[time-nuts] Help - Hope?
Rob Seaman
seaman at NOAO.EDU
Tue Jan 3 07:13:22 UTC 2006
John Miles says:
> I think we're seeing the technology shift to a different level of
> abstraction
Yes - this is certainly true of software, for instance. Our team
attended JavaOne this year - along with 15,000 rabid (and much
younger) technophiles. Object oriented programming replaces
procedural programming replaces assembler coding replaces machine
code - in significantly under one career length. As an
undergraduate, I programmed a 6502 "KIM" to do productive work (plot
time series photometry via an A/D connected to a photomultiplier) in
machine code via its hex pad. Now you can generate OO code direct
from UML (or so they claim - have yet to see it demonstrated
practically). (Algorithms remain algorithms, however.)
And no - physics remains physics. We're still building telescopes
out of big shiny mirrors using optical principles well known to
Fresnel and Fraunhofer. I'm reading the history of the first
Atlantic telegraph cable. Great story full of details like Kelvin's
invention of the precision galvanometer - virtually identical to the
torsion devices whose mirrors I learned to read as an undergraduate.
It may well be that TI or HP or Fluke will sell you a totally digital
handheld gizmo with greater sensitivity (and "features"), but you
still have to know as much about electrical circuits to use the new
gizmos as you did the old gizmos. Meanwhile, it is apparently the
case that today's cable laying ships still use cable handling
techniques perfected during the travails of the first transatlantic
cable venture 150 years ago. Some things change. Some things stay
the same.
What fundamentally remains the same is the reality underlying all our
technology. Won't belabor the question of layering UTC on Earth
orientation via mean solar time. Focus instead on the "works" of
atomic clocks (or related gizmos like masers or whatever comes
next). The levels of abstraction may be compressed to hide the
details of intervening layers of complexity, but the two parts that
will always remain are the user interface (itself an interesting
reflection of human factors), and at the other end, the basic physics
of whatever phenomena.
I suspect I'm not alone on this list in volunteering as a local
science fair judge. I focus on the middle school physical science
projects as providing the most opportunity for encouraging a future
career choice. Ignore the scoring rubric. The general award rules
provide for first/second/third prizes with ties for second and third
place, so the goal is simply to identify and rank the top five
projects. It can be difficult (to put it mildly) to infer the mental
state of most of the participants, but there are always a few that
stand out (even after discounting the projects resulting from Science
Olympiad, etc).
Really, all that matters at that age is a sense of creativity.
Actually, I weight any evidence of true curiosity and, well, fun even
higher. These are rare (especially under the crushing weight of
"standards"), but every year reveals new kids finding new ways of
looking at familiar territory. I invariably leave more optimistic
than when I arrived.
Bottom line is that a scientific world view is likely no more
prevalent now than it was in the middle ages. But it is likely no
less prevalent, either. This is the world of Burning Man, the "Long
Now", and public key cryptography. My neighbor is an AF pilot whose
son is rebuilding a Corvette from the ground up. These are not folks
full of technological angst. We just happen to be in the natural
pause between the first Moon landings and our inevitable (albeit
politicized) return. We'll miss this time of relative quiet when
it's gone.
Suggesting that the love of technological pursuits is dying out is
kind of like those 19th century ruminations that all of scientific
knowledge was well in hand, or that guy who figured out several
decades ago that all possible songs had already been written. Not
too worried at this end.
Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
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