[pron]

You're talking about the graphical representation of a string. A string is any stream of measurements (over time, if you like).

> If they weren't, I'd be happy writing my day-to-day code in Turing Machines.

And if they weren't, we'd see neurons or DNA using type-theory!

[tome]

Since you seem to have thought about the fine details of this much more than you are letting on here and on your blog post I suggest you post an addendum (or even a new blog post) to be more precise about what exactly they are. There's a lot missing as it stands, and interested readers like myself are left to fill in the blanks.