Learning to program gave me a new understanding and appreciation for the world. When trying to capture, describe, and emulate aspects of the world (whether it’s simulating a piece of cloth blowing in the wind or simulating interactions between particles), you gain an appreciation for what you are trying to model. Programming becomes its own type of an art form. We have our model, the world, which we are trying to represent. We try to understand and leverage user’s mental models so, make metaphors for our applications to provide users with a sense of familiarity, or try to simulate people and their understanding (through machine learning, neural networks, artificial intelligence, etc) to predict outcomes or promote learning. We try to implement the physical world and its constraints in games .
While trying to represent our world through the tools we have available is a form of appreciation and awe, we understand our boundaries and limits.Just as Van Gough did in Starry Night, we are limited by our medium. Van Gough’s quick and thick brush strokes and fast paced strokes remind an observer of how this is only one quick snap shot representation which is fleeting and limited by the medium. When looking at Starry Night in person, an observer’s attention is always reminded that this is a painting because of the thick strokes of paint on the canvas. Impressionists saw and represented the world through their eyes, fleeting as well. We also are limited by our ability to understand all the aspects of the world or just by our computational power.
However, recently it seems we may be going beyond representations of our world. Communities like facebook not only allow a way for people to connect to each other – but really create a virtual space that users spend hours and hours living in and perceiving changes and states between them and their friends (even down to intimate details such as relationships or what they are doing every few minutes). Instead of complementing and showing amazement and awe to our own world, people may find replacements for our real every day world in these virtual worlds and communities. While it’s amazing to be able to have all the knowledge in the world at our finger tips , we must not forget the amazing world we’re always in and always apart of.
