Monthly Archives: May 2011

The Scenic Route

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The Scenic Route (lemoyne.edu)

The Scenic Route (lemoyne.edu)

Would you believe it? After ten years teaching at Georgetown University, I got lost, yesterday, on my way to graduation. For some, being lost is not a major issue. Not so for me! Suffering from a mild form of dyslexia, getting lost instills in me a momentary sense of panic, as well as embarrassment, even at my stage in life. It is only recently, and with hindsight, that I have come to view the architecture of my brain in a new, and more positive, light. Now I realize that, while others, with more disciplined brains, may go straight to the quick, I meander along the scenic route, gaining serendipitous insights and experiences along the way. Graduation day was a reminder for me.

Let me say first that it is very easy to get lost on the Georgetown campus, especially if one veers off the beaten path. For, as the photograph below shows, the university buildings are nested on a hill, so that each appears to sit atop the others, as in a honey comb. In between, there are many nooks and crannies, connected by long staircases, which appear seemingly out of nowhere. When joined, they form a very elaborate maze. In such a 3-D environment, negotiating the landscape requires spacial skills as well as a good topographical map. Neither were at my disposal on graduation day.

Georgetown University (courtesy planetware.com)

Georgetown University (courtesy planetware.com)

Graduation has always been a rather straightforward, well scripted event. Absent rain, it has traditionally taken place right in the middle of the campus, in front of the main hall. This year, however, it took a different form; instead of one ceremony, in which both Masters and Doctors walked across the stage to the accolades of all, there were now two. The first, which celebrated the PhDs, took place as usual on the main campus, while the second set of ceremonies, featuring the Masters candidates, was distributed, according to degree, in different locations throughout the campus.

It was on the way to the ceremony for the Communication, Culture and Technology Program that I lost my way. The event took place in a large tent, situated on one of the terraced areas at the bottom of a long staircase. Locating it was problematic–at least for me. According to our instructions, we were to find the spot by following the faculty procession as it exited the main campus. However, even though the faculty members were clad in an array of brightly colored robes, within moments their two continuous lines dissipated, and blended into the crowd. Not knowing where to go, or how to get there, I meandered around asking directions, but to no avail. At last, I found a sign pointing to the disabled route, which–under the circumstances–seemed quite appropriate for me. Following the sign, I entered a main building where some very helpful people, although unfamiliar with the site, were able to trace out my destination on a map, and set me on the right course.

So it was that I arrived at the second graduation ceremony, and in time. The effort was well worth it. Not only was I delighted to see all of my students pass in front of me across the stage; I also relished the comments of the speaker, Ed Seidel, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation, who talked about complexity, and the future challenge that it presents for our brains! According to Seidel, in the future scholars will be overwhelmed by so much data that they can only make sense of it with the help of computational tools, and–as importantly–the collaborations of multiple scholars from widely diverse disciplines. As he said, solving the problems of tomorrow will require a community.

(courtesy of causesdyslexia.net)

(courtesy of causesdyslexia.net)

At this point a light went off in my head. In such an environment, people who are somewhat dyslexic may be at a considerable advantage in addressing future issues. For, their brains do not simplify. To the contrary, the pathways that a dyslexic brain follows are highly complex. Moreover, the dyslexic brain actually resembles a collaborative community, such as that described by Seidel. Working up to four times as hard as normal brains, its neurons interact and share information across a myriad of sources, creating in the process a holistic and, therefore, more realistic picture of the world. For those of us who follow circuitous routes such as these, the key is not to get too caught up in the scenery.

On Technorati: Communication Culture and Technology Program, complexity, computation, data analysis, dyslexia, Ed Seidel, Georgetown University, getting lost, graduation, hippocampus, National Science Foundation, spacial relations

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Letting Go. . . .

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Letting Go (Courtesy of Bisayan Lady)

Letting Go (Courtesy of Bisayan Lady)

The long hiatus in my blog postings is due, in part, to the difficulty I have been having letting go. It has now been more than two months, since Sparky– my dearest friend, and occasional collaborator–passed away. When he wasn’t commandeering my blog, he was there on my shoulder, helping me to see the world in a different way. The time has come to say goodbye.

Sparky, or Spartacus as he was formally called, was a blessing in more ways than one. A gift from my student Mridulika Menon, Sparky was intended to help assuage my loss of his predecessor, a black lab-shepherd suitably named Diablo. We browsed the dog pictures in all the nearby shelters, but my husband Brock was unable to choose one from among the many to be left behind. Let’s just wait until a dog shows up on our door step, he resolved. And, much to my suprise, on the very next day, that’s precisely what Sparky did! There in my office door was Mridulika, cradling an ink-black puppy, which she had purchased on the streets of Georgetown. I was on my way to George Washington Hospital to pick up my husband, who was undergoing a minor medical procedure. Just before leaving, I called and asked the nurse to tell my husband that Spartacus would be accompanying me.

one smart dog

one smart dog

Sparky was not only intelligent, he had a special gift of empathy. No doubt he was sensitized to other people’s feelings and emotions early in life, for a year after he came to live with us, my husband was stricken with multiple myeloma, then thought to be an incurable cancer. Overcome with fear, I turned to Sparky and held him fast, absorbing his massive strength and fortitude. Years later, he was still there, his head in my lap, at the first sign of a tear. On his last day, the day I had to put him down, I struggled to hide my feelings. My greatest fear was that Sparky would sense my grief, and try to comfort me.

Grand Old Boy

Grand Old Boy

It was Spring Vacation, so I was able to stay home by myself, reliving and savoring my shared times with Sparky. Already I missed him so. As often happens with me, I found comfort in a book, a rather unusual and, I should add, controversial one at that.

Written by the physicist Evan Harris Walker, the book was entitled The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life. Building on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the entanglement phenomenon–or as Einstein described it “spooky at a distance’”–the concept of state vector collapse, as well as quantum tunneling, Walker contends that reality is non material; to the contrary, it is subjective–that is to say dependent upon the consciousness of a quantum observer. In individuals, this consciousness is the product of quantum tunneling, which is carried out among the synapses within the brain. As importantly, given the entanglement of the quantum world, and the irrelevance of time and space, consciousness must also be nonlocal, and therefore conceived of as a whole. When, according to Walker, we view it this way, we encounter God.

Having to negotiate myself through the scientific concepts inherent in Walker’s argument might have distracted me from my pain. However, I stayed on track by following the thread throughout Walker’s narrative that I shared with him: the whys and wherefores of life and death. As a backdrop to his major theme, Walker describes his quest to discover the meaning of his adolescent girlfriend’s death more than a half of a century ago. His account, in the context of his major argument, provided a great insight to me. I could reconnect with Sparky by employing my consciousness (skeptics might say imagination) to observe him wherever he might be. So, for the next few weeks, there he lay–a slightly unfocused mass of pixels–at the foot of my bed. It was not long, however, before he let me know that it was time for me to let him go. And so I did.

On Technorati: Einstein, entanglement, Evan Harris Walker, God, life and death, multiple myeloma, non locality, parapsychology, quantum mechanics, quantum tunneling, the observer, The Physics of Consciousness and the Meaning of Life, uncertainty principle, wave function collapse

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