> [!tldr] Textual representation is a *projection* of a thing... not the thing itself. Computers work with strings. Humans work with things. A thing is not a string. A string may represent a thing, but it's never the thing itself. We cannot encapsulate any physical thing in a series of characters. We can, however, encapsulate a representation of a thing into strings. In particular, a [[JSON]] string can represent a thing quite robustly. A thing can be *very well represented* in a [[Graph]] showing how it relates to (representations of) other things. ![[Pasted image 20260805122257.png|510]] **** # More ## Source - I saw this phrase somewhere when looking at [[Graph]]-based stuff, can't remember when.