In June I spent one afternoon at the Science Museum in London, where - shame! - I had never been before. If I had to be concise, I would probably choose one adjective: fabulous.
... Of course, brevity is no familiar word of mine. :) A first look at the museum plan suggested me that I would need to select a few topics and focus on these, leaving the others for future day trips to the capital. I thus visited quite extensively the Mathematics section, looking with amazement at the beautifully crafted three-dimensional reproductions of solution curves for differential equations and staring at the zoo of polygons and solids that were discovered (and sometimes named, just like one would do with a child of their own!) in centuries of mathematical studies. I strolled around a couple of temporary installations, one of which I very much disliked, the other of which I quite enjoyed. Ah, art combined with science - often probabilistic in its outcome! :) On a general note, I did find the idea of having a permanent collection as well as a few sections that host temporary exhibitions on various topics an extremely clever way of structuring a museum...
... Which leads me to the main reason why I started this post in the first place. When I entered the museum, the first object that drew my attention was a poster advertising one of these temporary sections, in this case one that focussed on the life and legacy of Alan Turing (
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/galleries/turing.aspx). If the name does not ring any bell, I will leave you to the reading of the Wikipedia article (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing). If you do know a bit about Turing's contribution to mathematics, logic and computer science, then you probably won't be surprised to know that exploring the section one would be able to see a couple of Enigma machines and a reproduction of a computer designed by Turing himself when, well, a computer was everything but "personal" (in the early days, a "computer" was actually a human being - usually a woman - trained to compute specific calculations by typing on a machine very similar to the ones you would have written letters to your grandmother with), to mention a few items on display.
The real surprise came at the end of the exhibition: three very coloured, interactive machines had been brought there to get the so-called general public to familiarise with concepts such as looping. Such "key words" are well-known within the scientific community; they identify operations that are likely to appear as basic building blocks in many, many programming codes (irrespective of the specific language used). I must say that I voluntarily chose the looping example: I am an inexperienced programmer, and I still feel somehow uncomfortable every time I realise that I need to add a loop in a code. I thus decided to stop at the machine that stood there to give an insight into how looping instructions are written and executed: I was curious to see the way people would interact with it.
Let me try and describe the installation itself. Imagine a screen where specific areas (which are nothing but sets of pixels) have different colours: these coloured sections of the screen can be activated (and de-activated) depending on the instructions executed by the machine. This creates sequences of "coloured patches" that appear and disappear in cycles until one or more instructions change. This is because the lines of code that "tell the screen" "Now make the green pixels glow!" and so on are embedded in a loop, and are thus executed over and over (well... potentially - nothing lasts forever, I believe). Under the screen is a post where another screen is found: this one displays the actual code that is responsible for what happens on the glowing screen. It is also possible to see the circuit that physically implements the written programme. Finally, next to the screen showing the code there is a smaller screen that displays a few instructions that should allow visitors to understand how the machine works, and in turn make it possible to actively modify its glowing output.
I thus stand a few metres away from the installation: a first group of people arrives - good. They look like they are 25, maybe 30 years old; two men, two women. The latter somehow stay at a distance. Perhaps they are not interested, but maybe this is also because their male companions have quite naturally (and quickly) occupied the space in front of the screen: they are already interacting with the machine. What strikes me about the first bunch of groups that stop and spend some time in front of this looping machine is the following behaviour: they do look at the instructions that "translate" what the code does, but they rapidly start pressing the buttons that make it possible to modify the code - sometimes while they're still reading the instructions, and often in such a nervous way that makes me suspect that they're not really testing how this machine works. They play around. What is also interesting is that they seem to get bored quickly - many people extract a digital camera, take a picture of the coloured screen and then leave.
As for me, I had initially spent several minutes looking at the installation, and to be entirely honest, well, I am not sure I did understand how this is supposed to shine some light on how looping lines of code are implemented. Which is why I then decided to stay around, to see if I could feel less lost by watching other people dealing with the machine - someone could turn out to be a good demonstrator. Now, these first groups of visitors do not help at all: they're way too frantic, they touch every possible button and they don't seem to have any criteria driving their actions. Ah - now a man in his sixties comes around. He stares at the installation for a while. He looks at the glowing screen, then at the post with the two screens displaying the code and the instructions on how to operate the machine. Pause. He starts pressing a few buttons on the post - calmly but firmly, and constantly checking what the outcome of his actions is on the glowing screen: areas of different colours gently appear and disappear. Pause. He stares at the screen a little longer and he eventually leaves; I presume he is satisfied with the final result. Then I do realise - this man has just been my demonstrator! Now it all perfectly makes sense - easy. I am about to leave when something else happens: the post with the code and the instructions breaks - no instructions anymore. My reaction is immediate: too bad, now people won't stop as the machine cannot be operated in these conditions. Wrong. A couple (both in their mid-thirties, I would say) arrives and stares at the screens for a while: they do seem to get the general functioning, and after pressing a few buttons they leave. A few more people stop by: some of them look like they know what they're doing, some less - still they use the machine and produce coloured patterns on the glowing screen...
... Which is ultimately what happens when one switches on a laptop or a mobile phone: one does use them even without having a deep knowledge of the way they effectively work.
The code is there though.
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