You probably know that when you shoot a video on your phone, you’ll get a file representation of the thing you saw. That representation is immutable – if you play it back now, or in a thousand years, you’ll see the same thing.
You also probably know that this file is a sequence of zero and ones. So just add 0.
to the front of this sequence and you have a number that is between 0 and 0.12.
0.
to the front of this sequence and you have a number that is between 0 and 0.12. So you didn’t really need the physical phone and camera at all. If you happened to pluck that particular number from the infinite jar between 0 and 0.12, all you would need to do is strip off the 0.
from the front and you’ll be able to watch the video anyway.
Every film, every news show, every photograph, every home movie that’s ever been shot lies somewhere on the number line between 0 and 0.12.
Now think back to your first date. You probably didn’t have a team of camera operators and sound engineers following you around, recording the moment for posterity.
But, if you had done, they would have produced a video that lies between 0 and 0.12. That number still exists. Go find it and enjoy a trip down memory lane.
How about the oscar winning best film of 2050? Maybe some of the actors aren’t even born yet. No problem … the video of that movie still lies between 0 and 0.12. If you stumble across it, you can glimpse the future.
Be careful when rifling through this video library though. You’ll also find a five minute video of you and Margaret Thatcher skipping through Central Park, playing the harmonica. Oh, and for good measure, you and every human that has ever existed. Or will exist in the future. An endless collection of five minute videos playing every possible instrument and wearing every type of outfit.
If we ever discovered a way to catalogue all those videos, what gems we would find. Uninterrupted aerial footage of the Deccan Traps eruptions for 1,000,000 years, in glorious 8K fidelity.
Everything that happened, and everything that did not, is all present in that small gap between 0 and 0.12.
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