The Ace of Disks: Manifestation

Our ideal things are just stories we tell about real things

The way of all bits. Image from Wikimedia

The Tarot suit of pentacles, for computing, is the physical dimension of computing: computing in space, in time, with weight and electricity and heat and manufacturing and supply chain. The Ace of Pentacles is manifestation - the mechanical reality of computing.

Computers are mathematical but not mathematics. When we theorize about computers, we theorize about their limits: how much time a computation will take, how much memory will be needed. Computers in reality use electricity and produce heat. Setting up the air conditioning for data centers is an important and complex art.

The cards of the suit of disks are all aspects of the physical, finite nature of computers - where we’ve already drawn one of them (and disks seem overrepresented in the history of this deal) they are linked:

1. The Ace, the manifest property of computing itself.

2. Time complexity

3. Memory

4. Glitch

5. Overflow

6. Process

7. Reordering

8. Heat

9. Administration

10. Crash

The court of disks are working engineers, engaged with the limits and realities of computing.

• Princess of Disks: The Network Engineer

• Prince of Disks: The Build Engineer

• Queen of Disks: The Security Engineer

• Knight of Disks: The Computer Operator