Computación Básica
Qué pasa cuando enciendes una computadora
Cómo funciona un circuito electrónico
¿Qué es un bit y qué es un byte?
Qué es un procesador (CPU) y la memoria (RAM)
¿Qué es un sistema operativo?
Todo lo que pasa tras enviar un mensaje de WhatsApp
Cómo las computadoras guardan datos
¿Cómo se organizan los archivos?
Teléfonos y sus "System on a Chip" o SOC
GPUs: Procesadores gráficos y de AI
Redes e Internet
¿Qué es un algoritmo? ¿Qué es un Lenguaje de Programación?
Direcciones IP y el protocolo de Internet
Nombres de dominio, DNS y cómo obtener un .com
Modelo Cliente/Servidor: ¿Cómo funciona un sitio web?
Sistemas Operativos y Almacenamiento
Diferencias entre Windows, Linux y MacOS
Permisos, niveles de procesos y privilegios de ejecución
Archivos: Metadatos, cabeceras y extensiones
Archivos y estructuras de datos
¿Qué son las bases de datos?
Cómo funciona un .ZIP
Cómo funciona el formato .JPG
Videos: contendores, codecs y protocolos
Introducción a Blockchain e Inteligencia Artificial
Arquitectura y funcionamiento interno de Blockchain
¿Qué es una red neuronal?
¿Cómo funcionan los LLMs?
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The next time you send an emoji from your cell phone, remember that behind that small symbol there is a complex digital structure formed by bits and bytes. These terms may seem abstract, but in reality they are the essence of all the digital information we use on a daily basis.
Imagine being on a mountain and needing to send a simple message to a friend on another mountain. You have a flashlight, and you agree with your friend that turning on the flashlight means "1" and turning it off means "0." Each flash of light you send is the equivalent of a bit, the smallest unit of digital information that a computer can process. A bit is like a switch that can only be in the on (1) or off (0) position. In modern electronic circuits, this position is represented by specific voltage levels: 5 volts for a "1" and 0 volts for a "0".
But what if you need to send more complex information than a simple on or off? This is where the byte comes in, which is a group of eight bits. With these eight positions, each one being either 0 or 1, 256 different combinations can be created, allowing us to represent numbers, letters and symbols that we use every day in our devices. For example, in the ASCII table, the letter "A" is represented by the number 65, or in binary, as 01000001.
This coding system is not a recent development. In fact, the 19th century telegraph used a similar principle, sending short and long electrical pulses (dots and dashes) to represent letters in Morse code. Today, this basic logic has been greatly sophisticated, but the essence remains the same: transmitting information by means of signal sequences.
Electromagnetic waves, such as the radio waves used by Wi-Fi or cell phones, also use this principle of alternating states to communicate digital information. These waves can pass through walls and objects, allowing us to send messages instantly around the world. When you send a text message, your phone converts your words into bytes, then into electromagnetic waves, which are picked up by the nearest antenna and finally reach the receiver.
Even the digital images we share every day are simply a grid of pixels, each defined by bytes that specify the intensity of the colors red, green and blue (RGB). For example, a bright red pixel would have a high value in the red channel (255) and low values in green and blue (both 0).
All these systems would not work efficiently without international standards such as UTF (Unicode Transformation Format), which allows representing special characters and emojis using specific combinations of bytes. Thanks to organizations such as the Unicode Consortium, there is a global agreement on how to represent characters on different devices, ensuring that when you send an emoji from an iPhone to an Android phone, both devices correctly display the same symbol.
In conclusion, from simple messages to complex images and emojis, everything we see on our digital devices is built on the simple but powerful foundation of bits and bytes. Understanding these concepts gives us a new perspective on the technology we use every day.
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