The moving lines introduce a curious twist into the interpretation of a hexagram produced when consulting the oracle. They not only point to some emphasized aspect of the situation (corresponding to that line), but also give some indication of how circumstances could change or evolve in the future.
As noted in the discussion of emblematic lines, a moving line is one that has developed as far as possible (in a yin or yang direction) and is poised on the brink of turning into its opposite. This "teetering on the edge" gives the line special significance in the hexagram, hence the appended texts describing each line. Any moving line is an invitation to use this moving line text as added commentary on the situation at hand.
Further, if you actually change all the moving lines (if any) into their opposites, an entirely new hexagram is produced. This produces a threefold reading describing the changing process: the original situation (symbolized by the original hexagram), the means or avenues of change available to the inquirer (the additional commentary due to the moving lines), and a final outcome (the hexagram produced by changing the moving lines into their opposites). This gives an impression of the dynamics of the forces active in the current situation, a sense of what is at work, how to cooperate with it, and what to expect in the end. By contrast, a hexagram with no moving lines is rather static, a completed "thing in itself" with limited opportunity for change or evolution.
As for how the meanings of the moving lines were determined, a number of factors were apparently important. First of all, the methods described in the last section (especially position and trigrams) must be relied on very strongly. The moving line then becomes even stronger and its positional meaning intensified; its yin or yang nature becomes more pronounced. In some hexagrams, though, it seems that the line has already been allowed to change into its opposite, so that a moving yang line is interpreted (by position and trigram) as a yin line, or vice versa. This creates new trigrams and new pictographic clues for the mind to draw on. At times, both methods (making the line stronger and allowing it to change) seem to be woven together. This blending of images into a whole is typical of the holistic "both/and" style of thinking of the Chinese sages, as opposed to the Aristotelian "either/or" logic typical of the Western schools.
There are a number of interesting mathematical clues buried in the idea of moving lines, although the significance of these hints is not always clear. The first of these involve a correspondence between the emblematic lines and trigrams. As noted earlier, even though there are 4 kinds of emblematic lines, they are produced by 3 separate "changes" or yin/yang decisions: 8 possible outcomes are reduced to 4 kinds of lines. This is highly reminiscent of the trigrams. In fact, if you use the numerical equivalents of yin=2 and yang=3, K'un becomes an old/moving yin line (since the trigram and the old yin line both have a value of 6), the sons become young yang (=7), the daughters young yin (=8), and Ch'ien moving yang (=9). This accords well with the view of heaven and earth as creative (moving) forces, while the derived trigrams are secondary (static). Perhaps the young lines had some threefold meaning (since there are 3 sons and daughters); if so, this teaching has been lost. This also hints that the lines of a hexagram are actually trigrams in disguise. Perhaps a hexagram is more properly a fractal figure like the Mandelbrot set, where each line consists of smaller lines at a deeper level. The idea that the hexagram is "trigrams all the way down" would have obvious appeal to the more contemplative programmer. Again, the historical evidence for this concept is quite elusive.
The movement of these lines takes on an interesting structure when the emblematic lines are viewed as digrams. The original value of the line (whether yin or yang) is determined solely by the upper line of the two, while the value after movement depends solely on the lower. In fact, the new value is simply the negation of the lower line (where yin becomes yang and vice versa). Hence, old yin (2 yin lines) becomes yang (since the lower line is negated into a yang line), while young yang (yang over yin) stays yang (the lower yin "changes" into yang, again). This pattern is why the "I" or change is often symbolized by the boolean operation NOT.
Similarly, moving lines can be imagined as one hexagram "working on" another. In this view, a "ghost hexagram" is constructed by representing a moving line with yang and a static line with yin. The outcome hexagram is produced by the ghost "working on" the original hexagram, telling it which lines to change. More specifically, the operation is described by the boolean truth tables:
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This is why "I" is also symbolized by the boolean operation XOR. It also shows how any hexagram can transform into any other one in this system. (Mathematically, the Q-Ching forms a group.)
Scholars have debated whether the NOT/digrams or the XOR/2-hexagram models were the actual basis of the oracular computers of the time. Each method of representing hexagrams and their movement relies on a 12 bit code and various shift and/or boolean operations; such architectures were easily within the capabilities of the old Wise Ones. Unfortunately, this question may never be fully resolved in our day.
As with any computer language of note, the Q-Ching makes use of numerous keywords and phrases to represent important concepts and operations. These often cryptic references are not only seeds around which the thoughts and images of the reader are to constellate, but they also apparently served as "code words" between programmers for expressing opinions often frowned upon by upper management. Since the layoff packages in the old schools were considerably less generous than current practice (usually consisting of the beheading of the offending programmer), such poetic license is quite understandable. The practice is comparable to the flourishing of "black humor" in modern software houses.
The following representative list of keywords is by no means intended to be exhaustive, but should serve to reveal the true flavor of the oracle.
It has been noted by numerous historians of computer science that all old cultures that haven't rigorously developed the mathematical concept of infinity seem to pick some unimaginably (for them) large number as symbolic of the infinite. This "big" number can range from as small as 3 for some truly primitive tribes to such reasonable approximations as 100,000,000 in Hindu computing. The practice persists to this very day in the concept of "integer overflow" in modern computing systems, where the largest expressible integer is a function of the word size in the hardware (often only 32 bits, approx. ± 2 billion). The choice of 10000 by the Chinese has been somewhat of an enigma for historians, since this culture is otherwise quite advanced and sophisticated. Such a small threshold for the infinite is puzzling, since even the crudest pocket abacus of the day was easily capable of representing integers of much greater magnitude.
Perhaps some light on the topic is buried in the very structure of the Q-Ching itself. Remember that it was earlier noted that there is considerable controversy over such simple matters as the number base used by the Chinese in their computers. Further, it makes little sense to use a value of 10000 decimal for infinity, since such a number is not even a power of 2. The entire topic makes much more sense if you assume that an octal or base 8 number system was in use by the Wise Ones. One author has made the perceptive suggestion that the translation of "10000 things" is a corruption of the old texts, and that 10000 octal was the original intent of the sages. Notice that 10000 octal is 4096 or 64 times 64, the total number of hexagrams possible when the moving lines are included. Since the Q-Ching was intended to model all the comings and goings of the phenomenal universe, it seems especially fitting that the number of hexagrams should be exactly the same as "the ten thousand things under heaven".
This was apparently the "holy grail" of the Chinese programmer. The fact that it was symbolized by such a powerful hexagram (see Hx. 3, Golden Code) is testimony to how important the search for Golden Code was. While it is impossible to rigorously define (like much in this system) what sets Golden Code apart from ordinary code, it is often described as containing "beauty" or possessing a strong aesthetic quality. In more traditional terms, Golden Code revealed the Tao in a particularly striking fashion that simply could not be matched by the average programmer. The ability to write code that not only worked well, but inspired awe in the reader, was one of the main virtues of the Wise Ones.
The actual Chinese term that we've translated as "Wise One" is a multi-faceted word that has many meanings. Perhaps a better translation would be "enlightened programmer" or "master programmer", but these renderings still fall short. The phrase is literally translated as "implementer of the Tao". There seems to be three main virtues associated with the Wise Ones. First and foremost, they were in uncompromising pursuit of Golden Code, which they valued above all else (even promotions). Second, they were "survivors" in a very unique sense. Because the Wise Ones had intimate knowledge of the Tao, they were able to notice even the subtlest shifts in the organization around them and could adapt to these changes with grace and skill. Finally, they were marked by a very impish sense of humor and were infinitely amused by the foibles of men. While there were actual people that displayed these traits, the metaphor of "Wise Ones" seemed to be a training device for young programmers, as well. The Q-Ching is, in many ways, a training manual for the uninitiated on how to thrive in the emperor's court as a programmer and how to pursue the Golden Code. The Wise One was the ideal that all good coders eventually strived for.
This figure appears as the straight man to the Wise One in the Q-Ching. The term refers not to stupidity or dull wittedness, but to a lack of experience or insight into the ways of the Tao. The fool was thus a metaphor for all the traits to outgrow on the way to becoming a Wise One.
This is a mythical "black hole" down which things disappear, never to be heard of again. Normally, this includes things like code, test results, etc., but potentially, anything can drop into the bit bucket. The appearance of this symbol (associated with the trigram K'un) is almost always considered a bad omen.
Roughly the same as "bit bucket", signifying a matter that comes to nought in the end. For instance, the Wise Ones specifically refered to any technical reports that no one would read as "dragon food", a waste of time and energy that could be better spent coding.