It's really quite simple. Digital data is basically nothing but ones and zeros, right? Well, a one doesn't take up very much space because it's skinny. But a zero is fat. It has a big hole in it, which is a lot of wasted space. This problem was solved by the invention of the Zero Flattener. It squashes zeros until they look just like ones. They don't become ones, but they look just like ones. About four times as much data can be stored in the same amount of physical space when the zeros in the data are squashed flat.