Fascinating links

I collaborated for a while with Jean Ichbiah [1940-2007], inventor of the Ada programming language, whose name refers to Ada Lovelace [1815-1852], daughter of the poet Lord Byron. That lady worked alongside Charles Babbage [1791-1871], inventor of so-called engines that were precursors of modern computing machines. Much later, in the context of the affair of French submarines ordered by Australia, I happened to meet up by e-mail with Ross Babbage who informed me kindly, when I asked him, that he was indeed a descendant of Charles. Here are portraits of individuals I’ve just mentioned:

Jean Ichbiah

Ada Lovelace

Charles Babbage

Ross Babbage

I wonder at times if a mysterious Force (?) might have led me, as it were, to all those individuals. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not referring to heavenly guides such as Abraham and Jesus. I was merely imagining possible manipulations carried out by my own humble brain… which has always got a kick out of mentioning unexpected associations (as I’m doing at this very moment).

Cerveau associatif

Je sais depuis mon enfance que je suis né avec un cerveau associatif. C’est-à-dire que j’ai un mal fou à emmagasiner des blocs informes de données autonomes, non-connectées. En revanche, à partir du moment où je mets en route une approche associative, je finis par trouver une bonne partie de ce que je cherche. Pour emprunter mon résumé préféré : Je ne cherche pas ; je trouve.

Depuis longtemps, on a l’habitude de dire que, dans nos discussions sur le cerveau humain, il est bon d’introduire le concept de l’ordinateur et de l’informatique comme une métaphore. Mais qu’il faudrait éviter d'imaginer que le cerveau fonctionnerait réellement selon les mêmes principes que l’ordinateur. Alors pourquoi cette méfiance ? Existerait-il une réalisation « en chair et en os » des méthodes de programmation, au sens informatique, qui serait totalement différente de ce que nous avons pris l’habitude de faire dans le domaine informatique ?

Tout en évoquant l’idée selon laquelle le fonctionnement du cerveau serait réellement « près » de celui du cerveau, je me rends compte que je triche un peu. Après tout, un ordinateur de l’époque archaïque de la Seconde Guerre mondiale [1939-1945] n’est pas exactement « près » d’un appareil moderne, bien que nous dirions qu’ils utilisent des principes hautement communes. Pour revenir à mon point de départ, on pourrait imaginer qu’une vieille bécane et un iMac exploitent tous les deux une approche de recherche basée sur les associations… même si leurs réalisations en chair et en os (leurs implementations) soient totalement différentes.

Quand je tente de retrouver un terme qui m’a échappé, j’exploite une approche que l’on pourrait faire marcher facilement sur un ordinateur moderne. C’est-à-dire que je demande à mon cerveau de réfléchir à la lettre A, puis la lettre B, puis la lettre C, et ainsi de suite. Et souvent, mon cerveau tombe sur le terme que je recherche.

Une approche encore plus puissante consiste à associer les éléments de nos arguments de recherche avec des choses familières dans le monde réel. La semaine dernière, mon cerveau a perdu momentanément l’expression « dissonance cognitive ». Alors, pour le premier terme, je me suis mis à imaginer un aspirateur Dyson, tandis que pour le second, j’ai imaginé un cog [pignon] de vélo.

Vraiment n’importe quoi !

Et bien, croyez-moi : ces machins idiots marchent effectivement !

My brain hides unpleasant memories

This morning, unexpectedly, I suddenly found one of my favorite French songs floating through my brain, but I couldn't pin it down. Little by little, the melody started to shimmer in my memory, along with a few words, and accents of the singer's voice. But the singer's identity and the title of the song still failed to clarify themselves.

I immediately said to myself that some kind of a psychological obstacle was preventing me from obtaining a complete picture of this data stored in my brain. But there are ways to bring it back into view. Readers may have noticed that my brain has been working in overdrive for several months, simply because it has been “remastering” links that got messed up when I fell down the stairs last year. I promptly decided to start digging... as systematically as possible. I was convinced that, if I handled the situation calmly, but with determination, I would soon discover all the missing elements. So I simply lingered in the warm autumn sunshine and waited patiently, leaving my brain to search, like an obedient computer.

Within a few minutes, the singer's surname flashed onto my cerebral display screen: Moustaki. Fair enough, i remember being fond of this Greek-born singer, who made a name for himself in France.

But why would memories of this sympathetic singer lead to any kind of psychological obstacle in my brain? I recalled that, in 1993 (well before the singer's death in 2013), I had in fact attended a concert in which he performed, at St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, as part of the village's annual festival in honor of the great Belgian singer Jacques Brel, who had lived there for a short while. In my memory, I tried to turn on an image-retrieval system that might provide me with a photo of Moustaki as I had seen him that evening. No feedback...

All of a sudden, red lights started to flash in my brain, and buzzers made nasty noises. I realized immediately that I had made a hit... but it had nothing to do with wonderful artists such as Moustaki and Brel. Instead of their images, I picked up a cerebral snapshot of a unpleasant fellow named Merri. Here's a recent real picture of this comic artist:

I understood rapidly how this Merri demon had entered my mind, and why he was blocking the works. Let's see if I can explain to you what was happening. Better still, let me point you to a blog post I wrote, ten years ago, which includes a short account of the way in which Merri appeared for an unpleasant instant in my life. It's amusing to see that, in this blog post, I didn't even mention the fact that, on that same evening, I had been listening to Moustaki. I was so disturbed by Merri that I completely forgot about Moustaki. It was only this morning that the two fellows made an unexpected appearance, side by side, in my brain. Here is the 10-year-old blog post, which I urge you to read.

The name of Merri brought together both the name of my son's primary school, Saint Merri, in the heart of Paris, and my fond memories of the blue jacket that François had inherited in Fremantle, which he gave me later on. I remember being happy to wear this elegant jacket in St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, alongside nice local friends. Then Merri stepped into the picture, and screwed up everything... right up until this morning in the autumn sun at Gamone. I must make a conscious effort to zap him. I wonder if psychological devices such as cerebral drones exist.

Trying to find ancestors who made me smart

A few days ago, I was trying to solve the enigma of a charming ancestor named Frank Skyvington [1845-1916] whose son named William Skyvington [1868-1959] turned out to be a scoundrel. I kept saying to myself that it was strange to find a father and his son who were clearly so different. Why did this madness appear suddenly, before disappearing just as suddenly. I searched around intensely on the web to find an explanation of the ways in which chromosomes of madness might suddenly come into existence, maybe introduced by a baby’s mother. But every article I found on this genetic question was prefaced, as it were, by a huge warning: Be careful. Don’t assume that genes play any role whatsoever in the situation that concerns you. Maybe the factors that interest you were acquired, not from nature, but through nurture.

For ages, that sort of advice always infuriated me. It was unthinkable that environmental causes might have made me interested in science, then computers, then France, etc. To put it bluntly, nobody in my surroundings could have possibly persuaded me to get interested in out-of-the-way passions such as science, computers, France, etc. The only plausible explanation was that one of my ancestors must have supplied me with the necessary “good genes”.

Well, that last statement is utter nonsense. The only causes that make somebody smart come from the people who talk to him, the books he reads, the stuff he learns, etc. There are no magic genes in our bodies that turn on brightness as if we were an electric lamp.

It has taken me a long time to reach this simple conclusion.

Bugged nightware

In a recent Dilbert strip, the pointy-haired boss says he has just invested in new network software. When Dilbert asks him how he handled the technical aspects of this situation, the boss says he was assisted by the software vendor, who provided him with a weird explanation.

My present post is strange, almost crazy, but it’s perfectly genuine and understandable. Regularly, in my early-morning nightmares over the last year (since my fall in the Gamone staircase a year ago), I find myself programming a computer and striving to remove bugs from its faulty software. If the humorist Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) heard about my behavior, he would possibly see it as proof that we humans are participating in a gigantic theatrical play staged by superior creatures.

Personally, I have a more down-to-earth explanation. During the day, I spend time working on my computer (as I'm doing now) and trying to find logical explanations for certain complicated real-life situations and problems. So, it’s not surprising that a former software fellow like me might imagine in dreams that he’s still programming. The other night, the situation was enhanced by the fact that, before going to bed, I had watched Kubrick’s Space Odyssey movie (for the first time in years), which is frankly a sacred masterpiece for enthusiasts of artificial intelligence. Besides, I had spent time, during the day, trying to handle the reactions of my sisters to family-history puzzles. So, all the ingredients were present for a troublesome night of dreams.

The problem with nightmares of this character is that I’m terribly frustrated by the fact that, when I’m dreaming, I’m not using a real computer (as I am now) and that my imagined computing activities are totally fake. Inevitably, the absurd background of my nightware becomes obvious as soon as I wake up, as is generally the case with trivial dreams. I have no trouble in immediately getting back in contact with reality, including the presence of my authentic computer, just alongside the bed where I had been dreaming.