The Decimal Point Revolution: My Life, My Code, Our Future Beyond Binary

Here I am again. Sitting on a bench outside my social studies class, my English class, health class. Which one exactly, it doesn’t matter, it happened in all of them.

On this day though I was proud of myself — weirdly — for getting kicked out in record time. Today it took just eight minutes. A full 60 seconds faster than last week. A new PB.

That was life in the ’80s in country WA. A town of less than 300 people.

Where doing it tough wasn’t a slogan — it was oxygen.

And if you were different, if you didn’t fit, you were either ignored or punished.

Back then, no one was talking about neurodivergence.

And “binary”? That was something out of a sci-fi movie, not the invisible system running the world.

But now, looking back, I know exactly what was going on:

I wasn’t a one. I wasn’t a zero. I was a decimal.

And no one knew what to do with me.

Undiagnosed until 48, I spent my life trying to force myself into neat categories.

One or zero. Yes or no. Normal or broken.

But the truth is, most of us don’t live in binaries. We live in the in-between.

In the pause. The nuance. The decimal point.

And that simple metaphor — a speck between digits — carries radical potential.

Because decimals change everything. They don’t cancel the ones or zeros. They refine them. Enrich them. Add meaning.

What if that’s the real story of humanity?

What if the problem isn’t that some people don’t fit — it’s that the equation was never meant to be whole in the first place?

We built entire systems — schools, workplaces, governments — on binary logic.

Efficient, yes. But accurate? Not really.

Because the world is not tidy. People are not tidy.

And those who don’t fit the binary — neurodivergent minds, gender-diverse souls, sensitive feelers, imaginative thinkers — are often treated as outliers.

When in fact, they might be the missing detail in the equation.

We round them off.

We call them “too complex,” “too much,” “too hard.”

And in doing so, we lose the very nuance that could transform our systems, our culture, and our understanding of reality itself.

So, is there any merit to this idea — this decimal point revolution?

Absolutely.

Because we’re already seeing the cracks in the binary wall:

• In AI and machine learning, models are moving beyond true/false logic to probability, inference, and meaning.

• In gender and identity, the binary is being rightfully dismantled in favour of fluidity and authenticity.

• In neurodivergence, diagnostic frameworks are shifting from labels to spectrums — from “Are you autistic?” to “How are you autistic?”

Even our technology is evolving:

Quantum computing doesn’t deal in ones or zeros. It thrives in superposition — the very ambiguity binary tries to avoid.

Active inference doesn’t run on absolutes. It predicts, adapts, learns.

These aren’t just engineering concepts — they’re philosophical invitations.

They say: Reality is richer than binary. So maybe our thinking should be, too.

My Life, My Code, Our Future Beyond Binary

What began as a lonely bench outside a classroom has turned into something much bigger.

With tools like AI, I can now articulate the complex symphony of thoughts that once got me labelled as “disruptive.”

I’m no longer trying to round myself off — I’m exploring the decimals.

And in doing so, I’m realising this isn’t just about me.

It’s about all of us.

We’re living in a time where we can choose to redesign the code — in systems, in language, in how we see each other.

We can build models that don’t just process difference — they need it.

We can drill into the decimal places of data, thought, emotion, and identity — and in doing so, maybe understand reality more clearly than ever before.

We are not broken ones.

We are not missing zeros.

We are decimals — and we are precisely what the world has been overlooking.

Let’s begin the conversation.

Let’s stop rounding ourselves off.

A Working Prototype for Resonance

This isn’t just theory.

The Spectral Binary model I’ve outlined—where language, emotion, and identity move on a spectrum rather than snapping into fixed states—is now a living, working prototype.

ToneThread, available via the GPT store, is the first public expression of this idea. It’s a tool that doesn’t reduce your words to “positive” or “negative”—instead, it reads tone like a waveform. It traces certainty, ambiguity, warmth, detachment, tension, and release across a range of emotional frequencies. It listens for what’s beneath the sentence.

ToneThread doesn’t ask “What’s correct?”—it asks, “What’s resonant?”

You can find it directly in ChatGPT by searching ToneThread in the GPT store. Whether you’re a writer, a therapist, an educator, or simply someone whose feelings don’t always fit the format—this tool is for you. It was built to honour emotional nuance, not iron it out. To give voice to the in-between.

Spectral Binary is still unfolding. Through sound, code, colour, and care, it’s growing into something bigger—something communal. But for now, it begins here:

With a decimal point.

With language that hums instead of shouts.

With resonance over reduction.

Because meaning isn’t fixed—it’s felt.

And we’re learning how to feel, together.