Curiosity, Cats, Computers and Cuneiform

ProetryPlace Blog 13C

(This is actually number 14, but since it references an unfortunate cat, I had to work in the number 13 for good luck. Hence 13C (for cat).)

CURIOSITY, CATS, COMPUTERS and CUNEIFORM

    Curiosity may have killed the cat, but there is more than one way to skin a sonnet.

    Don’t blame me for the lead-in. My muse forced this bit of linguistic and logical convolution on me as I pondered the subject and meaning of this blog. I’d been thinking at random about change and evolution as they have affected me and juxtaposed on various aspects of my life and writing. Curiosity has been at the bottom of it, at least where I had any control in the matter.

    T’was curiosity that propelled me into the sciences, into studying and attempting to understand how nature works.  While I did discover some new truths (or theories, as these temporary truths are known), I barely dented the vast surface of scientific inquiry after years of research. It is a sad fact that the more I learned, the less it seemed I knew.

    For example, 50 years ago as part of my research, I wrote some simple computer programs in FORTRAN language, manually entered it on punch cards—carefully avoiding hanging chads—collated the cards and fed them into a mainframe computer used primarily for the universities financial matters. With the advent of Personal Computers, I wrote some simple BASIC programs, yet another language. More than once I got so engrossed in the writing process that I forgot the purpose of the program before I finished it. Thus I welcomed programs written by others and available on floppy discs to achieve more extensive computations and analyses.

    I worked through a series of PCs and with them an evolution of operating systems from CPM and DOS to a variety of Windows versions. Each was supposedly more simple to use. Each, while more capable, was significantly more complex, requiring me to learn more and more about less and less. Windows eventually eliminated the need to remember commands that both DOS and CPM required; just click the mouse on the drop-down menu and voila—magic.

    With each step in the evolution , culminating at this point with a Windows 8 system with more memory than a room full of elephants, my ability to control the machine and deal with its problems diminished (yes, computers have problems of their own). Now, I simply accept that the machine is in charge. If it can’t fix itself or give me terse and obscure instructions downloaded from some remote website, the jig is up, the computer is down.

    What has evolved? Certainly the hardware—e.g. CPUs, USB ports, hard drives and flash memory sticks. Some say that silicone based systems are nearing extinction. A new species will replace them, biological in nature perhaps. And the language will continue to evolve or make a quantum change with radically different syntax and grammar from those I learned 50 years ago.

    I should not be surprised. My writing has undergone equally revolutionary change. For 50 years I used the precise and specialized lexicon of scientific disciplines to write and think about my research. As the purpose of my work shifted focus, so did my language. Initially, at the university, understanding was its own reward of so called basic research. Working in industry, understanding became the stepping stone to solving problems, and conceiving new products and manufacturing processes in the new world of  applied research.

    Writing demanded new skills and techniques as well, from the legalese of patent claims to management reports that concealed most of the science to highlight the possibility of innovation for profit.

    After retirement my writing morphed again, as radically as the change from cuneiform to computer language. Now the evolution was from the impersonal dialogue of science, technology and business to the far extreme of memoir and personal poetry, with the intent of revealing rather than concealing the author. I am aware of a similar shift in emphasis from my earlier blogs to more recent ones. I expect my muse will continue to dictate a varied content, at times austerely analytical, otherwise subjective and even poetic.

    Although the physical world still holds many intrigues for me, my questions now center more on why than on how. My expectations for clear cut answers have become less demanding. Some mysteries must remain unresolved or solutions accepted on faith alone.

    The compelling curiosity of my youth persists. It may have killed the cat, but it is what keeps me alive and writing. Unbounded opportunity exists for sampling the smorgasbord that life offers and for probing the mysteries of existence by whatever means the mind conceives and the soul accepts.

    Sonnets are somewhere on my bucket list.

Richard Allen Anderson     < : - ()          http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com