色即空：空即色。
the abstraction gives birth to the instance, and the instance is exactly like the abstraction. you cannot see the instance, but you can know it is alive. you can see the form of the abstraction, but it is not alive. so which has more form, the instance or the abstraction?
just like the runtime is the program, the source code is the program, the binary is the program, but the source code is not the binary, and the binary is not the runtime.
that's why computing to me is both philosophy and engineering.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Abstraction n., 3. the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances (WordNet)
Abstraction must be the greatest achievement and sin into which the whole history of civilization has cumulated into. One professor once told me that it is the essence of computing. It must also be the motivation of mathematics. It tries to give one answer to all questions. If art were a lie that told the truth, abstraction, would be the truth that told lies.
I was listening to the BBC, they were airing a program on colour. And it made me realize that the whole spectrum of colours that we take for granted, choosing the colour of anything we like, once upon a time, were not given equal treatment, simply because, it was technically harder to make some dyes. Blue was once a big deal, cos it had few sources - indigo and lapis. Now it has become just another colour on the palette. We have drawn all the colours so close and given them equal treatment that we forget the truth behind them. We give ourselves the power to choose equally, but forgot the passion behind these choices.
Maybe you would understand better if I speak of the Internet. The Internet has abstracted the physical world, making distance inconsequential, reshaping the whole world into a different logical structure, one governed by numbers rather than by physical location. .com sites often redirect us servers in our own locality but we wouldn't care less (those manning the servers would, because less physical distance actually means less internet traffic and therefore higher overall performance for all their servers). But when main gateways (servers) in and out of the country gets hit by disaster, we start feeling the reality that sits under the 6 networking layers (network technology has a well-known OSI 7-layer abstraction that attempts to provide a platform where software can talk to one another without having to bother about physical location) that are so effective in making the world appear nearer.
So what is the problem, really? Abstraction is like specialization. It attempts to provide a common platform on which all issues within a known domain can be addressed easily. Which also means that, when it has become easy to deal with issues within a known domain, consistent exposure to a high volume of issues, alienate you from these issues, the way a worker in a diamond factory sometimes starts to forget what exactly is so great about these stones or <<insert your own analogy here>>.
Ok, put it in another way. If you have abstracted (ie, formularised) a method that can bring any group out there onto a top selling band on the music charts, it wouldn't matter anymore who the band were. Passion wouldn't matter anymore. It is simply machinery.
Yes, machinery is what we want, to get the nitty gritty details of life out of the way, so we can spend our lives doing better things. That's why Abstraction, to me is such a great achievement. It allows us not to have to think about how to extract oil to cook, walk through jungles and rough terrain when we travel, make clothes, but just be able to have the choices in front of us: what we want to have, where we want to go. But hey brother, you forgot all this nitty gritty detail shit, is life. In another words, abstraction alienates us from life itself. As much as we have decided that all these troublesome parts of life is a chore and thereafter figured out how to get over and done with it, we have also gotten rid of all these small bits of life from which we would have had the greatest chance to learn what it takes, to be happy. I think that's what fishing and evening walks are all about. Although I've never been fishing.
The "simple life" you see in movies is never so far away if you start realizing the lowest common denominator of life, and start enjoying every bit of it, like crushed nuts in a bar of chocolate. I used to hate nuts in my chocolates. But now I like them everywhere.
Well, next time you need to run an errand to wherever it is, for whatever reason, for whoever... be happy.
Abstraction must be the greatest achievement and sin into which the whole history of civilization has cumulated into. One professor once told me that it is the essence of computing. It must also be the motivation of mathematics. It tries to give one answer to all questions. If art were a lie that told the truth, abstraction, would be the truth that told lies.
I was listening to the BBC, they were airing a program on colour. And it made me realize that the whole spectrum of colours that we take for granted, choosing the colour of anything we like, once upon a time, were not given equal treatment, simply because, it was technically harder to make some dyes. Blue was once a big deal, cos it had few sources - indigo and lapis. Now it has become just another colour on the palette. We have drawn all the colours so close and given them equal treatment that we forget the truth behind them. We give ourselves the power to choose equally, but forgot the passion behind these choices.
Maybe you would understand better if I speak of the Internet. The Internet has abstracted the physical world, making distance inconsequential, reshaping the whole world into a different logical structure, one governed by numbers rather than by physical location. .com sites often redirect us servers in our own locality but we wouldn't care less (those manning the servers would, because less physical distance actually means less internet traffic and therefore higher overall performance for all their servers). But when main gateways (servers) in and out of the country gets hit by disaster, we start feeling the reality that sits under the 6 networking layers (network technology has a well-known OSI 7-layer abstraction that attempts to provide a platform where software can talk to one another without having to bother about physical location) that are so effective in making the world appear nearer.
So what is the problem, really? Abstraction is like specialization. It attempts to provide a common platform on which all issues within a known domain can be addressed easily. Which also means that, when it has become easy to deal with issues within a known domain, consistent exposure to a high volume of issues, alienate you from these issues, the way a worker in a diamond factory sometimes starts to forget what exactly is so great about these stones or <<insert your own analogy here>>.
Ok, put it in another way. If you have abstracted (ie, formularised) a method that can bring any group out there onto a top selling band on the music charts, it wouldn't matter anymore who the band were. Passion wouldn't matter anymore. It is simply machinery.
Yes, machinery is what we want, to get the nitty gritty details of life out of the way, so we can spend our lives doing better things. That's why Abstraction, to me is such a great achievement. It allows us not to have to think about how to extract oil to cook, walk through jungles and rough terrain when we travel, make clothes, but just be able to have the choices in front of us: what we want to have, where we want to go. But hey brother, you forgot all this nitty gritty detail shit, is life. In another words, abstraction alienates us from life itself. As much as we have decided that all these troublesome parts of life is a chore and thereafter figured out how to get over and done with it, we have also gotten rid of all these small bits of life from which we would have had the greatest chance to learn what it takes, to be happy. I think that's what fishing and evening walks are all about. Although I've never been fishing.
The "simple life" you see in movies is never so far away if you start realizing the lowest common denominator of life, and start enjoying every bit of it, like crushed nuts in a bar of chocolate. I used to hate nuts in my chocolates. But now I like them everywhere.
Well, next time you need to run an errand to wherever it is, for whatever reason, for whoever... be happy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)