Science has been a way of Man interpreting his environment and making an acceptable law that those who were interested to look in to these things could follow on and add their own experience. Art on the other hand has always been seen as Man’s way expressing himself abstractly without any particle constraints and is often deemed as the opposite of Science. But I have come to see the effects of both being felt on the other. This is so based on the fact that I am an intellectual that has been deeply rooted in the Sciences but yet I am also a man who loves to express himself in deep thought or discourse, poem, song or otherwise. To go one step further, my area of expertise and physical gifting is both in the area of Mathematics. As much as I have been gifted and have succeeded academically in Mathematics, my love and fascination has always been on one of the most intriguing tools Man has been able to fashion, The Computer. I have always seen this tool as the perfect marriage between Science and Art! It allows the most complex patterns to be printed on fabric and other materials that ordinarily would be unthinkable to do so, such as glass and plastic. Not only does this tool allow such complex replication such as printing which is not Art (the artist may say) but they are having the ability to analyze the same replicated patterns not only with respect to how they are seen (the most used form of conscious human perception) but other factors that human perception could never fathom conscious or unconscious. It is also no strange coincidence that the Computer is based on the fundamentals of Mathematics. It is worthwhile to go into some detail about how Mathematics the fundamental element in Computer Science, that which motivated the Computer allowed us to encapsulate from the very basic to incomprehensibly complex.
The very structure of Mathematics is based on patterns formed in and around Man’s own existence. Mathematics is its earliest forms is equivalent to Logic and Reasoning and the concept of quantity is not the obvious, but is the only way that Man has been able to make a strong case for Logical Statements and Reasons why things are the way they are. Strange is it? But it is true the concept of Numbers has opened the senses of Man to interpret, predict, encapsulate, simulate and demonstrate almost all forms of Nature. Art on the other hand is by no means inferior, since the natural expression that comes from Artistic sculpting, painting, writing, dreaming and imagination can never be reproduced or encapsulated by Science and specifically the Science of Numbers. It gives us a timely reminder that Man is definitely unique and lord of his domain as far as his environment is concerned. And yet with the advances of the Pattern Finding Tool he can come really close to doing so.
Computer Science is linked to Mathematics through basic pattern of counting. This system that has help the computer conquer some of the most complicated phenomenon such sounds, artistic printed designs and evolved to include animations (a mass improvement to Technicolor give what we know as Computer Generated Images), receiving these sounds, pictures (advanced scanning and machine reading in character recognition or machine sight), texture to in detail analyzing movement and position. The use of the basic “Black and White” Binary Number Pattern is the crux of the whole matter that allows us to see color of our computer screen. Binary is also pattern that Man used to conquer Reasoning where the 1 and 0 became equated with “True” or “False”. Computer Science is based on the whole Mathematical Logic along with the advances in Silicon Chemistry and other semiconductor designs extend that functionality to include millions, billions and even Trillions of Bits of information to be considered thus enhancing the picture so to speak. The advances in Nuclear Technologies have been interestingly merged with the Computer’s Analytical Reasoning capabilities to produce very precise Actuators and Sensors in the discipline of Robotics and Automated Theory. All this analysis, accuracy and acceleration seen in a computer system is basically attributed to the Binary Number Pattern platform. We take each number of this system to recognize one of two states: “On” or “Off”. And from this rationale, we got basic components of computing called switches. Electronics also took a path of its own to further tame electricity with the use of relays. However the ultimate training of the natural phenomenon of flowing electrons came which the discovery of the Transistor. This has since then gave over the Silicon Age and we have much fast and more capable machines being able of processing Trillions of pieces of information of one particular subject.
But my appreciation of Mathematics as in the form of Computer Science Advances is not based on the academic success that I have had but on that of my own physical limitations. What fascinates me most and I hope I have also drawn your attention to it as well, is how remarkably well our own brains work on this concept of Black or White. I believe that what Man has only been able to do quite recently with the computer has been hard-wired into humans from the beginning. Being male, not that personally feel there is any correlation, I have some difficulty distinguishing, remembering and naming colors. Contrastingly so, I am gifted with most immaculate photographic memory! I can recall strings of numbers, from phone numbers, ATM PINs, ID numbers to just random numbers I see I can recall them. I can do the same with words, positional directions (eg. if I go on a bus ride, I would be able to drive back the way we came in the bus without using the map and from only being on the route one time) and colors believe it or not. I recognized my deficiencies as motivation to prove how well our brains work and at the same time show how impossible it would be to mimic even though based on the same basics we use in Mathematics and Computer Science.
Color is a fascinating concept that has meaning to us only because of the receptacles of the eyes and the processing power of our brains. Without our eyes and brains we have no idea how this world would look. Our eyes are the sensors of our bodies and our brains the computer. We know from science that white light reflects differently and is refracted when passing back through certain molecules of matter however the many different spectrums of light that can be seen can be encapsulated by the theory of Black and White. I love to always relate this classical experience I had (several times might I add), that motivated me to prove this using Machine Sight specifically identify certain colors. The first time I realized this phenomenon I was at a conference where two of my colleagues whose specialization was in Computerized Learning tested my ability to observe color changes. It was the then Windows Vista logo of the flag in the screen saver. When they asked me what color is square of the flag had I honestly could not see any differences between any of the frames. But when they started to point out each color was different the color seemingly looked dissimilar. I recognized then that my problem was not observing color but distinguishing it. To my eye color is not as fancy as many artistic types may make it with all the several naming schemes like light, dark, off, etc., etc. not to mention special names that mean the same thing like purple and violet. But these naming schemes are useful for Machine Learning of colors, but confuse the appreciation of colors in reality. When I look at a color I tend to classify it based on the Black or White Principle or as one would say a Light Color or a Dark Color and that is it! If someone asks me what color it is unless it is from the basic set of White-Black+RBG and subsequent combinations that we are taught in elementary school and up: Yellow, Green, Brown; I say I do not know. If some gives me a ‘heads-up’ I remember. So I say am not color-blind just color-lazy. But aspect of Color-Laziness where one does not implement color sorting faculties other than the basic Binary of colors, to implement and improve on this laziness using Computer Storage and Processing Power. My second and all other noticeable experiences of motivation further brings me to another aspect I will use to implement Computer Color Awareness, that is off Relative Color. For instance, when asked to borrow a pen that had a blue casing, I automatically assumed that the pen was also a blue-inked pen, also I asked for a blue-inked pen, I wrote with the pen assuming it was blue. However looking further back in what I was writing I noticed that the ink changed color from when I started to write with the new pen. I was totally unaware that the pen indeed was a black-inked pen in a blue casing only until I compared it with previous writing. Still, my Color-Lazy brain still needed convincing and it was only when I compared both colors on the White Paper (we usually write on). You may ask what is so special about the White Paper comparison, I will say it is necessary for a color-lazy brain where even the simplest of colors are skimmed over, they can only compare colors when they have a base-background and they compare colors by focusing on the base either white or black or for less lazy brains a contrasting color. My postulation is a computer who only has its database is Color-Lazy when its subroutine for color recognition is not running. It has the ability to have the wavelengths of light to be sensed by its sensor but without analysis it has not comprehension of that color.
So my plan of implementation gives us hope to process this life of fancy assorted cashews to make sense of how we observe color. I plan to do the same for Texture awareness. How you say? Go Figure!
Mathematics is the Power being physically aware and reasoning by taking record of what is and what is not as far you can be aware with respect to sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.
