There is No Such Thing as Zero

There was a time when the number zero was unknown to us. Then we got smart enough to invent the number zero. Everyone agreed we must be smarter now that we have this new number that really isn't a number at all but instead is just a "place holder". The number zero served us well back when we first learned to count but it is now time for us to abandon the zero as a child will abandon the tricycle and then later the training wheels on their bike. The number Zero has had a long and glorious history and we should mark down its place with honor as long as we accept that there must be an end to this nonsense so we can move on to the next level. Along with the Dinosaurs, the Horse Drawn Carriage and the Phone Pager, we can abandon this archaic device. We don't need no zero now. Here are my proofs.

Let's talk dollars: If you have one and then you don't, it doesn't feel like zero dollars, it feels like negative one. There is no such thing as zero.

Let's talk apples. You want some for a pie and you don't have any yet but your dream pie does. You never had zero with all those apples gleaming in your eye.

Let's not talk apples. If you don't have any apples, and we are not talking about apples, it doesn't feel like zero apples because there are no apples to begin with. Zero would be too many apples in this case. As soon as we talk about apples, the very absence or presence makes the total a non-zero number. It is simply not possible to stop in between positive and negative values. There either is, or is not. The existence of a Twilight Zone in the middle requires an alternate universe that none of us have ever or will ever see.

Let's talk people. Can you be zero years old? At birth? At conception? Is there a moment just before or just after that is somehow long enough to allow a third condition? The answer should be no. No matter how we measure, there is only before and after but not even one single instant can exist between or we would all be stuck there forever and beyond.

Why do I berate the poor lowly zero so much? My main complaint is the confusion with the alphabet character with the same visual image we call "Oh". To confuse things further we interchange the "Oh" sound for both the number and the letter. Not only does the number dilute the market price of the letter, but it should have its own icon rather than borrow one already in use. Then to top it off they put these two characters next to each other on the keyboard in order to maximize the possibility that mistakes will be made. How many times has the number not added up due to it being a Capitol OH instead of the number zero. They look the same, why not agree to put a strike through one or the other?

Yes, there was a time when we needed this crutch to prop up our fledgling intellect but now we are ready to think on our own two feet and prepare to run ahead to our next goal in the race for knowledge. What once was our central pivot is now our only anchor and it's time to cut the line and sail away. The real benefit will be in the computer world where we deal exclusively with 1’s and 0’s. Imagine the savings if we can banish half the traffic. We should all tell the internet to, “Stop sending any more zero’s!” Just think how fast the web will be when we only have to send the ones.