As an older student (starting a masters at a 'youngish' 54), I arrived with plenty of real-world knowledge and 'conceptions.' (If you have had them this long, and came by 'em honestly, they are no longer PREconceptions.) It might look like baggage to the pedagogue, even one who is my contemporary, because he or she is so used to looking at relatively blank slates.
You know you are learning when you personally experience paradigm shift.
This is the mental equivalent of going back to the gym after a lapse, and selecting a personal trainer who acknowledged, but just, that you are different from supple young things that seem made for overexertion and subsequent tissue repair.
I have not been asked to leave my past at the gate, but no one will carry it in for me here, either. I was admitted to the academy, now I have to admit the academy into me.
I am looking for intellectual dialogue, if not communion, which I could find on occasion 'before,' but in my school's mostly-commuter population, the chemistry is all wrong. Everyone is always rushing to or from campus, and now I understand why there is no suitable hangout—nothing remotely resembling one, anywhere within a mile of the campus, even—for the kind of intellectual sparring that I craved as an undergrad and in all the aeons since...
The present intellectual 'boot camp' has me in cold-turkey withdrawal from the very stimulation I anticipated. I could use that succor, and kvetching here in monologue only seems to worsen the itch.
It looks like I may make it to the point where I 'pass' boot camp. Guess I will know when the drill-sergeants start saluting back!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Drive By Wire
'Throttle Cable' was a very straightforward name of a car or truck part until recent years; it ran from your gas pedal directly to the throttle lever on your carburettor. Input from driver to engine is becoming ever more mediated by electronic processing. Many vehicles now take your right foot's input as 'demand' input (electromechanical) into a computer, where it is one of several values that are processed, then an electromechanical output (via rod or cable linkage) operates the throttle in a housing or body on the intake side of your engine. Similarly, timing of the ignition spark (and in some cases now, valve operation) is modulated by this processor; each used to be adjusted mechanically and in isolation from the other variables, maximized for at most a few different engine operation regimes.
Those who have driven relatively low powered vehicle might remember being able to 'feel' when additional throttle application gained no additional performance and wasted fuel, or even inhibited performance gains, or when they wanted to be at a certain speed with the throttle already 'packed' to that point of diminishing returns, in order to crest the coming hill without losing a gear. Today's driver, for two reasons, will not generally have such learning opportunities. The vehicles are almost all powered, for their weight, in what we used to call 'sports car' category (1 horsepower or more per 14 lbs of weight) so 'feel' for differences in grade and wind is very subtle. And the sensors and brains are mediating between what we want (demand, via our right foot or the speed control) and the engine components and functions which will deliver.
I will not rail against anti-lock brakes, but point out that the instruction one can get from learning how to feel for the modulation point, where you are at the limits of adhesion between your tires and the road, also instructs about when steering will get squirmy too. Directional control, braking and acceleration all depend on the instantaneous condition of adhesion between four points of contact between tires and earth surface... and 'progress' is taking from us some of the direct ways skilled drivers used to make that very sensible.
Back to our sophisticated throttles: the main downside here is that the connection many of us felt with the primary mover, which told us lots about its capabilities, limits and needs, was also telling us a lot about efficiencies (if we were paying attention). Lots of this is generalizable knowledge, and will prove very useful to us as we figure how to manage fewer resources for more people. The related secondary loss is that engineer/inventor types, and their appreciators, have been put at a remove from the lessons that driving a car could teach about power generation and use.
For now, I hope that lots of Prius drivers are digesting the interesting computer graphics and learning how to get even better mileage by letting up on the 'gas pedal.' Our lives abound in very relevant physics lessons, although we seem to be getting more protected from them all the time!
Those who have driven relatively low powered vehicle might remember being able to 'feel' when additional throttle application gained no additional performance and wasted fuel, or even inhibited performance gains, or when they wanted to be at a certain speed with the throttle already 'packed' to that point of diminishing returns, in order to crest the coming hill without losing a gear. Today's driver, for two reasons, will not generally have such learning opportunities. The vehicles are almost all powered, for their weight, in what we used to call 'sports car' category (1 horsepower or more per 14 lbs of weight) so 'feel' for differences in grade and wind is very subtle. And the sensors and brains are mediating between what we want (demand, via our right foot or the speed control) and the engine components and functions which will deliver.
I will not rail against anti-lock brakes, but point out that the instruction one can get from learning how to feel for the modulation point, where you are at the limits of adhesion between your tires and the road, also instructs about when steering will get squirmy too. Directional control, braking and acceleration all depend on the instantaneous condition of adhesion between four points of contact between tires and earth surface... and 'progress' is taking from us some of the direct ways skilled drivers used to make that very sensible.
Back to our sophisticated throttles: the main downside here is that the connection many of us felt with the primary mover, which told us lots about its capabilities, limits and needs, was also telling us a lot about efficiencies (if we were paying attention). Lots of this is generalizable knowledge, and will prove very useful to us as we figure how to manage fewer resources for more people. The related secondary loss is that engineer/inventor types, and their appreciators, have been put at a remove from the lessons that driving a car could teach about power generation and use.
For now, I hope that lots of Prius drivers are digesting the interesting computer graphics and learning how to get even better mileage by letting up on the 'gas pedal.' Our lives abound in very relevant physics lessons, although we seem to be getting more protected from them all the time!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Dreaming in Cyber
As an undergrad in the early 1970's when sleep-dream research was starting to take off, I lucked into having James B. Maas (Cornell) as my adviser. He, and William Dement (at one of the large Southern California campuses then) were the two big publishers of research that was interesting, fun, groundbreaking, and memorable. Maas's Psych 101 in Baily Hall (1100 seats) was always oversubscribed.
As a subject in one of the survey studies, I remember being asked if I was ever aware of having dreamed in color. Apparently, this was as strange question for many subjects as it was for me... and the interviewers had developed a script to coach us in answering. If you were not specifically aware of having awakened from dreaming with a vivid, specific color memory, they counted it as a 'no.' Over time, I forgot the question and the strangeness of the suggestion that I did NOT dream in color.
I was in my late 20s when I had the described, defining experience. While I cannot generally report whether a specific recent dream was in color or not, I felt certain on the morning of revelation that I had not ever before dreamt in color, or I would have known it.
For what it may be worth, I have been dreaming with increasing frequency over the last year in 'computer screens' (in color, by the way). I wonder if this is analogous to 'dreaming in German,' say, as a hallmark of advanced fluency in a second language. If it gets to dreaming of being on hold to a help desk, I am seeking professional help, or at least looking up Professor Maas.
As a subject in one of the survey studies, I remember being asked if I was ever aware of having dreamed in color. Apparently, this was as strange question for many subjects as it was for me... and the interviewers had developed a script to coach us in answering. If you were not specifically aware of having awakened from dreaming with a vivid, specific color memory, they counted it as a 'no.' Over time, I forgot the question and the strangeness of the suggestion that I did NOT dream in color.
I was in my late 20s when I had the described, defining experience. While I cannot generally report whether a specific recent dream was in color or not, I felt certain on the morning of revelation that I had not ever before dreamt in color, or I would have known it.
For what it may be worth, I have been dreaming with increasing frequency over the last year in 'computer screens' (in color, by the way). I wonder if this is analogous to 'dreaming in German,' say, as a hallmark of advanced fluency in a second language. If it gets to dreaming of being on hold to a help desk, I am seeking professional help, or at least looking up Professor Maas.
Friday, November 9, 2007
A slight respite from assignment deadlines coincides with catching up on some reading, and these intersect with some thoughts I have been mulling. Reading Anthony Grafton's Future Reading (New Yorker Magazine, 11/5/2007) it clicked.
The half life of an information technology is the interval between successive media proliferations.
It sounds tautologous... but ponder a bit. I will throw out a few pearls now, and return with more in my next post.
What may be different in this regime change, with digital trying to replace paper records, is that print is still proliferating steadily. (Previously, paper rather deftly displaced parchment, which in turn was seen as better than a wax codex, which in pre-Christian days displaced clay tablets...)
Technology 'this time' allows for the production of either printed or digital records from virtually identical workflows, but once they are created, the stewardship, permanence, accessibility and findability of 'hard copy' records, and their 'born digital' siblings, are very different, in ways we are only starting to appreciate.
At the micro-level of digital storage media, we note, in a dizzying short span, the introduction, brief flourish, then complete obsolescence of: 5.25" diskettes, 3.5" floppies (including the uniquely formatted Apple version), ZIP discs (in 100, 250 and ultimately 750MB capacities), Jazz drives, and a host of tape cassette formats. The rewritable CD seems outright venerable, for having been available all of 12 years now, but one wonders how long 'til it is hard to find an optical media drive that won't have the requisite backward compatibility to read all of my carefully archived treasures...
At the macro level, the digital pile will only grow, if not ever fully take over. The incessant need to migrate digitalia to the next darling format on the next hegemonous medium is certain to effectively leave behind much of our societal record and output from this transition era. God knows my archived e-mails, on scores of lovingly labeled and stored media, are not going to be accessible and readable in ten years if I do not decide to commit to periodic conversions and rewritings, and if my original organizing and labeling schemes prove fugitive through it all.
Previous information tech revolutions were relatively swift, and once most of society heard the new tune, they shifted right to it. The important works, with some sad exceptions, made the migration to the next medium. The present revolution does not hold any promise of an early armistice. Think of protracted trench warfare, of waste, and squandered youth, truth and beauty.
The half life of an information technology is the interval between successive media proliferations.
It sounds tautologous... but ponder a bit. I will throw out a few pearls now, and return with more in my next post.
What may be different in this regime change, with digital trying to replace paper records, is that print is still proliferating steadily. (Previously, paper rather deftly displaced parchment, which in turn was seen as better than a wax codex, which in pre-Christian days displaced clay tablets...)
Technology 'this time' allows for the production of either printed or digital records from virtually identical workflows, but once they are created, the stewardship, permanence, accessibility and findability of 'hard copy' records, and their 'born digital' siblings, are very different, in ways we are only starting to appreciate.
At the micro-level of digital storage media, we note, in a dizzying short span, the introduction, brief flourish, then complete obsolescence of: 5.25" diskettes, 3.5" floppies (including the uniquely formatted Apple version), ZIP discs (in 100, 250 and ultimately 750MB capacities), Jazz drives, and a host of tape cassette formats. The rewritable CD seems outright venerable, for having been available all of 12 years now, but one wonders how long 'til it is hard to find an optical media drive that won't have the requisite backward compatibility to read all of my carefully archived treasures...
At the macro level, the digital pile will only grow, if not ever fully take over. The incessant need to migrate digitalia to the next darling format on the next hegemonous medium is certain to effectively leave behind much of our societal record and output from this transition era. God knows my archived e-mails, on scores of lovingly labeled and stored media, are not going to be accessible and readable in ten years if I do not decide to commit to periodic conversions and rewritings, and if my original organizing and labeling schemes prove fugitive through it all.
Previous information tech revolutions were relatively swift, and once most of society heard the new tune, they shifted right to it. The important works, with some sad exceptions, made the migration to the next medium. The present revolution does not hold any promise of an early armistice. Think of protracted trench warfare, of waste, and squandered youth, truth and beauty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)