Art and Science: part I

Earlier this year on a family holiday to France I started to torment myself with the question of whether art or science affected society and, if so, to what extent? 'Did they affect each other', I wondered?

Many a civilised dinner conversation was turned into a debate about the various merits of both and amongst my family there were many opinions. I’d like to share, if I may, one of the conclusions that I’ve come to over the past six or seven months:

Art reflects society

Anyone who’s struggled through On Popular Music by Theodore Adorno will know this principle. He argues that in order to sell music as commodity it must be culturally relevant. Therefore the most successful music – commercially – is that which is most culturally relevant. We sometimes forget that Bach’s music, in its day, was ‘pop’; Bach was the Simon Cowell of the 18th century.

This still holds true: no-one buys music they don’t understand or relate to, unless they’re rather pretentious, and modern art (I’m talking abstract, cubism, post-modernism) only survives because it can be understood and appreciated by a majority of decision makers in the world, and who is a more influential decision maker today than the masses?

Art, therefore, cannot affect society as it is only a reflection of it, no? Wrong, because art is specific to a local society, not a global one. There are ‘uninfluenced’ people across the globe who would be inspired by this art. Even art within the same sphere can affect its kin: African music still inspires western musicians and has affected composition for years.

You’d have to be deaf to ignore the fusion styles that have emerged over the last 50 years. HMV seems to add a new genre of music every time I visit (not that often I must add) and specialist styles litter the internet, the greatest melting pot of creativity today.
As this world gets smaller due to improved communication and transport links the melting pot also gets smaller and art in general will become more homogenous. The crossover in music between the ability to write a symphony and compose a pop song is becoming more broadband: This year at the BBC Proms Goldie premiered his first orchestral composition and Michael Nyman has recently collaborated with soul singer David McAlmont.

I recently reviewed Alan Ayckbourn’s play Absurd Person Singular. In the press release was this quote from the playwrite:

As a nation we show a marked preference for comedy when it comes to play-going, as any theatre manager will tell you. At the same time, over a large area of the stalls one can detect a faint sense of guilt that there is something called enjoyment going on. Should we, people seem to be asked, be sitting here laughing like this? It’s to do with the mistaken belief that because it’s funny, it can’t be serious – which of course isn’t true at all. Heavy, no; serious, yes. In other words, it can be funny, but let’s make it truthful.

It’s this last part that I feel seals the deal for me. Art will not succeed if it’s not recognisably relevant to its audience.

Different societies, however, can and will continue to be affected by the art of other cultures in an ironic bid to become more 'cultured'.

The future of computing

For those of you unfortunate enough to have missed this morning's Inventions that Changed the World presented by my favorite over-patriotic journo-petrol head, Jeremy Clarkson, I'd like to relay some of the sentiments that I felt particularly affected by.

Who's heard of Tommy Flowers? No? I'm not surprised. I hadn't until this morning, or if I did his efforts weren't praised enough for me to appreciate them: He built the world's first code breaking computer - Colossus.

Now first of all, I'd like to say what a damn cool name for a computer Colossus is, I mean if a German informer had heard that the Brits had created a machine called Colossus that could break their Lorenz cypher in a matter of minutes I bet they'd have sheize'd their lederhosen! "Nein, eine Colossus komputer! Mein Furher, wir sind gefickt!"

Secondly, I'd like to say a personal thank you to Mr. Flowers for his tenacity to build the thing in the first place. Made out of nearly 2000 thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) it took only 10 months to build the first one (the British Army requested 8 more) and over £1000 of personal investment from Tommy himself. A post office worker by trade he used the same principle as the PO switchboard to run two messages simultaneously in perfect synchrony making code breaking a matter of minutes rather than months.

At this point I'd like to tip my hat to another fellow whose efforts we aught to recognize: Alan Turing. After being found to be a homosexual he was ostracised by the code-breaking community but his influence cannot be under emphasized. His Turing machine (or the principle behind the design) is the basis for pretty much all modern computing and his efforts not only on the bombe (a machine that sped up the breaking of an Enigma Machine encoded message) have undoubtedly saved lives. Alan is immortalised as a statue in Sackville Park, Manchester.

After waving the flag for British computing poineering it is unfortunate that our friend Mr. Clarkson has to head overseas to finish the story of the computer. The Americans took the idea of a programmable switching machine to new highs and build vast rooms filled with valves. Xerox, a New-York based company, were the poineers now and this group of mathematicians and hippies pushed forwards the potential for these machines. Originally set up as a company selling photographic equipment, mainly paper, they diversified in the 60s and started making paper copiers, the first named the Xerox 813 in 1963, before progressing onto computers.

In 1971 Intel created the first microprocessor: the 4004. Using two conducting layers separated by a semi-conductor, the state of which is controlled by an electronic current, the switching technology could be made incredibly small and efficient. With a clock speed of 740 kHz and 2250 transistors (which act as switches, the same as the valves in Tommy Flowers' machine) it was technically only a little bit more powerful than Colossus but it led the way for microprocessors becoming common fare.

Xerox built the first 'personal computer', called the Alto, in 1973 and it had features that are now commonplace: A cathode-ray screen, a GUI, mouse pointer and QWERTY keyboard. It was built around a processor based on Texas Instruments' 74181 chip, essentially a collection of logic gates but capable of 45454545.45 calculations per second (one every 22 nanoseconds). In 1981 the Xerox Star (with input from Apple) was the first commercially available system, but due to it's astronomical cost ($16,000) it still didn't sell well. By this time the internet was up and running (to a degree) and email was developed to take advatage of it.

Nowadays every electrical item in the home has a microprocessor that controls it's every function. Processor clock speeds topped out at just under 4GHz due to the heat emitted by the transistors changing state but faster machines have been built using a design that incooporates multiple processors on a single chip, which means that Moore's Law can continue unabated for the time being.

So, what lies ahead for computing? Mr. Clarkson's programme ends with a sarcastic run down of 80s science fiction suggestions: having conversations with computers, maids/butlers attending to our every desire, robo-pets that develop 'personalities'. Some of these are, on a basic level, already with us but the main thrust of his point, hidden and cryptic as it may be, lies in a comment he makes about half way through. On the subject of modern computers he points out obvious but not imediately comprehensible flaws in computer design: They will do exactly what we programme them to do, obediently and unquestioningly. The limit of computer intelligence is therefore limited to the height of human intelligence. This is, I believe, going to be the truth that computer scientists will have to mould to their whim if Artificial Intelligence is going to become a reality. In principle AI is therefore impossible because a computer is only as intelligent as it's programmer and no matter how many switches/transistors a computer is blessed with it will still only live in a world with electricity and humans to provide it with the 'food' and knowledge that it requires.

However, humans are, to a degree, also only a collection of switches (neurones) that relay electronic pulses to a central processing unit (the brain) which de-cyphers these pulses into what we see, hear, smell, feel and do. Is it so improbable that one day a computer/cyborg will be built that can take energy from it's surroundings (solar/wind power) with enough basic programming to learn how to make decisions based on input signals in various circumstances? I, for one, believe that it can be done and that the only thing holding us back is the lack of a unified international effort to combine the programming knowledge and learnt computer history of all AI projects across the globe. Whether I want this to happen is another matter entirely and for the time being I'd rather we didn't put too much funding into it. (Anyone seen iRobot?)

From another programme about the future, James May's Big Ideas, Mr. May explores the current level of bionics and robotics and is amazed to see how far we've come. One particularly impressive project is called Asimo, a Japanese robot that can walk, run and climb the stairs. Another project from the sme laboratory can recognise physical opbjects and will learn the name of a new or foreign object. It can only be a matter of time before the ability to interact with the physical environment and the ability to learn is combined to create what we could, I suppose, call AI. However, until I can't tell a human and a cyborg apart I will remain steadfastly asured that we are not threatened by a Hal that won't open the cargo-bay doors. That is, still, science-fiction.