This is a story about the worlds greatest failure. The story is true, the people in it are real, just some of the facts may not be right. If you are someone who thinks that facts are more important than the story then by all means write your own version.
Once upon a time (as all good stories should begin) There were some people called mathematicians who were attempting to solve some particularly difficult problems. These problems were far more difficult than the numeracy problems you may get at school such as what is 7 x 9 or 169 x 27. In fact they were so difficult, mathematician's would find them very hard to describe even to other mathematician's.
One day two mathematicians called Alfred Whitehead and Bertrand Russell decided that one of the reasons that the problems were so difficult was that no one really understood why mathematics worked at all. They often did things like this because as well as being very good at numbers, they were both something we call philosophers. Now philosophers are people who spend all their time thinking about things most people just take for granted. For example, a philosopher will spend days thinking about whether you are sharing your room with a Rhinoceros, while most other people would just assume you were not due to the lack of things like Rhinoceros poo and the fact that Rhinoceros's are pretty poor at hide and seek. Anyway for these men it was not enough that the answer to 1+1 was 2, they wanted to know why it was not 3, 4 or even rhinoceros's. In fact next time your maths teacher gives you a sum, you can try asking them why it has to be that answer and not something else. If they are a pretty cool maths teacher, they may thank you for asking such an intriguing question, but most likely they will just get annoyed(teachers generally prefer to ask questions, not answer them ).
It is also worth saying a little about the man called Bertrand Russell. You probably haven't heard much about him at school, but once he was one of the most famous men in the world. One of the reasons he was so famous is that he was pretty good at everything. He must of been terrible to be at school with. For example, just imagine getting 9/10 in your Maths test and feeling pretty good about yourself, until you find Bertrand had 10/10 not only in Maths but English, History Science, etc. In fact the only subject he doesn't seemed to been very good at was sport, but that was probably only because he didn't have any time to do it. In fact as well as being good at mathematics he also won the Nobel prize for his writing, which is the best award any writer or scientist can get. You would also of thought that spending loads of time thinking and writing and not playing sport would mean he didn't have any girlfriends, but in fact he seemed pretty good at having girlfriends too.
Anyway Bertrand and Alfred decided to try and answer why 1+1 equals 2 by creating from Mathematics from scratch. They hoped that once the 1+1=2 problem had been solved, they could then solve more difficult problems (such as 7x9 and 169 x 27). So they wrote a book called the Principia Mathematica, which is a very grand title for a book. However this is not a book you are likely to find in the library (unless your library is very big and/or very weird). In fact even if you did get it, it wouldn't be a very good read. Most of it is written in something called symbolic logic which is very strange and not really understood by many people. (In fact if you ever meet a mathematician, ask them what they think of Principia Mathematica. They will probably tell you how important it is, but then ask them if they have ever read it, and they will almost certainly say no [or lie]).
Writing this book turned out to be a big job. In fact it took over 17 years and eventually it had to be written down in 3 books. The amazing thing is they only managed to show that 1+1=2 by the middle of book 2 (it is not known whether they also found the presence of any rhinoceros's in the book).
Unfortunately at the same time there was a man called Kurt Godel who was also thinking about things and had an idea that he called his Incompleteness theory. His idea was that it doesn't matter how clever we are or how hard we try, some problems can just never be solved. Now this was a big problem for Bertrand and Alfred, because Kurt's idea showed that they could never solve all maths problems, which after 17 years of work must have been very disappointing to Bertrand and Alfred. (Kurt Godel unfortunately came to a rather sticky end when he was convinced everyone was trying to poison him and refused to eat anything. He then starved himself to death. This can happen when people spend a lot of time thinking about really deep questions rather than what is next for dinner.)
However our story is not finished. Often when mathematicians come up with ideas, they describe them in really complicated ways that make it difficult for other people to understand them. Other mathematicians sometimes think of easier ways to describe them. Such a thing happened in this case. A man called Alan Turing thought he had much neater way to better describe Godel's theory.
His idea was to design an imaginary problem solving machine. This machine has a tape with an instruction on it, which could move backward and forward. Each time it read a new symbol it would cause the machine to do something and remember the result. This way the machine could be made to do mathematical problems. So if our tape has the values '1','+','1' then our machine would load each symbol in and do something with them. For example when it found the '+' symbol it would know it had to add the previous symbol to the next symbol on the tape.
You may recognise this imaginary machine as a computer, but this was a long time before computers actually existed. This was just an idea in Alan Turing's head. Turing could see that such a machine could do any type of mathematical puzzle, but for some problems it was difficult to work out when the machine had got to the answer and could be stopped. For example you could asked the machine to find all the numbers that could be divided exactly by 7. Now it's possible that if we carried on long enough you would find all the numbers in the universe that could be divided exactly by 7, but how will you know that if you do not keep on going you will not find another one? Well Alan showed his imaginary machine had the same problem and therefore some sums could never be solved so proving Kurt Godel's idea was correct (but in way that is easier to explain).
However the idea of a universal calculating machine was so good that people actually made them. In fact every computer, calculator, and mobile phone uses the same idea as Alan Turing's.
So that is the story about the world's greatest failure. However the word 'greatest' here does not mean in this case the worst failure. This time it is used to describe the most successful failure. If Alfred and Bertrand had not started writing their Principia Mathematica, Kurt Godel may not of had his big idea and Alan Turing may not of invented his universal machine. If that had happened then we would not have computers. Can you imagine a world today without computers? No mobile phones, no X Box! It would be a very different place wouldn't it.
Which just goes to show, that when you are doing hard things, starting them is more important than finishing them. Which is why we send space crafts to Pluto or build huge machines to smash atoms into tiny bits. You just never know what important things we will find along the way
Tuesday 24 December 2013
Sunday 29 September 2013
Nostalgia - It's a bitch
Recently I decided I would transfer my extensive collection of audio tapes to a brand spanking new digital format. Now I was never a vinyl record sort of guy, partly because we didn't really have a decent record player at home (I do remember having the wind up type with a darning needle for the pick up. Great for 78's but not for much else). Also when I started listening to music (I was a bit of a late developer in this) Walkman's were in vogue and the possibilities of portable music were too much to resist. I was also late in getting into CD's and kept buying tapes far later than I really should of done. The result is I really have a lot of tapes gathered over a lot of years.
Over the years however they got played less and less and ended up cluttering the dining room where occasionally I would trip over them. Eventually they got relegated to to that last resting ground of the unwanted, the loft, together with the tape player. But it was always my intention to do something with them and eventually I bit the bullet, got the tape player down put the first tape in and set about transferring them to MP3's
This is where I hit my first problem. Apparently lofts are not the best places for storing electrical apparatus, being subjected to hot and cold temperatures cycles. To cut a long story short it did not work. I opened it up and played around with the insides but it was clear it was dead. So the tape player went to the skip and we resorted to plan B. I bought one of those connect your Walkman to your computer devices from Aldi and tried again. This is where I found out that tapes are no happier with lofts than tape players. I managed to get one tape to play (ironically it was the 1st tape I ever bought - Concerts from China by Jean Michel Jarre [This was the 80's it could of been far worse]), but the 2nd and 3rd tape either refused to play or played in that sort of out of sync slow way which tapes had a habit of doing just before they terminally wrapped themselves round your tape deck capstan.
So instead I bought a tape player from Ebay (£0.99 plus £10 p&P). This thing is built like a proverbial tank and I was sure that if anything would play tapes this would. Well the 1st one worked, but from then on it went down hill and again I had failed.
In desperation (and generally I only do this in desperation) I asked my beloved wife for her advice. Now I say in desperation not because she gives out bad advice, but her advice generally is too good. It is the advice I don't want to hear. The kind that makes sense in your head at the same time that it breaks your heart.
"Why don't you just buy CD's of the tapes you like and chuck away the rest"? she said
My 1st reaction was dismissive. That she obviously did not understand the issue. My 2nd thought was the cost, but then why had I already spent over £30 on the equipment?
Then I started thinking. Why exactly did I want to copy my tapes? I mean even if I did manage it, it would only result in producing a 2nd rate copy when better were available on the Internet. Also when exactly did I ever listen to music nowadays. Sometimes I have CD on in the car and if I'm travelling by plane I'll take my MP3 player with me but it's not like in my youth when music was playing all the time. The truth is between work, the kids, and finding a time when I am not on the computer or the TV is not on, there is not much opportunity to play music. I have over a hundred CD's and very few ever get played in the house.
Then it hit me why I was so keen to transfer the tapes. Firstly there was the technical challenge. But mainly it was for the memories that the music represented. These tapes represent important points in my life such as hanging out with friends at school (ELO, Jean Michel Jarre), My first concerts (OMD, Thomas Dolby), Meeting my wife (Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Tpau[Sorry, like I said it was the 80's]), my maturing tastes into classical and blues. It was nostalgia, big time.
Of course nostalgia is not a game you play by yourself. Oh no the whole family must join in. "Gather rounds kids and listen to what your dad used to listen too when he was a kid" sort of thing(whether you want to or not). It also forms part of my legacy; my I was here moment. Legacy's however can be a pain on to those they are bestowed. Take for example my cousin's husband who received thousand's of classical records in a bequest. Now he is not a great classical fan, and being records they take up a lot of space, but he can't get rid of them because of where they came from and what they represent. So they sit there forming expensive wall insulation in his dining room.
And of course it's not just music. Leaving a legacy nowadays is getting more and more difficult.
Take photos. 20 years ago it was easy, hand over the bound books or boxes of slides and you were done. Your memories had been passed to the next generation so that in 50 years time your descendent can marvel at great granddad's 80's haircut .
Now it is different. While I do have some physical photos I have not taken a non-digital one for over 10 years now. While at first I would print some out, even that has now passed when it is far easier to stick them on Facebook. There are people reaching adulthood who will never have taken a physical photo. All there memories are stored on hard disk, Flikr, Facebook, etc. How will we pass those memories down? Will hard disks we have now still be accessible in 30 years time? Will the DVD's we created with all those photo's be readable. Will Google or Facebook still exist or have gone the way of Altavista and mySpace taking our memories with it. Even if they do, will we have the passwords and logins to access them?
True story. There exists a true representation of one of mankind's greatest events, the 1st man on the moon. Not the poor definition copy the people saw round the world, but one that was recorded as it was beamed back from the moon and before it was transferred to a format suitable for the TV's of the day.
However it cannot be found. At some point it was placed in a tin can, labelled, shifted off somewhere and lost. We know this because NASA was having a clear out and was about to scrap the only machines that could read these tapes. So they thought it would be a good idea to transfer the tape to digital. At which point they found it was missing. Now the tape almost certainly still exists and one day someone will be clearing out the equivalent of an attic somewhere and will come across it. But there is a fair chance by then that we will not have the capability of reading it. If NASA can't deal with legacy, what chance do we have?
And if that is not bad enough what about correspondence. In a shoe box I still have all the letters between me an Jackie when we were going out (I was a soppy git then believe me). If I was doing it today I would probably do it via email or text. Apart from the fact instead of carefully crafted missives it would consist of hieroglyphs such as LOL, ROFL, which are bare comprehensible to anyone over 30, how will we access them in 20 years time? How will our descendants obtain that insight in our personalities. Just imagine if Jane Austin had been living today, what we would of lost.
The irony is that we are in a world where we make more content affirming our existence than ever in the history of civilisation, but will probably leave less to our descendants than ever before.
However this is not our problem. I know where my photo's are, how to access my email account. It's my descendants, who if they wish to access these memories who will be left with the problem of achieving it.
Life's a bitch but at least it stops when you die. Nostalgia nowadays can seriously affect generations for years to come..
Over the years however they got played less and less and ended up cluttering the dining room where occasionally I would trip over them. Eventually they got relegated to to that last resting ground of the unwanted, the loft, together with the tape player. But it was always my intention to do something with them and eventually I bit the bullet, got the tape player down put the first tape in and set about transferring them to MP3's
This is where I hit my first problem. Apparently lofts are not the best places for storing electrical apparatus, being subjected to hot and cold temperatures cycles. To cut a long story short it did not work. I opened it up and played around with the insides but it was clear it was dead. So the tape player went to the skip and we resorted to plan B. I bought one of those connect your Walkman to your computer devices from Aldi and tried again. This is where I found out that tapes are no happier with lofts than tape players. I managed to get one tape to play (ironically it was the 1st tape I ever bought - Concerts from China by Jean Michel Jarre [This was the 80's it could of been far worse]), but the 2nd and 3rd tape either refused to play or played in that sort of out of sync slow way which tapes had a habit of doing just before they terminally wrapped themselves round your tape deck capstan.
So instead I bought a tape player from Ebay (£0.99 plus £10 p&P). This thing is built like a proverbial tank and I was sure that if anything would play tapes this would. Well the 1st one worked, but from then on it went down hill and again I had failed.
In desperation (and generally I only do this in desperation) I asked my beloved wife for her advice. Now I say in desperation not because she gives out bad advice, but her advice generally is too good. It is the advice I don't want to hear. The kind that makes sense in your head at the same time that it breaks your heart.
"Why don't you just buy CD's of the tapes you like and chuck away the rest"? she said
My 1st reaction was dismissive. That she obviously did not understand the issue. My 2nd thought was the cost, but then why had I already spent over £30 on the equipment?
Then I started thinking. Why exactly did I want to copy my tapes? I mean even if I did manage it, it would only result in producing a 2nd rate copy when better were available on the Internet. Also when exactly did I ever listen to music nowadays. Sometimes I have CD on in the car and if I'm travelling by plane I'll take my MP3 player with me but it's not like in my youth when music was playing all the time. The truth is between work, the kids, and finding a time when I am not on the computer or the TV is not on, there is not much opportunity to play music. I have over a hundred CD's and very few ever get played in the house.
Then it hit me why I was so keen to transfer the tapes. Firstly there was the technical challenge. But mainly it was for the memories that the music represented. These tapes represent important points in my life such as hanging out with friends at school (ELO, Jean Michel Jarre), My first concerts (OMD, Thomas Dolby), Meeting my wife (Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Tpau[Sorry, like I said it was the 80's]), my maturing tastes into classical and blues. It was nostalgia, big time.
Of course nostalgia is not a game you play by yourself. Oh no the whole family must join in. "Gather rounds kids and listen to what your dad used to listen too when he was a kid" sort of thing(whether you want to or not). It also forms part of my legacy; my I was here moment. Legacy's however can be a pain on to those they are bestowed. Take for example my cousin's husband who received thousand's of classical records in a bequest. Now he is not a great classical fan, and being records they take up a lot of space, but he can't get rid of them because of where they came from and what they represent. So they sit there forming expensive wall insulation in his dining room.
And of course it's not just music. Leaving a legacy nowadays is getting more and more difficult.
Take photos. 20 years ago it was easy, hand over the bound books or boxes of slides and you were done. Your memories had been passed to the next generation so that in 50 years time your descendent can marvel at great granddad's 80's haircut .
Now it is different. While I do have some physical photos I have not taken a non-digital one for over 10 years now. While at first I would print some out, even that has now passed when it is far easier to stick them on Facebook. There are people reaching adulthood who will never have taken a physical photo. All there memories are stored on hard disk, Flikr, Facebook, etc. How will we pass those memories down? Will hard disks we have now still be accessible in 30 years time? Will the DVD's we created with all those photo's be readable. Will Google or Facebook still exist or have gone the way of Altavista and mySpace taking our memories with it. Even if they do, will we have the passwords and logins to access them?
True story. There exists a true representation of one of mankind's greatest events, the 1st man on the moon. Not the poor definition copy the people saw round the world, but one that was recorded as it was beamed back from the moon and before it was transferred to a format suitable for the TV's of the day.
However it cannot be found. At some point it was placed in a tin can, labelled, shifted off somewhere and lost. We know this because NASA was having a clear out and was about to scrap the only machines that could read these tapes. So they thought it would be a good idea to transfer the tape to digital. At which point they found it was missing. Now the tape almost certainly still exists and one day someone will be clearing out the equivalent of an attic somewhere and will come across it. But there is a fair chance by then that we will not have the capability of reading it. If NASA can't deal with legacy, what chance do we have?
And if that is not bad enough what about correspondence. In a shoe box I still have all the letters between me an Jackie when we were going out (I was a soppy git then believe me). If I was doing it today I would probably do it via email or text. Apart from the fact instead of carefully crafted missives it would consist of hieroglyphs such as LOL, ROFL, which are bare comprehensible to anyone over 30, how will we access them in 20 years time? How will our descendants obtain that insight in our personalities. Just imagine if Jane Austin had been living today, what we would of lost.
The irony is that we are in a world where we make more content affirming our existence than ever in the history of civilisation, but will probably leave less to our descendants than ever before.
However this is not our problem. I know where my photo's are, how to access my email account. It's my descendants, who if they wish to access these memories who will be left with the problem of achieving it.
Life's a bitch but at least it stops when you die. Nostalgia nowadays can seriously affect generations for years to come..
Sunday 14 April 2013
Dear me...
A letter to the 16 year old version of me...
Hi,
Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you, but the trans-lunar express was late and my jet pack is in for a service.
Anyway I guess your wondering how it is going in 2013. Well I don't want to give away too many spoilers but things are going pretty well, especially now I've got my new cybernetic legs.
But I still couldn't pass up this opportunity to drop a few words of advice to help you better prepare for the future. I do however understand if you want to ignore my words of wisdom from some old bloke. Believe me I would of done the same at your age.
Anyway my first piece advice is cheer up. You may think standing around morose in some corner at a party makes you look deep and philosophical, but it actually just makes you look like somebody nobody wants to spend time with. Lighten up, you'll enjoy life and you'll find people will want to hang around with you more
While were at it, the coolest people I know are those who are happy with themselves. Learn to be yourself and not to be envious of the others around you. Don't look back with regrets about opportunities lost, but forward to the possibilities to come.
I know girls haven't figured much in your life over the last 4 years and you are probably at this point looking upon them like they are some alien species, but really they are not that different. Just talk to them, smile a lot and things will go fine. Oh and do something about your hair. It will always be greasy, but a washing it more than once a fortnight will help.
While I mention it practice talking to people. You may think you can go through life avoiding interacting with others. But you will have far more opportunities in life if you take the time to communicate with others. You will always be shy, but if you practice you will find it will get easier.
If you get the chance, try and travel. The worlds a big place, but you won't believe how much smaller its getting. Try and see some of it while you have the chance. Learn a foreign language(French or German,doesn't matter). You may think that you will never have any use for such things, but believe me it will come in far more useful than you think.
I should tell you to work hard in your A-levels, but others are telling you the same and you won't listen to them so why would you listen to me? Anyway it doesn't really matter. Your results will set in motion a chain of events that will result in you meeting the most important and wonderful person in your life, so don't panic with what you get; it will work out in the end.
You may also think you have at most only 5 more years of education. But you will learn that education never really stops. You will also get the hang of that exam thing though.
I have just one more request. If you see a career adviser who suggests that a job in chemistry has a greater future than computers, slap them on the back of head for me.
see you in 33 years
Tony.
P.S if you have any spare money buy as many Apple shares as you can.
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