Design Perceptive

One of the great things about being in academia is that I get to write really pretentious titles for things, just like this one.  Instead of simply saying that this first post is going to be about me, what I think, how I learn, who I am, and random wandering to other topics, I get to use really fancy words to obfuscate (there’s another fancy word!) the matter at hand; however, that’s going to be the first point I want to make today: the tendency for science (especially Computer Science, my chosen field) to obfuscate, why this occurs, why it shouldn’t occur, and ways to stop it.

The question of why is the hardest of the three, so let’s start with that.  It is my opinion that the “need” in CS (as I will refer to it from here on out because it’s really annoying to write “Computer Science” every time) for overly complex explanations, jargon and equations written largely in Greek comes from a seemingly subconscious need to “prove” CS as an academic discipline, despite all the wondrous advancements in life as we know it that would not be possible without CS.  Computer Science has only been around since the 50’s, which makes it still a relatively new discipline, and it seems that, from my experience, to be considered one of the preminient academic disciplines, youhave to talk and write like you read the dictionary as a kid.

Just look at medicine (one of the oldest disciplines, though for most of civilization doctors were absolute quacks) or it’s siblings biology and chemistry; they still use Latin as a primary language, and have an entire field dedicated to nomenclature.  Deep in the heart of every computer scientist there is the desire to beat the other sciences at their own game.  Plus, CS evolved from Mathematics (and many feel CS is an “applied math”) which, if you’ll recall, eschews words altogether and does business solely with characters from various alphabets, including Arabic and Greek.  This means that whenever a computer scientist has to represent a potentially complex or difficult idea formulated through their research, they have to represent it in a Greek-character-laden equation.  If they don’t, their idea is rejected by the CS community and their work will go unpublished, and to be unpublished in any scientific academia is the kiss of death.

In short, CS is the kid who, in an attempt to prove to all the older kids that he’s just as smart as they are, goes home to study a Word-A-Day calender.

So why does this matter?  Why shouldn’t CS obfuscate itself, cackling and pointing fingers at people who don’t “get it” while it high fives the other sciences in-between hands of Magic: The Gathering (okay, I’m taking this metaphor a bit far)? Because, metaphorically, that’s a very lonely life.  One will never get the fully rich cavalcade of experiences if one doesn’t open oneself to viewpoints that are outside what it deems “acceptable”.  I wonder if we in the CS community have already missed out on developments that could and should have occured had we not eliminated from contention people who had the chops to design or discover great things but couldn’t or wouldn’t bring themselves to the level of intellectual bullying that goes on in the academic sciences.  ”You don’t know how to solve complex quadratic equations, hur hur hur!”.  Luckily this is slowly beginning to right itself as more companies follow the Apple modus operandi of design and ease-of-use being as important as technical expertise (if not more so).

This, of course, is where an intrepid reader might be making the comment that what I’m describing is really a delination between a computer scientist and a computer engineer.  A scientist seeks to ask “how do things work?” or “why are things the way they are?”, whereas an engineer seeks “what can do I with this?” or “where can I apply this?”  And maybe they’re right.  It still doesn’t negate the idea that, even when one is taking the potentially more complexscientific questions (versus the more pragmatic and practicalengineering questions) one still should seek clarity in their writing and in their lecturing, lest we shut down brilliant minds before they have a chance to germinate.

There are ways to fix this, of course, but unforunately we in CS have already shot ourselves in the foot;  there actually exists a series of books with the intention of teaching topics that have been thought to be too “complex” for leyman, and to teach them with clarity and conciseness… and then they were called the “For Dummies” books.  You can imagine the aforementioned table of nerds snickering about having to explain their favorite subjects to “the dummies”.  Why do you have to be a “dummy” to want things explained in a straightforward, understandable manner?

So, how to conclude all of this… I know!  To borrow common slang from Internet message boards, I can provide “cliffnotes” in case this was “tl;dr” (too long, didn’t read).

• Computer science makes things overly complicated
• They do this for many reasons
  • To try and prove that they are just as “tough” as the older sciences
  • Because they originated within mathematics
  • Because it’s their own way of being a bully
• This has potentially eliminated talented designers from being computer scientists
• The “For Dummies” books only further this misdirection

With that, I’ll sign off for now.  Till next time, this was John.

P.S. – The irony does not escape me that, throughout an essay on the pitfalls of being overly complicated, I used many esoteric terms and fancy words (”portmanteau”?  Come on!).