3. First, the machinery. Ever since a transistor began making the rounds at Bell Labs, we have been accelerating on an autobahn defined by switching machinery. Our halls are littered with boxes-- 286es, 386es, Suns and Amigas, Macs and Pentiums. The boxes contain switching machinery carried to the absurd limit, it seems. Where we were raised thinking of switches as finger-sized, we now carry pockets full of them, numbering in the millions and now trillions. The terabit, a number of switches once exceeding all the switches on Earth, now fits into a large human hand.
And, make no mistake, all we are working from in this tidal wave is switches. Someone noticed that a switch has two choices built into it; that if you have two switches you have four choices; with four, sixteen choices, with eight, two-hundred and fifty-six choices. Compounding the numbers of switches, each only representing two states, allows the entire universe to be condensed into a simulation, given enough switches and the power to set and reset them quickly.