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