3.1: Atomic Data

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When we say that some data is “atomic,” we don’t mean it’s radioactive; we mean it’s indivisible.

The ancients spoke of “atoms” as the smallest possible bits of matter. If you divide up any physical object – say, an apple – into parts, you get its components: a stalk, a stem, skin, seeds, and the sweet juicy stuff. Cut up any of those pieces with a knife and you get smaller pieces. If you continue to split and split and split, philosophers like Democritus reasoned, you’ll eventually get to tiny indivisible bits that cannot be further dissected. This is where the physical world bottoms out at the finest degree of granularity.

Similarly, a piece of atomic data is typically treated as an entire unit, not as something with internal structure that can be broken down. In the next chapter we’ll learn about various ways that these atoms of data can be strung together and organized into larger wholes; for now, though, we’re just looking at the atoms themselves.