If you're no electrical engineer (like yours truly), & want to know more about what makes digital electronics tick, the HardwareSecrets gang has just the article for you this morning. They're laying it all down on logic gates for the un-initiated.

"Logic gates are the basic components in digital electronics. They are used to create digital circuits and even complex integrated circuits. For example, complex integrated circuits may bring already a complete circuit ready to be used – microprocessors and microcontrollers are the best example – but inside them they were projected using several logic gates."