I love reading those long letters that people used to write before the advent of email, tweets and what have you. And I used to write such long letters and email myself. But given that the average attention span of most adults these days seems to be limited to 140 characters or less, that’s one way to turn people off quickly. So my emails are getting shorter (and some would say to the point!) and I find myself increasingly resorting to short tweets. There is always the blog if you want to share your thoughts in greater depth.
But I still miss those lengthy emails, both the act of reading as well as writing them. But what’s there to be missed you may wonder? Well to find out, I started sifting through my emails to find which was the longest I had written in recent times and found one that made me laugh, laugh at the sheer zaniness of its contents and its serious tone which I found to be comical. Ahh, now I know what I truly miss… :-) I’m reproducing that email here for your entertainment...:
[personal details have been removed for reasons of privacy ]
To: ....
Subject: Re: ....
…. [r]ecently in the midst of …...........I have been revisiting some topics in complexity and how it relates to reductionism etc. and I have gotten interested in some of the work that philosophers have been doing in this area - something that practitioners in the 'field' are usually ignorant of - for example the work done by Herbert Simon etc. Something is pulling me towards this subject. And I have also started brushing up on statistical mechanics in anticipation - a really wonderful subject - however having read what the philosophers have said I'm beginning to become more aware its limitations - it's all conceptually blurry at the moment but the picture is beginning to come into focus.
I have also been reading up on this book on Quantum mechanics which I first came across many years ago whilst an undergraduate - but now I'm able to marvel at the lucidity of the presentation of its mathematical foundation by the author of the book - Shankar - I like the way in which he introduces the Dirac notation etc.
By sheer coincidence, last week I started reading Wheeler (one of the greatest American physicist of the 20th century) who has spoken about Baha'is and had mentioned them in a popular Physics (?!!) book he wrote. Wheeler's textbook on Gravitation is perhaps the most accessible book on General Relativity. The way in which Wheeler & co introduce the mathematical notation for GR as well as the physical insights they share (which ultimately must guide the math) makes it all seem like child's play, which in a sense it is. I say coincidence because, when I got home last weekend and switched on the telly the first thing in the morning, there was this really good documentary on Einstein - accessible to the layman but with little of the usual 'dumbing down' of the subject matter. The historical perspective provided by the documentary helped clarify what I had been reading in Wheeler's book and there were a number of aha moments.
Sorry for this stream of consciousness style of writing - I usually do not do this - but I hope what I've said comes across as being somewhat sensible :-)
I hope you have a good week ahead and yup before I forget ….........You may recall that Obama recently spoke of extending the number of weeks that children spend in school and the positive impact that would have - when I heard this I remembered Malcolm Gladwell's argument in his recent book that disadvantaged kids from lower income/ broken families would stand to gain most from [such a move] and this would [counter] the effects of their social condition. Gladwell supports his arguments with compelling story.
Ok, I better stop here.
