Past unexpected

A chance comment today set me thinking about time travel. Long a staple of science fiction, time travel is one of those things that is so unlikely to be encountered in real life that most people just accept whatever is presented to them.

But I'm not so easy to persuade. The well-worn and obvious cliches about time travel are either meeting yourself, or altering the past so that you no longer exist in the future. There's already plenty of words been expended on those, so I'll explore the more mundane...

First off, there's the 'Universal Translator' problem. Now whilst Captain Kirk and Doctor Who can just glibly explain that they have one, and so can communicate with any alien races that they encounter, the unfortunate truth about time travel is that you go back even a few hundred years and things have changed in ways that make you stand out like, well, like a time traveller.

For example, changes in the pronounciation of English are always ignored in films, except for certain cliches. It appears that going back in time quickly renders your speech so different that you may be unable to communicate (between 1200 and 1600 the way that vowels were pronounced in English changed markedly - this is one of the differences betwixt Middle English and Modern English). Worse, your eating preferences would also mark you out as an outsider (coffee, tea, potatoes and more are all comparatively modern), as would your behaviour to others and especially those higher in rank, and would your clothes, and your smell, or lack of it. Before shampoo, keeping hair clean and 'manageable' was very difficult, and so your hair might give you away, as would your watch, your shoes, your jeans, t-shirt, glasses, underwear, iPod, contact lenses, and your fillings in your mouth. Then there's germs, where your carefully constructed defences against the diseases of your own time are probably laughably ineffective against those of ancient times.

So, actual time travel is tricky for a whole set of reasons that have nothing to do with the technology, and anyone foolhardy enough to try it would almost certainly be unable to conceal their strangeness from the locals. In fact, one suspects that there isn't really a need for Temporal Policemen to stop people killing their grandparents or posting themselves stock market summaries, because trying to survive in a world as totally alien as the past, seems to be almost impossibly difficult,and potentially very life-threatening.

As with many interesting and exciting things, the simple truth is that the mundane nature of the real world makes them far less appealing and extremely unlikely.

3D or 2D?

I've been using a popular example of slide presentation software for many years, and I've learned many ways to use it efficiently to get quick diagrams that convey ideas to people. But today I learned something that removed some of my confidence.

It all happened innocently enough. A colleague asked me if I could help with an urgent task by producing a diagram. Please note that this was because of my mere competence rather than any amazing talent that I have. The description of what was need went along the lines of: '...and you have a series of choices, and can take any choice at each stage...' and I was doing what my head does automatically at this point: visualising it.

But here's the problem - I was thinking about it in 3D, and the diagram I had in my head was perfect for expressing the concept, except that when I tried to draw it using the 2D slide presentation software I quickly realised that I couldn't re-produce what was in my head on the screen - at least not in a reasonable time-scale, and not without enormous efforts to do the 3D transforms manually by drawing line segments by hand.

It suddenly struck me that the 2D software was perfectly okay for just about all everyday diagram tasks, except those where I came up with a 3D mental picture, and couldn't find a 2D alternative. At a pivotal moment like this bloggers are supposed to have a neat analogy immediately to hand, something like: 'It is like the climactic space-ship fight sequence between Khan and Kirk in The Wrath of Khan, where Kirk and crew realize that Khan is thinking in 2D instead of 3D, and that this gives them an advantage because they aren't tied to the idea that there is any direction called 'up' in space.' Oh, I seem to have found a suitable quote!

To illustrate just how hard it is to avoid thinking in 3D, look at the picture below:


Did you see two shapes: a square and a strange four-sided kite shape? Or did you see a square, and another square, turned and twisted around in 3D space, and with the top left corner closest to you? Be honest! Now that I've told you you will see a kite, although trying to draw this in 2D is hard, and I cheated by using 3D transforms!

I'm now waiting/looking for a neat presentation slide software that lets me work in 3D. Something very different from a 3D modelling or rendering tool: a 3D diagram maker. I've never seen one. have you?