Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1996
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Flying Blind
Imagine being told that when you throw a cricket ball the trajectory will be straight for a distance followed by an abrupt fall to the ground. You would immediately contest this on the basis of your earliest childhood recollections that the trajectory is actually an arc. Unfortunately, much of our understanding is not based on such an easily assimilated experience, and for example, we can safely assume no-one understands quantum mechanics! The notion that an atom effectively changes size on the basis of the speed of approach of a proton is something we cannot experience directly. But this is well founded and lies at the heart of calculating the probability of a collision or nuclear fission. The counter intuitive nature of such interactions means only a fraction of the population can cope with atomic physics. Computer simulation and VR now offer new windows into such worlds that surpass all our established methods of modelling and visualisation. Since the ancient Greeks, and until recent times, modelling and understanding has been dominated by difficult to comprehend mathematics. So it has therefore been inaccessible to all but a few educated in the art of abstract manipulation and hieroglyphic formulation. All this is now changing - fast.

Throughout our formal education we are fed a diet of problems that can be solved. From our earliest days at school we are led to believe that our world is dominated by well behaved and understandable phenomenon. But it is actually grossly non-linear and difficult to understand. The stock market, weather prediction, earthquakes, water flow, road traffic, advertising and crowd behaviour are common examples.

So in many respects we have been fortunate in being able to develop the majority of our systems and technologies on nominally linear assumptions. Prior to the arrival of computers we saw very strong links between our direct experience, physical models and mathematics. However, technology has now introduced, and opened up, new realms that are not coupled to any of our previous experience. For example, the sheer scale of software programs of millions of lines of code, with thousands of loops and decision points, is way beyond raw human brain power to understand. We are definitely wet ware limited.

An analogous, and a hugely complex system, would be trying to build a bridge on the basis of the binding energies in the nucleus of the iron atom. This would be fundamentally impossible. And yet the simple abstraction to Young?s Modulus of Elasticity allows us to stand back from any deep physical understanding of iron with sufficient accuracy to construct a bridge fit for purpose. The difficulty with software is that we have yet to discover a suitable abstraction. Although we have migrated from machine code to high level languages, we are still unable to grasp the full picture. Perhaps VR will allow us to enter such realms to gain a new perspective and an understanding of the grossly non-linear.

As recently as the 13th Century the use of pictures in mathematics was decried, and yet, visualisation is probably the single most powerful tool available, beyond a good left-right brain connect, for understanding the topic. But a parallel situation also exists today with those who decry the use of IT. The reality is that without computers the world of complexity would remain totally hidden. Chaos and Fractals cannot be explored without the screen! Turning the complex into animated, 3D, colour, pictographic form gives a new route to understanding. It is almost certain that this technology holds the vital key to creating a generalised understanding of almost everything. Without it we would know virtually nothing about turbulent flow in gases and fluids, economic systems, human interaction, or evolutionary theory - we would be flying blind!

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk

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