Dear
Everybody,
Why are people afraid of computers? Why do we
have the data protection act and laws that make illegal, for example, to keep
on a computer the data of students for more than 40 days? Why electronic data
are considered different from paper files at the disposal of any organisation
that may veto your application for a job or a loan, without giving you a
reason? Why are we afraid of what one can do to us by storing our data in a
computer? The world is teeming with examples of societies and regimes, which
are nowhere near computerised, and yet they oppress their people with the help
of files and archives stored in the vaults of secrete services and police
departments, containing minute and insignificant pieces of information, ranging
from a person's political views down to when he sneezed and who gave him the
hanky! What is the difference between holding the data on a computer from
holding them on paper? Why people blame the electronic mail for
misunderstandings that arise, on the grounds that it does not convey emotions
via voice intonation and body language? Why an email is different from a letter
on paper? People have been exchanging written messages, which lack the wealth
of extra information contained in verbal communication, ever since writing was
invented. And yet as far as I know letters have never been blamed for
misunderstandings as an incomplete means of communication. Why do we need the
emoticons (see p 5)? Frankly speaking, by the time I search the list of
emoticons to use the right one to convey my feelings, I might as well read my
message once more to make sure that it says what I wish to say !
I thought of a profound theory to answer all
these questions! Every natural system has its own length, time and mass scales
intrinsically determined. From these three basic units, we can determine all
other units needed to measure the physical phenomena involving the system. For
example, the size of the filter with which you can detect a line in an image
must have some relevance to the width of the line, otherwise the line will be
missed either as too thin or as too wide! The human body has its own
speed-scale, determined by the size of the slice of space-time carved for it:
this speed-scale can be quantified by the size of the Earth on which we live
and our average life time. Using the perimeter length (40,000 km) for the
former and 70 years for the latter, I make that the speed scales of phenomena
for which a human may feel at ease, must be measured in units of 65 m/hr, or 18
mm/sec. Isn't it remarkable that this is of the same order of magnitude as the
speed with which messages are exchanged between neurons in our brain? Anything
that happens at significantly higher speeds must appear disturbing. So, what
bothers us is perhaps the speed with which one can retrieve our data from a
computer, and the speed with which our message can travel, rather than the
knowledge that somebody holds information on us or that email does not convey
feelings.
Taking
these thoughts one step further, I can understand now why I could not kill that
fly the other day: given that a fly lives 1 year instead of 70, its brain must
work 70 times faster than mine! And can you imagine how immigrants to Jupiter
will cope with Jupiter's mosquitoes which live on a planet 11 times bigger than
ours! :-o :-o :-o (I looked it up; that is the emoticon for Uh oh, Uh oh, Uh
oh!)
Maria
Petrou