Information event horizons

I've always been fascinated by the way that change gradually accumulates to the point where you suddenly become aware of it. All of those incremental changes are more or less invisible - right up until the moment that you notice that things are not as you thought.

It can be quite a shock! That favourite short-cut might suddenly become a building-site, or a piece of old software no longer runs after an operating system update and you discover that the web-site no longer exists. In the first example, then the barricade across the road or path will be visible from some distance away, and so you might get some advance warning as you approach, but the software example only surfaces when you actually try to visit the web-site to see if there is a new version to suit the updated operating system.

Now if this was a physics blog, then one possible analogy at this point (and I'll avoid any Sheldon-isms) would be an event horizon - the intangible barrier between places where you can escape from the gravitation attraction of a black hole, and places where you cannot escape. So let's explore this a bit further. In the case of the building site, then you don't know about the fact that your shortcut has gone until you see that your way ahead is blocked. At which point one of those unwritten laws comes into play:

"You can't unsee something."

(I tried in vain to find the source of this idea, so if anyone knows, please let me know!)

So this is like the case where one might expect spaceships full of tourists gathered just outside the event horizon of a particularly spectacular black hole... and in these times of protective legislation, I would expect warning signs and 'Police: Do Not Cross' tape all around the event horizon.

But in the case of the web-site, then you normally wouldn't get any advance warning until you actually look for it, which is rather like the distressing result of straying past an unmarked event horizon and discovering that not only can you not unsee it, you can't leave either.

One example that happened to me recently was that I was asked about my work by someone, and I suddenly realised that most of the really detailed analsysis, results, prediction and comment that I have produced over the years are not available publicly. They are owned by the companies that I have worked for, and except for exceptions like patents and conference presentations, they haven't been published in the world outside the company, and even then, the copyright or the Intellectual Property belongs to the company.

If you can find things that I've done, then you can't unsee them, of course. But if you haven't seen them, then there's so much information out there that if you don't know what to look for, then you won't find them by accident. There's a reverse event horizon, and from outside you don't know what I've done.

In fact, we all live inside our own little event horizons, some smaller than others. Some larger than others - like Barrack Obama!

My own personal event horizon is quite peculiar. If you search online for my name you get references to my book on sound synthesis, but you will also find lots of other Martin Russes - like one who wrote about the Korean War. And you will find even more references to Russ Martin! Of course, most online searches get progressively worse as you go back in time to before blogs, before html, and before the Internet, which is another event horizon effect.

I'm afraid that now you know the analogy, it is hard to unknow it!

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