This button will send a single bit.

This is no mindgame, no weird trolley-problem-monkey's-paw-dilemma.

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This page, this post, pressing this button, are meant to be whatever they need to be for you in this moment. The purpose of this singular bit is entirely up to you. Take a second, and Consider The Button. What do you need from this?

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You probably already know if this was useful or not, but if you aren’t being present, take a second to think about “What The Button Can Do For You” before you continue reading or your mind skips to The Next Thing.

A Single Bit

Sometimes a single bit of information is sufficient, if we have a predetermined context to understand that bit. When scheduling over a chat, A question like “How’s 2pm?” should resolve in either two ways. If that is acceptable, it is confirmed and we move on. Otherwise, we keep organizing. The amount of information needed in the second case is significantly more and potentially unbounded; it could resolve in postponing planning, deferring scheduling, and any number of additional “What about Y?”’s down the road.

However, when the first case is true, we only need that one bit, and everything is done! A “thumbs up” operates as this acknowledgement and end in richer chat programs. Otherwise, things like “sure”, “sounds good”, “OK”, “yup”, etc. fill the gap, but they’re sending more bits! The context (culture, mood, previous conversation) can lead to more information being received than was meant to be sent.

With a single bit, you might have to assume the simplest intention of the sender. There is no constraint on the space of possible meanings except that “We’re good to go for 2pm”. More bits create additional, more complex interpretations of the sender’s intent.

At the beginning of this post, there is a button to send a bit. The context I want that bit to have is entirely up to you, and the receiver of that bit is yourself. Is there something you need to do that you’ve been avoiding? Is there a thought you have been avoiding thinking about? Do you need water? To stretch? Respond to that other message? Have a meditative moment?

You might already know what you need, but perhaps you got distracted reading random bullshit on the internet and forgot. Maybe that “bit” is a just a reminder.

Sometimes a single bit can get lost, and we need some integrity, or checksum, or confirmation that the bit was received and interpreted in the way we expect. We need to restrain the context post-hoc. “Does 2 or 3 work?”, “sounds good”, “wait which one?”.

These and the other bits in this post should suffice to be enough context and error-checking for you and you, I think :).

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I often need reminders or jumpstarts to hack my brain into doing things I want it to do. Most of the time a single bit is sufficient, with maybe a bit of context. I know what that context is, I know what that bit is for, I just needed it to be sent and actually read. Hopefully in the vast distracting world we now live in, this post and That Button can be A Bit For You.

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That button up there is a picture, for the Full Button Experience check out the link.