The photo shows Katie at a seminar yesterday afternoon. A question came up and in answering it, she's doing some hell-for-leather astrophysics. Usually scientists in cartoons, television or movies are depicted as working at a whiteboard filled with either gibberish or something out of a textbook. Sometimes science advisors bring a bit of authenticity, but generally there's a gap between reality and what's shown (I'm sure the same is probably true for any field depicted by outsiders). The television show Big Bang Theory is a partial exception. A particle physicist from UCLA consults to add a bit of reality to the dialog as well as most of that goes up on their whiteboards or posters. But it doesn't capture reality and that's interesting.
Physics and astrophysics have periods of rather intense play. You try out ideas and follow them for awhile. This is usually done with paper and pencil or, particularly in collaborations, on a slate blackboard with chalk. There are a number of shorthands you just can't quickly produce on a computer in a satisfying manner. Sometimes when you're following an idea a four by eight foot blackboard isn't enough. Some of the markings get erased almost immediately while others may be important and live for months or longer. White boards and magic markers fail on the long term .. they just don't erase easily enough as the markings tend to permanence. The markers lack the artistic expressiveness of a quality chalk like Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk and their solvents smell bad if you're standing at the board all day. There are only a few companies in the US that sell quality slate boards and most of their business comes from physics and math departments. And, like a quality pencil on good paper, there's the feel.
I understand why others don't like chalk or pencil and paper, but slate and chalk appears to be a nearly optimal technology for the sport of physics. It raises the question of what is best suited for a given field and how good it really is. I find it necessary to decouple the frontal cortex a bit to let the imagination flow. This just seems to work better with paper and pencil and slate and chalk for me. Even young mathematicians and physicists appear to follow the same convention. It may well be that something better will come along.. I've seen people try artificial realities where you can add computer simulations, but the jury is still out as the tech is primitive. My experiences with augmented and virtual realities have been disappointing.
But what about your field? Have people found an optimal interface or are they still looking? There's a subfield of human computer interaction that looks at that - it's particularly important for remote work. It turns out most of us communicate person to person with much more than audio and just our faces. We adapt and use what's around, but can we do better?
Art and photography are highly dependent on interface and experience .. I'll probably write about some very unusual cameras that might surprise you. My sister is an artist and photographer and will tell you about her frustrations with the computational tools she uses. It's very difficult to get into a state of flow with many.
Pianos, cellos, drums, beat boxes... auto-tuners? Sometimes it's in the ear of the beholder.
And sports... it strikes me as interesting that so much of the planet's attention is focused on moving a ball between two contestants or groups of contestants. An invention that independently arose in many cultures. Here the interfaces and experiences are often highly tuned. Although computer gaming is large and growing, there's something lacking.
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