains its setting indefinitely
– until instructed to change it. Pulse it, and it “flips” – pulse it
again and it “flops”.
Prior to the advent of the flip-flop, electronic decision-making
circuits could only deal with things as they were at the instant the
decision was made. Punched-card sorting machines could make decisions
about only one card at a time, with each card having no effect on
subsequent ones. Electronic control was a simplistic, dogmatic and
brute-force matter, with no subtleties and no sense of history.
History, in fact, is what the flip-flop introduced to the technology of
control. With it, computers became possible to the extent that today
our lives and livelihoods depend upon them.
One flip-flop can remember two possible conditions, or “states”. Add
another flip-flop and the number of possible states doubles. String
sixteen of them nose-to-tail and you create a counter that can assume –
wait for it – 65,536 states. Smear enough microscopic flip-flops onto a
bit of silicon and you’ve created a memory chip. Coffee makers,
ignition systems, music synthesizers and the mysteries of the Web
emerge as a result. Facts, patterns, shades of meaning can now be held
for reference and communicated.
“No, no!” cry the incumbent’s partisans, “We need steadfastness,
strength, determination! All this stuff about shades of meaning will
weaken us!”
But the stolid flip-flop, implemented over generations in every
technology used for control, bears witness to the past occurrence of a
single event, its flag raised or lowered. It stands, ranked with its
innumerable fellows, holding patterns that express letters or numbers,
currency or vital statistics, images, sounds, transactions – all the
things that make our present-day economy move, or exist at all. Not
only does the flip-flop deserve respect, it should be held in the
highest esteem.
Were we to abolish the flip-flop we would revert from an interactive
age to an age of belief. Machinery could still be created that responds
to its surroundings, to be sure, but the rules for these transactions
would be “hard-wired” into them, changeable only by an act of surgery,
best carried out without witnesses. “That’s the way the system works,”
the self-satisfied explainers would say, “trust us on this.”
But we have moved beyond that, thanks to the flip-flop – the
Eccles-Jordan invention which, with its multitudes of offspring,
bestows upon us a panoply of machines that remember, that adapt, that
empower our thoughts and ideas with global reach via the Internet.
Those who fear subtlety, nuance, dissent and individualism can continue
to chant and wave beach sandals. We ask those who value the power of
the common flip-flop to reclaim its name from those who would, in a
sense, do away with its benefits.
Sept. 8, 2004
Lee Felsenstein "take the obvious...and simplify it!"
2460 Park Blvd. #1 Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650)814-0427
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