Anomaly and Error: A New Kind of Problem Solving

Currently, computers represent a technology of undeniable sophistication. We use them to solve a great number of sophisticated problems, including modelling of the worldwide climate and designing chemical reactions that have never occurred. If we open our computers or cell phones, we see a collection of components whose complex arrangement indicates that such a rigid complexity is the only way to accomplish the task of computation.

Certainly, the creation of computers that follow rules (and follow them well) has been a successful endeavor. The concept of an imprecise computer seems to be an anathema: even our rigid computers seem to run on Murphy’s Law and frustration. Nonetheless, they seem to get the job done. We can solve a great many problems, but, in order to do so, we must continue to create computers that follow rules faster and faster.

In place of creation and intelligence, we have speed. At what point does that paradigm break down? To facilitate speed, our computers must be made smaller. At some point, though, the world with which we are familiar begins to break down. Following Moore’s Law, in the not-too-near future, the imprecise nature of the quantum world will clash with the rigid nature of our computers.

Some seem to think that quantum computers represent the solution to this problem. To my limited understanding, a quantum computer is fundamentally unable to solve any new problems. We can solve certain problems faster, but we will still be limited by the rigid structure that has become so fundamentally necessary to our conception of computation.

If we examine the computer as a device to solve problems, we can examine a great many things under the definition. Further, we can ask, do other systems exhibit the same rigid structure of our friendly neighborhood problem solver? To my knowledge, in virtually all cases, the answer is no.

Presented with the problem of surviving on this unpredictable planet, the solution is evolution. In short, life could not persist without error. Error allows us to adapt, to change with a changing environment. Presented with the problem of consciousness, we understand that our brains are imprecise, our thoughts governed by the unpredictable course of electrical and chemical signals. All around, we see evidence of systems that thrive because of imperfection and error. Rigid systems do not persist for long.

What, then, will come of our technological obsession with rigidity? Certainly, that structure will persist for some time. However, I think the threads of the next technological revolution are currently visible. In addition to quantum computers, current research is being undertaken in the field of Amorphic computing. Amorphic computing relies on many imperfect simple components. Much like cellular automaton such as Conway’s Game of Life, meaningful phenomena emerges from a system that is let to run, without the influence of external guides.

At the moment, our computers are remarkably well-suited to solve our problems, but they do so in ways we wouldn't. Instead of creating increasingly complex computers, with technologies that exist solely to facilitate a perfect system of order and rules, we can embrace anomaly. In the not-too-far future, when our problem solving infrastructure begins to clash with the physical world, perhaps we must embrace the natural world—imperfection and all—to continue adapting.

                        

Mirroring Happiness

Most of our discussion of time has been based on combating our individual relative feeling of time with the mechanic "clock" time that we use to organize our societal lives.  To me this is very similar to the nature of Revolutions that must originate and proliferate in the hearts and minds of individuals that then go forth and distribute the ideas to the target society.  I can't help but believe that there isn't a clear divide though between the internal, individual decisions and the societal implications.  I have a few examples that led me to this question.

I don't know how many people have heard about "Mirror Neurons" but I find them fascinating.  The following American Psychological Association articles describes them.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror.aspx
Long story short: mirror neurons are neurons that fire when you witness something happen in the same way that they would fire if you were the person you witnessed.  They do not distinguish between you as an observer or you as an actor in the situation.  These studies and definitions of course have huge ramifications in terms of basic human learning and development as well as our ability to experience extreme empathy.

So where am I going with this?  Mirror neurons show that every moment of our life, our brains are bombarded with information and, unless we are in complete solitude, our mind can easily confuse if the signals are original to our experiences or original to those around us.  Time cannot be an exception.  Undoubtedly, sitting in a class of engaged students makes the class feel faster than one in which every student is asleep.  Of course, the largest source of our internal perception of things is our actual internal perception of things, but mirror neurons point out that there is a gray area of environmental interference.

The second topic that I'd like to tie in is the studies of happiness and gratitude.  Below is the Georgia Psychological Association study and corresponding YouTube video (I suggest the YouTube video for a less-scientific but more engaging approach).
http://www.gapsychology.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=309
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHv6vTKD6lg
Again Long story short: expressing gratitude goes a long way towards increasing your happiness.  In a world where the mind exists in its own closed system this would appear contradictory.  It is not the existence of gratitude that increases happiness, it is the expression of it.  Expression, by definition, is making known one's thoughts and feelings, most often to others.

The idea of Revolutions originating internally and proliferating externally is overly simplistic and excludes the important ramification on the revolutionist's mind from their environment.  Just as Lightman suggested that Einstein's theory was influenced by his uncontrollable dreams, American Founders were influential upon each other, and an unremarkable woman was influenced by a moment to do the remarkable and stay in her seat at the front of the bus.

The Reality of Time

After discussing Einstein's dreams, contemplating his realities and attempting to create my own, I began to think about the idea of time from a human perspective. Yes, it is easy to define time as the constant movement of a hand around the white face of a clock, or the reliable sun up sun down system, we somewhat derived this clock idea from, but are those things really time or just a way of normalizing everyone's relative clock to make our society functional?
By that I mean that, what if true time was the speed at which our brains analyzed the reality we live in? In which case it would be possible that time is not a constant. As I am sure you have experienced, the activities we do affect the rate at which we "perceive" time. Consistently, we gripe and groan about the monday to friday work week and its length, but when it comes to vacation, a week isn't even close to enough time for some well needed R&R. Why is this?
My proposition is this. Our bodies do in fact experience different rates of time. While the absolute normalized clock demonstrates on the outside what the "time" is, our bodies may experience this time at a different rate which is almost never constant. This idea would create some explanation as to those who are happier, live longer. Possibly, being happy releases a chemical that induces your body to experience life at a slower rate, where as unhappy people experience the opposite.
While we see time as the amount left in a class, or until the end of the week, or vacation, what time really counts is the time our body has left on this planet. So why not pay attention to this "clock" and do things that enable us to change the rate at which it operates. Do things that make us happier so that we might live longer.

Out of my comfort zone: Simile poetry challenge

So I mentioned to Toni that I'm not too big a fan of similes because they feel sort of cheesy to me. I like metaphors because they can be anything; they're not constrained by word choice. They don't need to say this is this directly, they let you infer what this is like. Even so, Toni gave me a "Poetry Challenge" sheet that asked you to fill out several similes and to pick a few and write a poem. So here it is:

Perspective

If I should wake before I die,

I should like to know I made at least a small difference.

It feels like stones being lobbed at my heart

Repeatedly

Just to make sure that I feel small and worthless.

I feel powerless sometimes

Like there’s nothing I can do to be better

Everything wrong is my fault

I try and I try and I try

To fix the things I cannot change

To change the opinions that won’t be changed by me.

I can only change ME.

She held her life in her own hands as if it were a new and special gift.

I can choose to be positive

Respectful

To Listen

To try to understand what’s needed from me.

I can choose to do my best

To accept others’ opinions as differing from my own.

I do not have to let them define me.

Nothing was the same, now that it was in her charge.  

Quantum Information Poetry

I stumbled across a blog from the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, somewhat similar to our blog. More specifically, a colleague linked me to this post, "The complementarity (not incompatibility of reason and rhyme."

It features a brief discussion of the the author's introduction to quantum information poetry, but the highlight is the author's poem about her research.

I could try to define all the terms she uses, but I think in that would cause the poem to lose some of its charm. Much of the piece's appeal comes from the way the author juxtaposes heavy technical references with a light, airy tone. Reading it (at least first) without fully understanding what she's talking about is a neat way of seeing how poetry can make sense even a little out of context.

I wish her the best of luck in getting Physical Review Letters to publish the sequel.

Time is a slippery subject. Like Socrates’ attempts to futilely define virtue, time is an ever present concept that elusively escapes mankind’s grasp. Time is a richly varied concept within human history, but even that is difficult to understand. Behaviorally modern humans have been around for approximately 50,000 years. That is quite a long time considering the entire span of recorded history is only around 5,000 years. Yet humans have been around for much longer. In fact, anatomically modern humans have been mucking about for 200,000 years. People who look just like you and I have been on this planet for 200,000 years and we’ve only managed to record less than 3 percent of it.

Homo sapiens have had quite a number of ideas about what time is and how it works; many of these ideas are outlined in our reading Einstien’s Dreams. What I find particularly interesting, however, is modern physics’ take on the subject. One concept is that of imaginary time. Keep in mind that the word ‘imaginary’ is not meant to imply a departure from reality, but rather a different kind of time. This is a time that runs orthogonal to what we know as ‘real’ time and it comes from Quantum theory. This imaginary time along with the three directions of space make up Euclidean space-time. Steven Hawking and James Hartle have proposed that imaginary time and space together are finite in extent, but without boundary. A way to conceptualize this is to think of the surface of a balloon. Imaginary time along with space is the surface of the balloon. You can go all the way around the balloon and never leave the surface. This is interesting in that it seems a parallel to a cyclical way of viewing time. Real time marches on in a more or less linear fashion while imaginary time seems to circle around. This view of time is quite intriguing on a philosophical level as to how our universe came to be as well as on a scientific level since it helps to avoid singularities in the Big Bang theory.

I have to wonder, though, what the real impact of this is. Yes, it is fascinating to daydream about, but in the end what does this mean in the grand scheme of things. To me, generally, it seems that science attempts to figure out the truth of reality by looking outside ourselves while religion attempt the same by looking within. Both are on the same quest for “the answer”, only taking different paths to this end.

What if humans were to go extinct tomorrow? What would the consequences be? The health of the planet would surely improve. The impact on the universe would most certainly be negligible. Perhaps the only loss would be in the Universe no longer learning about itself.

Quantum Mechanics, Time, and Yoga

 

I am safe and sound, good things come to me, they bring me peace

Bones, muscles, movement; anxiety, elation, depression; everything, I give onto the hands of peace

I am free, I am free

On the surface quantum mechanics and yoga are diverse concepts with no real relationship to one another, but they are all centered on the idea of unity. In the film "What the Bleep Do We Know?!" quantum mechanics is explored for its implications that reality is much more intricate than it even appears to be with an infinite number of layers of complexity and detail that must interact to create a coherent reality. We live in a complicated world of cells, atoms, and the macroscopic but we have a unity of these concepts to produce a sense of wholeness and unity within ourselves and with the wider world. One of the biggest implication of this intricacy is the idea that we are all inescapably connected to each other and our entire reality. How we choose to see the world, how we choose to see our past and future affects our perception and perhaps even time itself. The speakers in the movie discussed scientific theories and experiments that are showing how we are all contributors to the reality we experience and that of others. This idea was especially advocated through the experiments on the effects emotions and thoughts have on the structure of water. The film advocated that labeling water with either positive or negative words directly affected the crystalline structure of the water, positive words induced a seemingly harmonious and artful structure where as negativity disrupted that harmony and caused much more erratic and essentially stressed structure. This principle was applied to the fact that our bodies are 70% water and that these same principles of the effects of thought could take place within us. By quantum mechanics our thoughts and ideas have more significance than we ever thought before and we are accountable for their effects, we are important to the whole of reality for our significance as conscious beings with the power to change the world.

These same principles have been essential to yoga throughout history. I have been a practicing yoga for seven years now and in that time I have found that it's emotional and mental benefits even outweigh the physical. Through the setting of intentions, use of affirmations, meditations, and other emotional support in posture yoga has always embraced the idea that each of us is important to the world be it with our thoughts, actions, or attitudes and utilizes this in every aspect of the practice. Intention and affirmations are used to center the mind and being on the positive even in the most difficult postures. An example of posture affirmations are listed above. Their purpose is to change how the mind views pain or stress by focusing it on a positive idea. Even if the affirmation is nothing like the actual feelings a yogi has in the poses these affirmations distract the mind and allow one to sink into the practice and find peace and enjoyment despite any perceived level of pain or stress. The basic idea is that by thinking positively one can physically feel that peace, that thoughts affect our physical state. Intentions expand on this idea to a statement about yourself for you to keep with you even after the practice, primarily about your relation to the wider world. This is a valuable activity because it extends that awareness of the importance of our thoughts in our interactions with others and is a reminder of our effect on others. Yoga is also very involved in removing the emotional roadblocks in our own lives by physically excising them through motion. Everything from our atoms to cells to muscles to thoughts to interactions are connected and we can affect our thoughts through movement just like we can affect our interactions through thought.

Both quantum mechanics and yoga share the same fundamental ideas and principles even though their creation was separated by thousands of years, yoga is thought to have begun as early as the stone age and substantiated by 3000 B.C while quantum mechanics is a 20th century scientific theory that is still developing. This is where my primary question comes in. In our class discussions Lincoln briefly asked about the connection between ancient Egyptian belief and current science and what exactly that connection implies. Yoga is an ancient and well established practice and seems to have already been aware of the very breakthroughs in the implications of quantum mechanics that we are still discovering. How do we rectify this seeming resurgence of ancient ideas? Do we brush the connections off as backwards mysticism that could never compare to our science? Is it the result of the circular time dreamed by Einstein? Is it information encoded in our souls? Our DNA? Do we see the desire for knowledge about the wholeness of creation and our unique importance to be an innate longing?

As the traditional salutation of yoga, as a way to acknowledge both yourself, those around you, and the rest of the universe:

Namaste

Culture and Truth: Validity versus Correctness and Cultural Relativism

                I would like to apologize in advance: this post is going to jump around a little bit, but hopefully it will come together in the end for the determined reader. In class on Wednesday Lincoln brought up the idea of validity as opposed to correctness. I can’t recall exactly how he put it, but he used the contrast of the classic art hanging in the Louvre and more ‘mundane’ art hanging in another museum. This brought to mind a very similar critique of the state of ethnography by Cora Du Bois, a professor of anthropology. Du Bois, as cited by Renato Rosaldo in Culture and Truth, described the “distance she felt from the ‘complexity and disarray of what [she had] once found a justifiable and challenging discipline… It has been like moving from a distinguished art museum into a garage sale.’” [1] Du Bois’ critique arose as a result of the diversification of the field of anthropology. The classic ways of writing ethnographies are being reevaluated as more individuals from different walks of life take on the role of ethnographer. For Du Bois it seems as though this reworking of anthropology through the inclusion of minority authors is leading to a degradation of the integrity of the field. In the past, names like Geertz, Boas, Malinowski, and Levi-Strauss were treated with veneration and their works treated as the standard upon which all subsequent works were to be judged; now they are as open to critique as is an ethnography written by a chemical engineer with no background in anthropology.

                In class we also briefly discussed the interesting fact that there are surprisingly few individuals like Alan Lightman who have a multidisciplinary background in both the humanities and the hard sciences. We noted that many of the great discoveries of recent times were made by individuals with their feet in two worlds. Additionally, we discussed the effect of perception on the world. Why does some art end up in the Louvre while some art gets set out at a garage sale? I believe that it has to do with perspective. Someone decided that one artist’s work was more valuable than another’s, so one artist becomes more famous while the other is left out. When one artist becomes famous, they are featured in museums and suddenly their techniques and critiques become more valid than those of the garage sale artist. Because people see the museum artist as valid, he becomes correct about everything related to art while the garage sale artist knows nothing, his work is not as valid a contribution to the artistic world, and he is not valued as highly. In reality, there is no universal scale against which to measure the works of the two artists, no grand art judge who can definitively say which is superior. Van Gogh was not famous during his lifetime; people did not view his work as valid, correct, or valued. But now he is a household name. 

                This same process applies to anthropology: graduates from certain schools have more academic prestige, thus their work is granted more validity, and then suddenly their analysis of a culture is the only correct analysis. Contributions made by “native ethnographers” who may or may not have received training in anthropology and who may or may not be biased in their reports are disregarded because they are not as correct as papers filled with anthropological parlance and terminology. In a field that focuses on humanity, culture, and the human condition, isn’t every viewpoint valid, even if not necessarily ‘correct’? 

In his book, Rosaldo argues that anthropology needs to be more open to the contributions of minority groups. He calls for a change in the way that ethnographies are written and for an inclusion of the human element in case studies and reports. He also points out the seeming impossibility of remaining objective in anthropology. Ruth Benedict describes the issue eloquently in Patterns of Culture: “No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs.” [2] In this case, isn’t it extremely important to have multidisciplinary individuals involved in anthropology? Is the same true for engineering and the hard-sciences?

The following questions that occurred to me while writing this post. Since I can’t come up with answers, I thought I would share them and see what you all thought:

Cultural relativism is a tool used by anthropologists in an attempt to avoid making ethnocentric judgments upon first contact with a bizarre cultural practice. It is a way of lending validity to other ways of life without necessarily deeming them to be ‘correct’. Does cultural relativism fit into the harmony or the unity paradigm better?

How would Aristotle, using his four causes, explain something like mortuary cannibalism or headhunting?

Sources:

[1] Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, Renato Rosaldo, 1989.

[2] Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict, 1934

Representation, Algorithmic Complexity, and Quantum Mechanics

How is representation related to the three global paradigms of unity, complexity, and harmony? 

A key underlying issue in global paradigms is the standing problem of representation: what is real?  Plato addressed this problem in terms of his theory of forms, in which he postulates that all our experiences are shadows of shadows of the true form.  In Meno, an early Platonic dialog, he is already formulating this concept by moving the real definition of virtue beyond our grasp.  In the Amduat, an Egyptian tomb text, representation is found in terms of numinal quantities, the gods, each one a part of our psyche in manifestations of archetypes, as Kacie grasped immediately and pointed out.  In this sense the gods in the Amduat are useful mental representations, not explanations of natural phenomenon, any more than our beloved stories and films serve that purpose.  What kinds of representations are we using in science?  Humanity spent a long time transitioning from inner, complex representations as we find in the Amduat to unifying representations as begin in Plato and culminate in Grand Unified Field Theories in physics, as we see in the standard model of particles and fields.  Likewise, the attempt to use survival of the fittest and Darwinian evolution to explain so much of biology is another example of an attempt at a unifying theory.

In fact, science has been tremendously successful at providing clarity in the paradigm of unity.  Recently this paradigm has been challenged by the advent of complexity.  Complexity includes features like emergent phenomena, hierarchies of scale, connectivity, and yes, chaos.  Measures of complexity include Kolmogorov or algorithmic complexity, which measure complexity by the length of the representation, in particular the computational resources needed.  So for example even though pi is an infinite bit string, since it can be calculated from just a few lines of computer code, pi is not very complex.  Likewise, many kinds of chaos and fractals are not complex in this sense.  On the other hand the internet, DNA, consciousness, and many other phenomena do not appear to be representable in a simple algorithm, or even by iteration over that algorithm.  Scientists still hope that such complex phenomena will come down to equations, and it is hard to prove otherwise.  But for the moment it appears that complexity is common in the universe, does not appear as any obvious result of fundamental physical law, and cannot be represented by a simple algorithm in most cases.  Thus the paradigm of unity (science through the mid to late twentieth century) is giving rise to a new paradigm of complexity now.  Perhaps this paradigm is not that of the Amduat.  However, we can understand some basic concepts in the Amduat scientifically.

First, unity, a single state, has entropy zero.  For the Egyptians and the Sumerians this state is nothingness, uninteresting.  Only diversity gives rise to life and interest, to the plethora of gods, representing the complexity of the human mind, found for example in the Amduat.  Complexity has continued as a philosophical and religious paradigm in Hinduism and Indian cultures today.  Complexity is re-appearing naturally in the sciences and it may be that we need a new paradigm to understand it, one which relies less on grand unified field theories and more on diversity.

Second, we now know that quantum logic is more efficient at solving certain problems, in particular factoring large numbers (Shor's algorithm).  So although any problem may be represented by binary logic (yes/no or true/false), in fact some are more efficiently represented by quantum logic, or other forms of probabilistic logic, called modal logic in philosophy.  The Amduat prefers to avoid dichotomies like yes/no in favor of multiplicity.  It is a system of thought, albeit in a language and format we cannot relate to very well today, which emphasizes modal logic over binary logic.  There are several manuscripts of Egyptian mathematical proofs (Reisner papyrus, Rhind mathematical papyrus, Akhmim wooden tablets), and one finds many interesting theorems in them, with correct reasoning: however, the approach to those theorems is different from ours. 

Coming back to representation and what is real, quantum mechanics has provided very strong evidence that at some level reality is non-local and probabalistic.  Every time we test quantum mechanics, it does even better.  As Deborah pointed out, even the many worlds interpretation has now become a mainstream possibility, with serious considerations in physics of the universe as one possibility in an infinite multiverse.  A century ago none of us would have imaged a probabilistic non-local representation of reality would be meaningful, let alone accurate and useful enough to build digital computing technology from.  What will we find out in another century?  What might a new investigation of complexity teach us to see?

I leave the discussion of harmony, a paradigm employed and enjoyed in China, comprising ~1/4 of the world's population, for another post.

"19 April 1905" and the Many Worlds Interpretation, or Einstein, that's the wrong physics revolution!

In the "19 April 1905" vignette in Alan Lightman's novella Einstein's Dreams, a man stands on his balcony and ponders whether to go to a woman. He has three options: to stay away, to go to her and start a relationship, or to go to her but not start a relationship. He does each, but in different worlds.

The man on the balcony can do this, not by trick or treachery, but because everyone in this world can do this. Whenever a decision is made, the world splits into three distinct worlds. Eventually, there are an infinite number of worlds [1].

As I was reading this piece, I was struck by its similarity to the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI). The MWI argues that any time a quantum experiment with more than one outcome with non-zero probability is performed, all the outcomes are achieved in different worlds [2].

While there exists only one universe in MWI, there are an infinite number of worlds within the universe. ("Worlds" are defined to be combinations of all macroscopic objects. Macroscopic objects are things like tables, cats, and people.) These worlds are constructed from quantum states corresponding to macroscopic objects, and objects are constructed from the wave functions of elementary particles combined into atoms combined into molecules combined into cells [2].

In equations, that looks like:

To reference a common example, in MWI, Schrodinger's cat is alive in one world and dead in another [2].

What I find most interesting about the integration of this concept into "19 April 1905" is its link with Einstein. (It is, of course, his dream.) Notoriously, Einstein held that quantum mechanics was not a complete theory and not the future of physics. He took issue with the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics (the predominant interpretation and an alternative to MWI), saying "I, in any case, am convinced that He [God] does not play dice" [3].

I find the inclusion of a multi-world conception of time interesting, at least as a physics in-joke, though I am not yet sure what (if anything in particular) its purpose is.


References

[1] Lightman, Alan. Einstein's Dreams. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

[2] Vaidman, Lev. "Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2008. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/qm-manyworlds/ (accessed September 11, 2013).

[3] Norton, John D. "Einstein on the Completeness of Quantum Theory." Einstein for Everyone. 2013. http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/quantum_theory_completeness/ (accessed September 11, 2013).

Why Religion?

The First Hour of the Egyptian Amduat is a perfect example of how ancient peoples often used religion to explain natural phenomena. I have often also heard people say that religion began when people first encountered death since death is mysterious and confusing. In a world where science can answer questions about our universe, what is the role of religion today? If religion’s only purpose were to serve as a default for things we could not explain, why are there so many faithful followers today? If science holds the key, why would anyone at Mines believe in an Omniscient Being? Why does Stephen Hawking remain a professed atheist while some of his contemporaries are devout in some religion or another?

I was able to speak with Aaron about this topic on Wednesday, and we started talking about faith and what it meant. Aaron mentioned how sometimes it seemed that people expressing “faith” just accept things without question or doubt and that these same people too often say, “God works in mysterious ways.” (I hope I paraphrased you correctly, Aaron. If not, I apologize. Please correct me.) I responded by saying faith is an expression of humility when we realize that we cannot know everything and that we must trust that events happen for a reason.

The question remains: For what is Pablo Neruda searching in his poem Unity? Do we seek closeness to “The Old One” as Alan Lightman states in his book Einstein’s Dreams, or is being a member of a religion comparable to joining a club or other organization based on common interests?

Touchscreen

I think that Marshall Davis Jones does an amazing job of portraying the digital society that we were talking about tonight in class.  When it comes to this paradox of increased communication technology resulting in a deficit of personal human contact, I am still not sure where I stand.  I can definitely agree with Marshall's ideas that by digitizing our methods of interaction, we are not only losing the potential development of true kinship with others, but also risking the physical devolution of our human bodies and the desensitizing of our human spirit.  Nearly anywhere I go on any day, most of the humans I see are hunched over a laptop with horrible posture, or staring at their smartphone while they distractedly try to speak to a friend at lunch; and yet, I am only able to witness this during the odd occurrence when my own eyes are not directed at a small LED screen, so who am I to judge?

On the other hand, as both a scholar and world traveler, I am obviously very aware of how important and beneficial communication technology is (as I'm sure we all are) in spreading ideas, knowledge, and emotions to friends and family all around the world.

So what next?  Marshall ends with the brilliant line, "When our technology is advanced enough to make us human again."   Is that really a possibility?  Will better technology someday allow us to communicate with anyone anywhere while we are standing upright, speaking face-to-face, and sharing emotions like homo sapiens have for centuries?  Some may argue that with anything short of a teleporter, this "true" form of interpersonal communication will never again be obtained by society through the use of technology.  Others may argue that it is not needed and that our digital communication is a much better form of communication that gives everyone an "equal playing ground" so to speak, since they don't necessarily have to worry about shyness or body language.  Perhaps the problem is not in the technology itself, but in the way we use the technology and change our personal interactions in life.

I cannot escape the irony that I watched this YouTube video on a computer and then posted it to an internet blog (though for what it is worth, the video was originally described to me face-to-face by a friend).  Wouldn't it be humorous if the key to solving this problem turned out to be the use of communication technology to spread this idea of emotional human interaction to people all over the world?  What a revolution that would be!

Art's Significant Role in Revolution

I was really struck by the quote in Erik Hornung's book Concepts of God in Ancient Egypt about the way people try to describe our world: "The language in which we speak of the world will never be contained entirely in mathematical formulas, nor will it be contained entirely in words" (pg. 258).

Take this photo for example:

(Forgive the fact that it's a picture of a picture).

Imagine if I tried to describe this with only words. I could use words like desperation, salvation, need, want, fear, hunger, beggars, and youth. I don't know what's going on necessarily, but it looks like someone out of the shot is passing something to these boys that they want more than anything in the world at that moment. They seem to be lower income, with thin faces and protruding ribs.Yes, this seems like an adequate description, and some of the words seem to match up with the image, but something is missing.

Imagine if I tried describing this with only mathematical/physical equations.

But somehow I feel like I could go on for a long time using equations to describe small characteristics I noticed, but it seems a little tedious.

There is something to be said about an image; it can convey a dozen messages without a single word. It can emulate an emotion the way a thousand words or equations could not. It's not to say that words and equations do not describe the world well, but there comes a time when they just aren't enough.

I believe this idea is relevant in modern revolution. The words/message of a movement can bring about a collaboration of people or a whole revolution can be started from new equations (relativity for example), but revolution often needs art and emotion to truly capture the whole story. Think of some common images we've seen for revolutions and revolutionary movements; the essence of the event is captured in a picture of a swarm of people or of a leader's determined face. Revolution, especially in the age of photography and video, is not the same without art.