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Independence Day |
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Today, I resolve to start a journal, a chronicle of a journey of a particular computational sort. Having spent the last couple of weeks struggling with how to begin my next project, the book I've been thinking about now for nearly a year and planning to write during my sabbatical, the prospect of embarking on the journey immediately and chronicling it in a journal is liberating.
I had thought about combining a general, topical1 or popular book on computing with a diary-like format since I produced my first on-line journal in preparation for teaching a class on building robots (CS148: Building Intelligent Robots). I can't say that the journal was a success with the class, but I had fun producing it and people, robotics enthusiasts mainly, from all over read it and sent me comments. I've long been fascinated with journals and diaries, and the journalists and diarists who produce them. This last winter I read an interesting book about diaries [Thomas Mallon, A Book of One's Own - People and Their Diaries, 1984] and then several real and fabricated or rationally reconstructed diaries, e.g., [John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure, 1987] and [Jill Ker Conway, The Education of a Woman, 2001]. I also met Carol DeBoer-Langworthy from the English Department here at Brown who specializes in an area of creative writing called life writing and pointed me to some additional texts and encouraged me in thinking about producing introductory and motivational material on computer science in a journal-like format.
However when I started to think about producing such a work I found I was stuck. I felt that the format of a real diary wouldn't suit and so it would have to be contrived to have the feeling of a diary but the flow and organization of a well-thought-out scholarly work. "Real books" aren't created in a stream-of-conscious, strictly chronological flow. And so I was stuck at the beginning like so many writers, facing an empty page or caught in endless cycle of aborted opening lines, outlines and first paragraphs.
I was reading or, I thought, re-reading as a possible source of inspiration some of the books that I felt had inspired me when I was learning about computing, e.g., Abelson and Sussman's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP) [Abelson and Sussman, 1985], when I realized that I had never read the opening pages of many of the books that I was most fond of. In reading the opening pages of SICP, I did find the prose inspiring in the sense of making computer science and computer programming sound exciting, but then I was already hooked. The foreword by Alan Perlis, the quotations by Marvin Minsky and the interesting connection between computer programs and John Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" at the beginning of the first chapter were all inspiring, exciting and pumped me up for half a day. But I didn't read any of this the first time around; I just jumped all over the book, forward to discover some interesting bits and then back to find out what I'd missed and had to master before tackling the more interesting parts.
At the same time that I was re-reading some of my old favorites I was going through Richard Felder's papers on teaching and learning styles, e.g., see [Felder, 1993], and realizing how many different ways there are of learning and trying to think about how to reach a set of students with diverse learning styles. In reading Felder, I thought back over my various teachers and noted how few had taught to my strengths or allowed me to exercise the styles of learning that suited me best. I'll probably return to this but suffice it to say, that I was not looking forward to dictating a style of learning to my students through adopting a particular literary style. Selfishly and more to the point, I wasn't looking forward to being chained to the style and requirements of the sort of books I'd written in the past. I'd lost my first two sabbaticals to writing books and I wasn't going to lose this one; I was determined to have some fun working on this project.
Therefore I resolve to proceed chronologically, one day at a time, with the following rules in mind. Each day that I can set aside a sufficient of time to focus, I will write a journal entry. Where possible, I'll spend effort editing, organizing and going over the entry but I won't add substantive content after that day. I may come back at some point and add or update links, correct spelling, grammar or factual errors, and perhaps add forward and backward references, sideways annotations and indexing but no more - the basic content is set on the day the entry is generated. Of course, I'll be thinking about structure and organization as I have been for nearly a year. Those thoughts will determine future entries but only indirectly influence the past through the use of indexes, revisionist tables of contents, and induced web overlays.
One reason I've resisted this free-form, write-as-you-think sort of scholarship is that it flies in the face of my training as a scientist and an engineer. Think first, organize your thoughts, complete your design before you write a line of code or set a pen to paper or a finger to a keyboard. I actually think of books as code that runs on human computing machinery. But I have to admit that humans are not as uniform in their architecture for learning as are machines in their computational architecture; Felder's writing on learning styles underscores this variety of architecture. So I have to realize I'm not writing production code for a Mark IV Human Computer. I'm writing it for all the students I've met and talked with over the years in the hopes of exercising their minds and my own in ways they haven't been exercised in more restrictive formats.
The tale of my journey is really the tale of my revisiting old haunts, rekindling my enthusiasms, and, inevitably in this dynamic enterprise, taking off on new jaunts and following where my interests lead. My path to becoming a computer scientist was anything but straight, and I'd like to encourage others to take up computing whether they come from physics, carpentry or modern dance. For me this is supposed to be a joyful revisiting of my favorite haunts and an exciting revealing of ideas that I missed and brand new ideas that I'll stumble on as I explore. The best way for me to instill enthusiasm in you is to convey my own enthusiasm.
I won't shrink from dredging up the past or recycling ideas or presentations that I've used in the past. Nor will I reinvent the wheel when I think someone has presented material better than I am able and I can point you to a relevant web page. I've been keeping notes and journals for years and I plan to use that external source of memory to supplement the present work. Again, the idea of a journal appeals to me in the flow of ideas and notion of education as growth and change.
This was written on two sheets of 3 by 5 note paper from an old journal I found in my briefcase as I was riding into Brown this morning. As a writing table, I used my well-worn copy of SICP with the red hard back cover with simple white text. I was on RIPTA #60 inbound on an ozone-alert day from Little Compton, RI to Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence, RI. As I was walking to the Computer Science Department from downtown, I passed the Brown University English Department and saw a quote from Gertrude Stein2 carved into an inset piece of stone on the recently remodeled building; it read "And then there is using everything." And so I have.
1. I've always liked the word "topical" for its dual meanings of local application and temporary or passing interest.
Main Entry: top.i.cal Function: adjective Date: 1588 1 : designed for or involving local application and action (as on the body) 2 a : of, relating to, or arranged by topics b : referring to the topics of the day or place : of local or temporary interest
2. Gertrude Stein was a diarist and was mentioned by Thomas Mallon in his book, "A Book of One's Own - People and Their Diaries" [Mallon, 1984]. I think it was partly for this reason that her quote inscribed in the wall of the English Department caught my eye.
In discussing her early work on time, GS implies that the continuous present in her narration is realized by "using everything" and by "beginning again and again." The latter describes the repetitions, so-called, which create extended, unbroken continuity as well as gradual variety that opens into "insistence." "Using everything" refers to her reliance on minute details, including tiny inflections of language, to develop the evolving continuity of the present. Stein always insists on the importance of small things--an infinitude of tiny details rather than a collective totality.
- Ulla Dydo, Working Notes for The Language That Rises: The Voice of Gertrude Stein 1923-1934