system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is information and data stored in pieces of metal and green boards?
gpt
A bunch of 1s and 0s (that are specifically arranged to describe the information) are stored in the form of anything that can be in one of two states, like a light switch. It's either up or down, on or off, 1 or 0.

So the easiest example to explain is CDs. The bottom of a CD is etched by a laser with tiny little dots, or, tiny little spaces with no tiny little dot. Then, an electronic device like a CD player is made so that it can see the arrangement of dots or no dots, and turn that information back into the form that humans can understand.

Other forms of data storage work the same way, just with different methods of storing and retrieving the 1s and 0s.



to go a little deeper and explain how something can be 1s and 0s... take the alphabet.

If you were to say 00000001 is A, and 00000010 is B, etc, and you had a wall of light switches and lights that went on and on and on, you could write messages by having the right lights on or off.

Modern flash memory does the same thing, except the wall of lightbulbs is actually an insane amount of tiny transistors that push electrons around to indicate 1 or 0.