We are such complex things, human beings. My own little corner of the world is 'playing games', and I love how you cannot get your head around how complex all of this is. As a Computer Scientist I like to think we have an advantage over the Natural Scientists (like Biologists, Chemists, Physicists, etc.) Actually, a set of advantages.
One is that we are still in a nascent era of our technology. Computing only goes back, really, to the 1950's. Video games only to the 1970's, and to the 1980's as a recognised marketplace. That is all within my own lifetime. If we ask the question: where will Comp Sci and Video Games be in 10, 20 or 30 years time, we frankly don't have scoobie. We can guess, pontificate, argue and discuss; but we don't and can't know.
The future, you see, ain't yet writ. Heisenberg kinda said that we can never know more than 50% of the causes of anything. Now, if we can't know 50%++ of what is going on, we can't make a reasoned guess as to where it is all going. It's a bit like hitting a ball with 99.9% accuracy. After 10m it may be +/-5cm from target. After 100m it is +/-50cm of target. After 1km it is +/-1m off target. After 100km it is +/- 100m off target. And, this to a 95% accuracy (i.e. there is a 5% chance we are more than .1% out.)
Guessing the future is for fortune tellers, not for scientists. As Computer Scientists we can be ever so 'umble on this one. Will computers ever 'think'? No idea. Will we have direct brain->computer comms? No idea. Will my wristwatch be as powerful as a Cray in 20 years time? On past guesswork, mebbes, but I really don't have a scoobie on this one either. Nor does anyone else.
It's nice to be in an area of amazing flux. Video games have rapidly gone from annoying little things that play on pathetic boxes, up to today's astounding graphics and music explosions that last for hours on a box a million times more powerful than the one that took men to the moon. But, where will we be in 10, 20 or 30 years time? Not a clue.
When I started in Computing, back in 1976, I could see even ten years later that it was a far more exciting place to be than, say, Law, Banking or even the Biology I originally decided upon studying. Why pick on Biology? because it has got too big for its tiny little boots and is making unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable claims to absolute truth. And this just isn't the place of any science which is, by definition, a study of knowledge, not theosophical pontification.
Computing Science does have its nuttier ends. There's a chap in Cambridge (the town, not the Uni) who thinks people are machines and can, using replacement surgery, live forever. We are, you see, just like computers and everything can be replaced, in a kinda blood'n'guts/cum/PC World kinda way. He forgets the uncertainty of our knowledge on humans, medicine, pain, psychology, sociology, surgery, etc.
Claiming certainty is something we must never do, IMHO. the problem with this claim is that it is, ipso facto, a certainty. kinda like 'I disagree with everything you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' These are both contradictory statements. But, they are, nonetheless right.
Computers are slaves. You program them; they jump. The link is amazing when you consider just how impossibly complex the high level language code, the operating systems code and the hardware wiring of a video game system is; more complex than anyone can ever understand. But, these are just wires and electrons, nothing more. And we know this because we were there when they were created, we designed them, we upgrade and replace them. Sorry, Will Smith, it is You Robot, never Thou Robot, or, I Robot.
Not everything else in the universe is not humanly created. Allow me to rephrase that: much else in the universe is humanly created. Our societies have grown from small villages of families to today's mega-metropolises. Back in Roman times the population of Britain was around 1m, today it is 60m. Greater London is now effectively 30m people of all races, faiths, languages, moralities, diseases, social statuses, etc. Greater London is effectively a mcrocosm of The World.
This is a human creation, by design, accident, population growth and immigration (some legal, some not). So, the Tory Mayor Boris Johnson is happy to be seen dancing at the Gay Pride festival; incongruous. Can anyone understand Greater London? Can anyone understand Britain, Europe, the USA, Canada, Russia, Japan? Can anyone understand Upper Skelmorlie (where I live!) or the University of The West of Scotland (where I work)? No.
So, we have here humanly created institutions that are impossibly complex and incomprehensible as totalities. This is called, of course, Sociology. But, to beat another bat, this early C20th creation has a long way to go to even begin to make a start in understanding what people are doing with other people. Anthropologists help a bit. As do Psychologists.
My father was a Civil Engineer. He built roads. He was part of the teams who built the M8 through Glasgow. An utterly brilliant road which goes straight through the city, with branches off, allowing access to any part of the city within 20 minutes of the M8. Brilliant. Back at the ranch in 2008, we have a road that clogs utterly for 2-3 hours a day every day. Traffic travels so slowly that you can walk across the busiest city road bridge in Europe in perfect safety.
If we ask the question: is the M8 a disaster?, we cannot even begin, however, to answer the question. Like the Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy's search for the ultimate question and answer, we don't understand what is happening, and can't relate it to what we want to understand. 'Is the M8 a disaster?' is simply not a question that has any validity in terms of ever being able to find any useful answer. We can philosophise and explore the question, which may prove helpful in planning a future M8 strategy, but the M8 simply is. The M8 is. It is as open to question as the moon, the stars and the sea.
This is called 'metaphysics', posing and trying to answer stupid questions. Great mental fun, but totally pointless in terms of anything useful being produced in terms of an answer.
In Computing Science we have our own: will computers think? will PS3 be a success? will Nintendo abandon games and go for sports training machines? will Microsoft drop the XBox financial disaster and go all out for MS Office? There are a host of unanswerables, perhaps even imponderables in every science, and we have ours.
So, back to the Biology bat. I studied Biology and Zoology as part of my 1st degree at Glasgow University. It is a subject often called science-for-girls as it lacks much depth and complexity. No need to get your head round n-dimensional sub-atomic backwards-in-time-facing forces and particles here. No need to handle probability states of matter in solutions and increasingly dodgy models of the universe (my Chemist son gives the Atomic Table a few decades more, but that is all; he has 3 Chemistry degrees, BTW.)
So, just why do some Biologists now find themselves getting us all a bad name, peddling certainties we aren't equipped to push? As they are part of the human domain, I have no certain answers. It could be a childhood phobia, a feeling of inadequacy bundled up as megalomania, an idleness caused by a dull field, a lack of understanding of field boundaries; whatever.
What I do know is that uncertainty is part and parcel of human understanding and the world we live in. I don't know really how we got here in Comp Sci, despite my three degrees, 30 years and some not insignificant work in the field with some amazing people. Nor do i know where we will be in the future. But, that doesn't bother me as the nature of Science is to explore the unknown and seek to rational explanations that are supported by the data available.
It is not the role of Science to go beyond our boundaries and to risk bringing ridicule, eventually, upon the wider scientific community as some have become ever so keen to do.
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