1
00:00:01,919 --> 00:00:04,319
Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories

2
00:00:04,319 --> 00:00:07,040
podcast. I'm Andrew Glester, and it's a hundred

3
00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:09,439
years ago in 1925

4
00:00:09,439 --> 00:00:11,679
when one of our favorite origin stories from

5
00:00:11,679 --> 00:00:13,779
the world of physics came to be.

6
00:00:14,345 --> 00:00:17,225
Heisenberg, trying to escape the pollen filled streets

7
00:00:17,225 --> 00:00:18,045
of the city,

8
00:00:18,425 --> 00:00:20,125
voyaged to the island of Helgoland,

9
00:00:20,664 --> 00:00:23,064
where unencumbered by his hay fever, he was

10
00:00:23,064 --> 00:00:25,304
able to give life to the nascent field

11
00:00:25,304 --> 00:00:26,339
of quantum mechanics.

12
00:00:26,820 --> 00:00:29,320
It was, of course, in 1925

13
00:00:29,539 --> 00:00:32,280
that Heisenberg published his work on the matrix

14
00:00:32,340 --> 00:00:33,399
mechanics formulation

15
00:00:33,939 --> 00:00:35,159
of quantum mechanics.

16
00:00:35,780 --> 00:00:37,700
And for a new lateral thoughts piece in

17
00:00:37,700 --> 00:00:40,200
the Physics World magazine, Kevlin Henney

18
00:00:40,564 --> 00:00:43,684
reimagines this story from another angle. We'll hear

19
00:00:43,684 --> 00:00:45,684
from Kevlin on the art of the story

20
00:00:45,684 --> 00:00:48,564
shortly. But first, here he is reading a

21
00:00:48,564 --> 00:00:51,064
snippet of that piece in our magazine.

22
00:00:53,109 --> 00:00:55,590
I am somewhat aggrieved that professor Born did

23
00:00:55,590 --> 00:00:57,210
not grant my request for leave.

24
00:00:57,750 --> 00:00:59,909
Abitantly, the notice was short, but the hay

25
00:00:59,909 --> 00:01:01,049
fever is most wretched.

26
00:01:01,670 --> 00:01:03,429
I am barely able to string two thoughts

27
00:01:03,429 --> 00:01:06,170
together, let alone a theory for electron transition.

28
00:01:07,224 --> 00:01:10,025
The problem of hydrogen spectral lines eludes me,

29
00:01:10,025 --> 00:01:11,864
as does any coherence during much of the

30
00:01:11,864 --> 00:01:12,765
day or night.

31
00:01:13,784 --> 00:01:16,104
The lushness of Gottingen's parks and gardens is

32
00:01:16,104 --> 00:01:17,165
a curse in summer.

33
00:01:17,625 --> 00:01:18,984
If I am to make progress on this

34
00:01:18,984 --> 00:01:20,905
problem of physics, I must first address this

35
00:01:20,905 --> 00:01:22,364
problem of my own biology.

36
00:01:23,939 --> 00:01:24,760
Sixth of June.

37
00:01:25,780 --> 00:01:28,359
Chemistry is today's pursuit. I have secured medication

38
00:01:28,579 --> 00:01:30,120
in a greater dose than before.

39
00:01:30,819 --> 00:01:31,799
June 7.

40
00:01:32,579 --> 00:01:34,659
Empirically, I appear to have determined that a

41
00:01:34,659 --> 00:01:36,359
more generous ingestion of cocaine

42
00:01:36,739 --> 00:01:38,795
is not the solution to my hay fever

43
00:01:38,795 --> 00:01:39,295
problem.

44
00:01:39,674 --> 00:01:42,075
I shall instead switch to increasing my intake

45
00:01:42,075 --> 00:01:42,734
of aspirin.

46
00:01:44,875 --> 00:01:46,015
Eleventh of June.

47
00:01:47,114 --> 00:01:49,215
I am feeling most sorry,

48
00:01:49,594 --> 00:01:51,614
both myself and the state of our discipline.

49
00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:54,359
It is as though my own ills are

50
00:01:54,359 --> 00:01:56,299
entangled with physics as a whole.

51
00:01:57,159 --> 00:01:59,020
There is little certainty or clarity,

52
00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:01,100
only contradictions and incompleteness.

53
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:03,560
Whether at the scale of the atom or

54
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:04,219
the galaxy,

55
00:02:05,084 --> 00:02:08,044
our understanding contradicts our intuition and our progress

56
00:02:08,044 --> 00:02:09,665
out of this darkness is pitiful.

57
00:02:10,444 --> 00:02:13,405
Even professor Einstein's magnificent and general theory of

58
00:02:13,405 --> 00:02:14,784
relativity has its difficulties.

59
00:02:15,805 --> 00:02:18,444
Without a fix that lacks any theoretical origin,

60
00:02:18,444 --> 00:02:20,145
it predicts an expanding universe.

61
00:02:20,729 --> 00:02:23,210
Solutions that permit dark stars whose gravity would

62
00:02:23,210 --> 00:02:25,210
be so large that not even light could

63
00:02:25,210 --> 00:02:25,710
escape.

64
00:02:26,409 --> 00:02:28,349
We are mired in questions and nonsense.

65
00:02:28,729 --> 00:02:30,250
All the while, I am little more than

66
00:02:30,250 --> 00:02:32,110
coughs or sneezes and reddened eyes.

67
00:02:32,775 --> 00:02:34,615
What I might generously call my mind is

68
00:02:34,615 --> 00:02:36,155
barely deserving of the name.

69
00:02:37,495 --> 00:02:39,754
I am consoled, at least, that in mathematics,

70
00:02:39,814 --> 00:02:41,194
the story is not the same.

71
00:02:42,135 --> 00:02:44,455
Russell and Whitehead have shown that mathematics is

72
00:02:44,455 --> 00:02:45,594
complete and consistent,

73
00:02:46,189 --> 00:02:47,870
although I know of no one who's managed

74
00:02:47,870 --> 00:02:48,930
to read the whole proof.

75
00:02:49,949 --> 00:02:52,189
This result offers a firm bedrock. I am

76
00:02:52,189 --> 00:02:54,669
sure mathematicians will continue to celebrate a hundred

77
00:02:54,669 --> 00:02:55,650
years from now.

78
00:03:00,349 --> 00:03:02,085
On the thirteenth and fourteenth

79
00:03:02,645 --> 00:03:04,905
May, The Economist is hosting

80
00:03:05,365 --> 00:03:05,865
commercializing

81
00:03:06,485 --> 00:03:07,705
quantum global

82
00:03:08,165 --> 00:03:09,064
twenty twenty

83
00:03:09,444 --> 00:03:10,344
five in London

84
00:03:10,885 --> 00:03:12,344
as part of the UN's

85
00:03:12,724 --> 00:03:13,224
international

86
00:03:13,605 --> 00:03:16,344
year of quantum science and technology.

87
00:03:17,439 --> 00:03:17,939
Commercializing

88
00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:20,020
quantum is sponsored

89
00:03:20,319 --> 00:03:21,939
by the Institute of Physics,

90
00:03:22,319 --> 00:03:24,659
which brings you physics world.

91
00:03:25,280 --> 00:03:28,740
In London, you'll join global leaders from business,

92
00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:30,500
science, and policy

93
00:03:30,955 --> 00:03:33,775
for two days of real world insights

94
00:03:34,074 --> 00:03:35,614
into quantum's future.

95
00:03:36,555 --> 00:03:38,974
Explore breakthroughs in quantum computing,

96
00:03:39,435 --> 00:03:39,935
communications,

97
00:03:40,474 --> 00:03:42,254
and sensing at the event,

98
00:03:42,634 --> 00:03:44,735
and discover how these technologies

99
00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:46,739
are shaping industries,

100
00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:47,860
economies,

101
00:03:48,319 --> 00:03:49,699
and global regulation.

102
00:03:50,799 --> 00:03:55,459
Register now at events.economist.com,

103
00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:58,259
and use the code quantum 20

104
00:03:58,560 --> 00:03:59,219
to receive

105
00:03:59,715 --> 00:04:03,814
20% off. That's quantum in upper case letters

106
00:04:04,275 --> 00:04:05,655
followed by the numeral

107
00:04:06,034 --> 00:04:06,534
20.

108
00:04:07,235 --> 00:04:09,974
This offer ends the May 4.

109
00:04:10,435 --> 00:04:11,335
See you there.

110
00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:16,660
Here's Kevlin Henning.

111
00:04:17,040 --> 00:04:20,660
I'm an independent software consultant, trainer, and writer,

112
00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:23,220
and I am based in Bristol.

113
00:04:24,064 --> 00:04:27,664
So software development. Why why have you written

114
00:04:27,664 --> 00:04:28,644
something about

115
00:04:29,104 --> 00:04:29,604
Heisenberg

116
00:04:30,464 --> 00:04:31,204
and Helgoland

117
00:04:31,584 --> 00:04:34,305
for Physics World? That is that is a

118
00:04:34,305 --> 00:04:35,504
a long and twisted story.

119
00:04:35,985 --> 00:04:36,485
Yes.

120
00:04:37,664 --> 00:04:39,204
It's not an obvious connection.

121
00:04:39,939 --> 00:04:41,379
So we need a couple of other strands

122
00:04:41,379 --> 00:04:43,300
to this story. One of which is that

123
00:04:43,300 --> 00:04:43,800
my,

124
00:04:44,500 --> 00:04:45,960
first degree was in physics.

125
00:04:46,660 --> 00:04:48,740
And I've kind of maintained a a a

126
00:04:48,740 --> 00:04:51,540
a casual and broad interest, in that ever

127
00:04:51,540 --> 00:04:52,040
since.

128
00:04:53,074 --> 00:04:55,074
And there's a number of people in my

129
00:04:55,074 --> 00:04:57,795
cohort and and ended up in software. That

130
00:04:57,875 --> 00:04:59,795
that's relatively unsurprising. I think it was about,

131
00:04:59,795 --> 00:05:03,395
you know, 50% people went into, software, fifty

132
00:05:03,395 --> 00:05:05,555
percent went into accounting, and a negligible amount

133
00:05:05,555 --> 00:05:06,689
actually went into physics.

134
00:05:07,250 --> 00:05:09,089
That that that's what it felt like certainly

135
00:05:09,089 --> 00:05:09,750
back then.

136
00:05:10,290 --> 00:05:12,230
So I was one of the software crowd.

137
00:05:13,170 --> 00:05:13,670
The

138
00:05:14,769 --> 00:05:15,269
so

139
00:05:15,569 --> 00:05:17,970
the story aspect is an interesting one because

140
00:05:17,970 --> 00:05:20,069
it's that's a thing that I accidentally

141
00:05:20,529 --> 00:05:21,830
got back into

142
00:05:23,444 --> 00:05:24,665
in more recent years,

143
00:05:25,125 --> 00:05:27,605
was writing short fiction, very short fiction, what's

144
00:05:27,605 --> 00:05:29,625
what's technically known as a flash fiction,

145
00:05:30,165 --> 00:05:32,245
which is stuff that is, you know, fair

146
00:05:32,404 --> 00:05:33,925
very short, can be read in a few

147
00:05:33,925 --> 00:05:34,425
minutes,

148
00:05:34,805 --> 00:05:35,305
and

149
00:05:35,980 --> 00:05:37,500
and there's not much longer than that. In

150
00:05:37,500 --> 00:05:39,439
other words, it fits a modern attention span.

151
00:05:39,819 --> 00:05:41,899
And, within Bristol, I've run a number of

152
00:05:41,899 --> 00:05:43,899
events on that, and, you know, that's that's

153
00:05:43,899 --> 00:05:45,120
been an area of interest.

154
00:05:46,460 --> 00:05:48,300
And I've written a couple of things for

155
00:05:48,300 --> 00:05:50,639
Physics World in the past, a couple of

156
00:05:50,914 --> 00:05:52,754
fiction related things, both of which did actually

157
00:05:52,754 --> 00:05:54,055
have a software tie in,

158
00:05:54,995 --> 00:05:57,095
in one sense or another. But

159
00:05:57,555 --> 00:05:59,794
this one was an interesting one because, I

160
00:05:59,794 --> 00:06:02,435
was told, well, you know, we'd like we'd

161
00:06:02,435 --> 00:06:04,439
like a story because it's the international year

162
00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:07,240
of, of quantum, you know, quantum computing, quantum

163
00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:10,540
physics, quantum everything. And so perhaps quantum story.

164
00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:13,399
And to do something, around that, and given

165
00:06:13,399 --> 00:06:13,899
that,

166
00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:15,580
2025

167
00:06:15,879 --> 00:06:16,379
marks,

168
00:06:17,345 --> 00:06:18,865
one hundred years since,

169
00:06:19,584 --> 00:06:20,725
Heisenberg formulated

170
00:06:21,824 --> 00:06:23,745
an approach that kind of changed the way

171
00:06:23,745 --> 00:06:26,225
we looked at, quantum mechanics and, and how

172
00:06:26,225 --> 00:06:28,004
things were calculated and perceived,

173
00:06:28,545 --> 00:06:30,485
that was seen as a useful,

174
00:06:30,944 --> 00:06:31,444
event.

175
00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:34,680
And, actually, his formulation and the story behind

176
00:06:34,680 --> 00:06:36,600
it was then seen as the useful event.

177
00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:38,520
We discussed various ideas and,

178
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:40,199
came up with this,

179
00:06:40,600 --> 00:06:42,120
I came up with this story to to

180
00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:44,520
go against it. Stories are compelling. Right? There's

181
00:06:44,520 --> 00:06:46,120
a reason why this podcast is called the

182
00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:48,964
Physics World Stories podcast because we're interested in

183
00:06:48,964 --> 00:06:51,285
the stories. I'd I'd like to get your

184
00:06:51,285 --> 00:06:53,785
take on this story of Heisenberg and,

185
00:06:54,245 --> 00:06:55,144
going to Helgoland.

186
00:06:55,524 --> 00:06:57,524
It it's it's a very comfortable story. Right?

187
00:06:57,524 --> 00:06:59,044
It's a lovely it's a lovely sort of

188
00:06:59,044 --> 00:07:01,044
narrative that he's got this hayfury where he

189
00:07:01,044 --> 00:07:01,649
needs to

190
00:07:02,129 --> 00:07:03,810
clear his mind and go to the island,

191
00:07:03,810 --> 00:07:05,410
and then he goes to the island. And,

192
00:07:05,410 --> 00:07:07,009
oh, his his mind's clear so he can

193
00:07:07,009 --> 00:07:09,970
cover is it too comfortable? Is it too

194
00:07:09,970 --> 00:07:10,870
easy a story?

195
00:07:11,729 --> 00:07:13,725
That's the funny thing about stories, isn't it?

196
00:07:14,205 --> 00:07:16,225
We we want them to be true regardless

197
00:07:16,285 --> 00:07:18,365
of whether or not that's why they're compelling

198
00:07:18,365 --> 00:07:20,925
because they they make sense of something. And

199
00:07:20,925 --> 00:07:22,205
I think that that's given,

200
00:07:24,125 --> 00:07:26,464
given that we perceive order in the world,

201
00:07:27,560 --> 00:07:29,800
and sometimes feel destabilized by not seeing it,

202
00:07:29,800 --> 00:07:31,339
and this is at any scale,

203
00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:33,879
that's

204
00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:36,279
as as humans, we look for the sense.

205
00:07:36,279 --> 00:07:38,220
We we try and make sense of it.

206
00:07:39,160 --> 00:07:39,900
And so

207
00:07:40,254 --> 00:07:42,254
even where there is a true story, we

208
00:07:42,254 --> 00:07:43,475
are likely to

209
00:07:44,334 --> 00:07:45,875
mentally filter events.

210
00:07:46,574 --> 00:07:47,235
You know,

211
00:07:47,615 --> 00:07:49,134
that we we we now have a very

212
00:07:49,134 --> 00:07:51,694
well honed narrative of the the hay fever

213
00:07:51,694 --> 00:07:53,134
thing. And by the way, that was also

214
00:07:53,134 --> 00:07:54,595
something that drew me to

215
00:07:55,910 --> 00:07:57,990
making writing a story about this as a

216
00:07:57,990 --> 00:08:00,410
hay fever sufferer. I am right there,

217
00:08:00,870 --> 00:08:02,949
with Heisenberg. You know? We we are connected

218
00:08:02,949 --> 00:08:04,629
across time, I feel. You know? I'm I'm

219
00:08:04,629 --> 00:08:07,209
understanding. It's like, yes. What a perfect idea.

220
00:08:07,270 --> 00:08:09,985
Get out of this this city of greenery

221
00:08:10,365 --> 00:08:12,524
and go to an island with no trees

222
00:08:12,524 --> 00:08:14,845
that is, you know, many kilometers off the

223
00:08:14,845 --> 00:08:16,685
coast. It's just like, that sounds that sounds

224
00:08:16,685 --> 00:08:17,504
like a solution.

225
00:08:18,205 --> 00:08:18,705
So

226
00:08:19,324 --> 00:08:20,944
that's another point. We identify,

227
00:08:21,485 --> 00:08:23,165
with with characters. And so there's a lot

228
00:08:23,165 --> 00:08:26,169
of undoubtedly uncomfortable and awkward bits in the

229
00:08:26,169 --> 00:08:28,250
true story, bits that don't fit and don't

230
00:08:28,250 --> 00:08:29,689
make sense. But those kind of been, you

231
00:08:29,689 --> 00:08:30,810
know, like a like a,

232
00:08:31,449 --> 00:08:33,450
a rock dashed against the shore. They've they've

233
00:08:33,450 --> 00:08:35,929
been rounded off. We leave those bits out.

234
00:08:35,929 --> 00:08:37,230
In telling of the story,

235
00:08:37,610 --> 00:08:39,470
it's not necessarily that we

236
00:08:39,985 --> 00:08:42,785
also reshape facts, it's probably we choose the

237
00:08:42,785 --> 00:08:44,705
ones that fit together the best. They're they're

238
00:08:44,705 --> 00:08:46,545
not necessarily false. So there's a I think

239
00:08:46,545 --> 00:08:48,065
there's a lot of different aspects to a

240
00:08:48,065 --> 00:08:49,045
story. Some stories,

241
00:08:49,825 --> 00:08:51,904
we change the truth. In other stories, we

242
00:08:51,904 --> 00:08:53,365
leave out the bits that don't

243
00:08:53,720 --> 00:08:55,720
fit, that that are a little bit you

244
00:08:55,720 --> 00:08:57,320
know, they don't seem to fit the narrative

245
00:08:57,320 --> 00:08:59,080
and and and make the narrative a little

246
00:08:59,080 --> 00:09:00,379
more linear and compelling.

247
00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:03,500
So in one sense, it is tidy because

248
00:09:04,519 --> 00:09:06,120
we know the story, but we know what

249
00:09:06,120 --> 00:09:07,865
happened behind it, or rather we know some

250
00:09:07,865 --> 00:09:09,884
of the things that are relevant behind it.

251
00:09:10,184 --> 00:09:11,464
And there are probably a lot of other

252
00:09:11,464 --> 00:09:13,704
things that happened, but they don't fit. So

253
00:09:13,704 --> 00:09:16,105
we we forgotten. They're lost to time. Did

254
00:09:16,105 --> 00:09:18,264
you know the story beforehand? Is it is

255
00:09:18,264 --> 00:09:19,644
it a story that sort of,

256
00:09:20,105 --> 00:09:21,944
you know, have you been interested in quantum

257
00:09:21,944 --> 00:09:23,580
physics and these beginnings of it?

258
00:09:23,980 --> 00:09:26,940
I so for me, when I was approached

259
00:09:26,940 --> 00:09:28,779
about this one, I wasn't as aware of

260
00:09:28,779 --> 00:09:31,100
this. I had some vague notion of this

261
00:09:31,100 --> 00:09:33,040
and, you know, and for me,

262
00:09:33,420 --> 00:09:34,639
1925

263
00:09:34,700 --> 00:09:36,559
didn't hold any particular

264
00:09:37,259 --> 00:09:37,759
significance.

265
00:09:38,574 --> 00:09:39,315
And because

266
00:09:40,095 --> 00:09:42,014
for for something like this, again, this is

267
00:09:42,014 --> 00:09:44,254
this is where stories come in, what is

268
00:09:44,254 --> 00:09:45,054
the beginning of,

269
00:09:45,855 --> 00:09:47,134
of the quantum story?

270
00:09:47,534 --> 00:09:48,815
You know, 1925,

271
00:09:48,815 --> 00:09:50,429
in many ways, feels very late.

272
00:09:52,669 --> 00:09:54,129
A lot of stuff was happening,

273
00:09:54,509 --> 00:09:56,990
and, you know, nineteen hundreds onwards, but you

274
00:09:56,990 --> 00:09:58,750
can go back a bit further. But normally,

275
00:09:58,750 --> 00:10:00,110
for a lot of people, it's just like,

276
00:10:00,110 --> 00:10:00,610
oh,

277
00:10:01,230 --> 00:10:03,009
is is the photoelectric effect.

278
00:10:03,389 --> 00:10:06,054
The quantization there seems to be that and

279
00:10:06,054 --> 00:10:07,195
that's an earlier date.

280
00:10:07,575 --> 00:10:09,014
So we should have already had this story

281
00:10:09,014 --> 00:10:09,914
in one sense.

282
00:10:10,215 --> 00:10:10,715
But

283
00:10:11,254 --> 00:10:13,414
so there's a lot of arbitrary beginnings, and

284
00:10:13,414 --> 00:10:14,774
this is as good as any. So I

285
00:10:14,774 --> 00:10:16,315
wasn't as aware of it.

286
00:10:18,179 --> 00:10:19,700
I just had a vague notion of it.

287
00:10:19,700 --> 00:10:21,460
But when I when I dug into it

288
00:10:21,460 --> 00:10:23,940
and read around, it was interesting seeing the

289
00:10:23,940 --> 00:10:24,440
different

290
00:10:24,980 --> 00:10:26,820
versions of it around, and they differ by

291
00:10:26,820 --> 00:10:28,740
one day. I found that very interesting. There's

292
00:10:28,740 --> 00:10:30,360
a lot of a lot of variations

293
00:10:30,740 --> 00:10:31,240
on

294
00:10:32,774 --> 00:10:34,615
what happened, but they mostly fit the same

295
00:10:34,615 --> 00:10:35,115
narrative.

296
00:10:35,735 --> 00:10:37,095
There were a number of other things that

297
00:10:37,095 --> 00:10:38,154
I I thought were

298
00:10:40,295 --> 00:10:42,075
interesting in the sense of,

299
00:10:43,014 --> 00:10:44,375
there's the kind of the notion of the

300
00:10:44,535 --> 00:10:45,434
of of solitude,

301
00:10:46,519 --> 00:10:48,059
and, you know, that kind of

302
00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:50,600
appeals to the lone genius narrative. Although, we

303
00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:52,700
know that that's not often the case.

304
00:10:53,879 --> 00:10:55,500
I like the fact that,

305
00:10:57,320 --> 00:10:59,320
he felt that it was appropriate to go

306
00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:00,139
and see,

307
00:11:01,904 --> 00:11:04,144
go and see, Powley, go and see Wolfgang

308
00:11:04,144 --> 00:11:06,465
Powley. And that kind of connects in. You

309
00:11:06,465 --> 00:11:07,985
know, just to go and check his thinking

310
00:11:07,985 --> 00:11:09,044
on the way back,

311
00:11:11,345 --> 00:11:12,644
before seeing his supervisor,

312
00:11:13,184 --> 00:11:14,785
and saying, hey, I've I've come up with

313
00:11:14,785 --> 00:11:15,445
this approach.

314
00:11:16,850 --> 00:11:18,170
So I think there's a there's a number

315
00:11:18,170 --> 00:11:19,509
of things there. But also,

316
00:11:19,970 --> 00:11:21,889
in in in the sense that the story

317
00:11:21,889 --> 00:11:24,210
is not complete, it was actually not his

318
00:11:24,210 --> 00:11:27,490
initial formulation that that that came to really

319
00:11:27,490 --> 00:11:28,550
change things. But,

320
00:11:29,330 --> 00:11:32,284
Max Born and others were were were took

321
00:11:32,284 --> 00:11:34,605
those ideas and said, No. We we we

322
00:11:34,605 --> 00:11:35,964
see that this is there's a whole load

323
00:11:35,964 --> 00:11:37,404
of stuff here, and there's a whole branch

324
00:11:37,404 --> 00:11:38,144
of mathematics,

325
00:11:39,004 --> 00:11:40,865
that is applicable, matrix,

326
00:11:41,324 --> 00:11:43,620
mathematics, which I I, you know, I found

327
00:11:43,620 --> 00:11:45,540
absolutely fascinating. It's one of these things that

328
00:11:45,540 --> 00:11:47,399
we have a an idea

329
00:11:47,860 --> 00:11:49,720
that whatever it is that we were taught,

330
00:11:49,940 --> 00:11:52,139
school, university, and onwards, there's a sort of

331
00:11:52,139 --> 00:11:53,860
a timeless quality to it. People have always

332
00:11:53,860 --> 00:11:54,840
been learning this.

333
00:11:55,220 --> 00:11:56,840
But the idea that

334
00:11:57,954 --> 00:12:00,115
physics a hundred years ago, of course, in

335
00:12:00,115 --> 00:12:00,834
a state of,

336
00:12:01,554 --> 00:12:03,174
state of change, a state of flux,

337
00:12:04,514 --> 00:12:05,014
and

338
00:12:05,394 --> 00:12:06,995
we kind of assume, yes, the dawn of

339
00:12:06,995 --> 00:12:08,995
a new age. And what were the tools?

340
00:12:08,995 --> 00:12:10,995
What were the mathematical tools that they had

341
00:12:10,995 --> 00:12:11,495
available?

342
00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:14,039
And what it what fascinated me was the

343
00:12:14,039 --> 00:12:14,539
fact

344
00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:17,480
that that matric matrices were not part of

345
00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:19,559
that toolkit, and that is only a kind

346
00:12:19,559 --> 00:12:20,299
of coincidence

347
00:12:20,759 --> 00:12:21,259
that,

348
00:12:22,759 --> 00:12:25,720
that, you know, Bourne had kind of remembered.

349
00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:27,399
Oh, yes. I did something like this in

350
00:12:27,399 --> 00:12:27,899
maths

351
00:12:28,225 --> 00:12:30,784
some time ago. And there's a crossover. This

352
00:12:30,784 --> 00:12:34,085
this accurately describes stuff, and and, Bernard Heisenberg

353
00:12:34,144 --> 00:12:35,284
was working with tables

354
00:12:35,664 --> 00:12:37,904
and multiplying them together in a particular way.

355
00:12:37,904 --> 00:12:39,825
And it's just like, these days, we'd immediately

356
00:12:39,825 --> 00:12:40,784
look at that and go, yeah. I was

357
00:12:40,784 --> 00:12:41,924
taught this for a level.

358
00:12:43,160 --> 00:12:44,379
And it's it's

359
00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:46,620
the idea that the this

360
00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:47,580
toolkit

361
00:12:48,279 --> 00:12:50,860
is changing and and relies on these occasional

362
00:12:51,080 --> 00:12:52,840
coincidences of something going, wait a minute, it's

363
00:12:52,840 --> 00:12:53,580
cross fertilization.

364
00:12:54,200 --> 00:12:56,764
Here's a here's an idea that nobody thought

365
00:12:57,065 --> 00:12:59,165
had direct application in the physical sciences,

366
00:12:59,625 --> 00:13:00,365
and suddenly,

367
00:13:00,825 --> 00:13:03,225
it does. And it's it's more about the

368
00:13:03,225 --> 00:13:04,904
person. And again, this comes back to the

369
00:13:04,904 --> 00:13:07,705
stories being compelling. The the the pollen in

370
00:13:07,705 --> 00:13:09,929
the story is is one person, you know,

371
00:13:10,169 --> 00:13:12,509
one person going from one discipline to another

372
00:13:12,809 --> 00:13:14,809
and cross fertilizing that and going, wait a

373
00:13:14,809 --> 00:13:16,669
minute. This is explained by this.

374
00:13:17,210 --> 00:13:19,049
And I think that's also fascinating, but that's

375
00:13:19,049 --> 00:13:20,490
obviously a bit that doesn't fit in the

376
00:13:20,490 --> 00:13:22,089
story that I wrote. So I kind of

377
00:13:22,089 --> 00:13:23,054
gloss over it.

378
00:13:23,615 --> 00:13:25,615
But the idea is that even within our,

379
00:13:25,855 --> 00:13:27,855
even within a traditional story frame, actually, lots

380
00:13:27,855 --> 00:13:29,214
of the story leaks out,

381
00:13:29,615 --> 00:13:31,794
and we kind of from the perspective of

382
00:13:31,934 --> 00:13:33,154
2025,

383
00:13:33,455 --> 00:13:35,294
the fact that those two events happened months

384
00:13:35,294 --> 00:13:37,554
apart in, in 1925,

385
00:13:37,850 --> 00:13:39,769
you know, they're practically identical from this point

386
00:13:39,769 --> 00:13:41,050
of view. A hundred years is a hundred

387
00:13:41,050 --> 00:13:41,550
years.

388
00:13:42,410 --> 00:13:43,850
But I find that that one was an

389
00:13:43,850 --> 00:13:45,450
interest that was interesting to me, and I

390
00:13:45,450 --> 00:13:47,210
I was not I don't think I really

391
00:13:47,210 --> 00:13:48,269
fully appreciated,

392
00:13:49,290 --> 00:13:51,524
the the difference. People would have been steeped

393
00:13:51,845 --> 00:13:53,845
in, yeah, there would have been a a

394
00:13:53,845 --> 00:13:56,004
lot of hand calculating, but from the actual

395
00:13:56,004 --> 00:13:58,245
mathematical point of view, the toolkit that they

396
00:13:58,245 --> 00:13:58,745
had

397
00:13:59,205 --> 00:14:01,764
was not the one that I was taught.

398
00:14:01,764 --> 00:14:03,365
And I think that is interesting. There there

399
00:14:03,365 --> 00:14:04,825
was obviously a lot more calculus,

400
00:14:05,459 --> 00:14:06,759
but the fact that matrices

401
00:14:07,220 --> 00:14:08,980
were not part of it was I I

402
00:14:08,980 --> 00:14:10,819
just hadn't thought about it. It's just absolutely

403
00:14:10,819 --> 00:14:11,319
fascinating.

404
00:14:11,620 --> 00:14:13,220
Because you say you didn't put that in

405
00:14:13,220 --> 00:14:15,459
the story. What how do you choose when

406
00:14:15,459 --> 00:14:17,139
you're writing a sort a story like this

407
00:14:17,139 --> 00:14:18,339
where you've got to get some of the

408
00:14:18,339 --> 00:14:20,264
science in there? Right? That's the thing. So

409
00:14:20,264 --> 00:14:21,865
what what how do you go about that

410
00:14:21,865 --> 00:14:24,504
process? I think, in fact, the way you

411
00:14:24,504 --> 00:14:25,945
you describe it, you gotta get some of

412
00:14:25,945 --> 00:14:27,464
the science in there. It's it's almost like

413
00:14:27,464 --> 00:14:28,365
taking a photograph.

414
00:14:29,304 --> 00:14:31,144
And in a photograph, you have to choose

415
00:14:31,144 --> 00:14:32,299
your frame. And

416
00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:34,299
what makes a good photograph,

417
00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:37,820
good is normally

418
00:14:38,279 --> 00:14:40,200
what you have chosen to include, but also

419
00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:41,740
what you've chosen not to include.

420
00:14:42,200 --> 00:14:44,279
The temptation is to choose try and choose

421
00:14:44,279 --> 00:14:46,039
everything, at which point you end up with

422
00:14:46,039 --> 00:14:47,934
a wide angle shot that is very high

423
00:14:47,934 --> 00:14:49,794
definition and you can't see the subject matter.

424
00:14:49,934 --> 00:14:51,774
You've you've chosen too much. In other words,

425
00:14:51,774 --> 00:14:54,274
by trying to be too faithful, you've included

426
00:14:54,414 --> 00:14:55,394
too much complexity.

427
00:14:56,414 --> 00:14:58,815
And again, this is another feature of of

428
00:14:58,815 --> 00:15:01,009
stories as well as how we look at

429
00:15:01,190 --> 00:15:03,470
things, is there's you gotta have a few

430
00:15:03,470 --> 00:15:05,710
things that stand out. And so sometimes what

431
00:15:05,710 --> 00:15:07,970
you're looking for is a frame, a constraint.

432
00:15:08,750 --> 00:15:10,830
A very simple constraint, for example, is that

433
00:15:10,830 --> 00:15:13,404
I mentioned I write, what I primarily write

434
00:15:13,404 --> 00:15:13,804
is,

435
00:15:14,365 --> 00:15:16,605
flash fiction, which is very short. And depending

436
00:15:16,605 --> 00:15:17,825
on who you speak to,

437
00:15:18,605 --> 00:15:20,845
the the upper limit is either 500 words

438
00:15:20,845 --> 00:15:22,065
or 1,000 words,

439
00:15:23,884 --> 00:15:25,485
but it is fairly short. Now that's a

440
00:15:25,485 --> 00:15:27,089
good example of a frame. There's only so

441
00:15:27,089 --> 00:15:29,669
much you can put in that. So naturally,

442
00:15:29,730 --> 00:15:30,870
you're gonna limit,

443
00:15:31,329 --> 00:15:33,089
how much of the world building or story

444
00:15:33,089 --> 00:15:34,690
you can include. There's a there's a natural

445
00:15:34,690 --> 00:15:37,110
boundary on that. But at the same time,

446
00:15:37,250 --> 00:15:38,950
you're looking for an excuse

447
00:15:39,924 --> 00:15:42,004
to not include certain things as well as

448
00:15:42,004 --> 00:15:44,644
include certain things. And with this story, what

449
00:15:44,644 --> 00:15:47,065
I wrote was based on, a diary.

450
00:15:47,764 --> 00:15:50,404
And so a diary naturally has it it

451
00:15:50,404 --> 00:15:51,924
gives you a constraint to work with. In

452
00:15:51,924 --> 00:15:53,365
other words, there is a starting date and

453
00:15:53,365 --> 00:15:55,100
there is an end date, and everything that

454
00:15:55,100 --> 00:15:57,500
you want to tell must lie between those

455
00:15:57,500 --> 00:15:59,179
two dates. Now I could have chosen a

456
00:15:59,179 --> 00:16:01,339
different format, but because of the way the

457
00:16:01,339 --> 00:16:02,480
story is told,

458
00:16:02,940 --> 00:16:05,259
the diary was the best way to, I

459
00:16:05,259 --> 00:16:06,539
I felt the diary is the best way

460
00:16:06,539 --> 00:16:08,220
to bring out that truth. So therefore, the

461
00:16:08,220 --> 00:16:09,679
events that happen afterwards,

462
00:16:10,434 --> 00:16:12,434
we can hand wave and suggest there might

463
00:16:12,434 --> 00:16:14,754
be more, but that's the limit of it.

464
00:16:14,754 --> 00:16:15,495
So therefore,

465
00:16:15,875 --> 00:16:18,595
what could have happened between this date, getting

466
00:16:18,595 --> 00:16:20,835
the green light to go to Helgoland and

467
00:16:20,835 --> 00:16:21,894
take some time off,

468
00:16:22,274 --> 00:16:23,715
and returning to Gottingen,

469
00:16:25,350 --> 00:16:28,149
with this idea. What what you know, that

470
00:16:28,149 --> 00:16:30,330
gives us our frame, and therefore,

471
00:16:30,790 --> 00:16:32,629
it automatically tells us what we're not going

472
00:16:32,629 --> 00:16:34,230
to tell, as well as what we can

473
00:16:34,230 --> 00:16:36,389
tell. Did you think about different time periods

474
00:16:36,389 --> 00:16:37,590
when you think about it, or is it

475
00:16:37,590 --> 00:16:39,825
like well, that's the obvious point where this

476
00:16:40,065 --> 00:16:43,105
diary segment is gonna come from? I honestly,

477
00:16:43,105 --> 00:16:44,705
in the initial conception when I was,

478
00:16:45,345 --> 00:16:47,024
when I made the suggestion, when the idea

479
00:16:47,024 --> 00:16:47,924
came to me,

480
00:16:48,465 --> 00:16:51,024
actually, it was very clear in my head

481
00:16:51,024 --> 00:16:52,965
that a diary was the right,

482
00:16:53,919 --> 00:16:54,899
was the right structure,

483
00:16:55,360 --> 00:16:58,019
and therefore, a diary based on Helgoland

484
00:16:58,399 --> 00:17:00,879
and that visit. So in that sense, I

485
00:17:00,879 --> 00:17:01,699
didn't explore

486
00:17:03,199 --> 00:17:03,699
alternatives,

487
00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:06,500
because this one seemed to work

488
00:17:06,984 --> 00:17:08,424
very well. In other words, it's in in

489
00:17:08,505 --> 00:17:10,184
from the story point of view, it's just

490
00:17:10,184 --> 00:17:11,704
like, oh, yeah. This this kind of is

491
00:17:11,704 --> 00:17:13,224
is kind of cute. It's kind of attractive.

492
00:17:13,224 --> 00:17:15,644
It it works very well in the context

493
00:17:15,865 --> 00:17:17,704
and for what we want to say. And

494
00:17:17,704 --> 00:17:19,289
so I thought, yeah. Actually, that,

495
00:17:19,769 --> 00:17:20,890
and I think that's that's the thing is

496
00:17:20,890 --> 00:17:22,970
you'll there are many different ways of telling

497
00:17:22,970 --> 00:17:25,390
short stories, and you can have, you know,

498
00:17:25,690 --> 00:17:27,850
narrative styles. You've got a lot of choice,

499
00:17:27,850 --> 00:17:29,369
but the idea of, like, let's tell the

500
00:17:29,369 --> 00:17:30,109
story through,

501
00:17:31,130 --> 00:17:33,130
diary entries is quite an interesting one, and

502
00:17:33,130 --> 00:17:34,705
that one leaped out at me. And I

503
00:17:34,705 --> 00:17:36,144
thought, right. Well, let's go with that. And

504
00:17:36,144 --> 00:17:36,805
so, therefore,

505
00:17:37,505 --> 00:17:40,144
that gave that I didn't really explore. I

506
00:17:40,144 --> 00:17:41,585
I did kind of have a rough think

507
00:17:41,585 --> 00:17:43,505
on the way home. Just like, are there

508
00:17:43,505 --> 00:17:44,005
alternatives?

509
00:17:44,945 --> 00:17:47,424
And there undoubtedly are, but that one started

510
00:17:47,424 --> 00:17:49,105
growing in my mind a lot more, you

511
00:17:49,105 --> 00:17:50,920
know, that took seed. And it was just

512
00:17:50,920 --> 00:17:52,380
like, yep, that one's gonna work.

513
00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:54,920
I just wanna take a slight side step

514
00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:55,580
here because,

515
00:17:56,279 --> 00:17:58,519
if listeners are anything like me, they're wondering

516
00:17:58,519 --> 00:18:01,000
a little bit about flash fiction because it

517
00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:03,285
might be something they didn't know about. So,

518
00:18:03,845 --> 00:18:06,244
flash fiction is is a format that's been

519
00:18:06,244 --> 00:18:08,484
around for a while. Its name only really

520
00:18:08,484 --> 00:18:10,424
came about in the last few decades.

521
00:18:10,965 --> 00:18:12,744
You you find that a lot of,

522
00:18:13,924 --> 00:18:15,625
short story a lot of authors,

523
00:18:16,919 --> 00:18:18,919
who wrote short stories in the past and

524
00:18:18,919 --> 00:18:21,480
in the present often end up sometimes writing

525
00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:23,319
something that is very short, a page or

526
00:18:23,319 --> 00:18:25,159
two pages long. And that that there there

527
00:18:25,159 --> 00:18:26,380
it is. It's self contained,

528
00:18:26,839 --> 00:18:28,759
and and it's quite nice. So you we

529
00:18:28,759 --> 00:18:30,380
find this dotted throughout,

530
00:18:32,115 --> 00:18:33,335
dotted throughout history,

531
00:18:33,875 --> 00:18:36,195
in well respected authors. For those of you

532
00:18:36,195 --> 00:18:37,734
who have, young children,

533
00:18:38,195 --> 00:18:40,115
I I suggest do a quick word count

534
00:18:40,115 --> 00:18:41,795
of of the books. You'll find that every

535
00:18:41,795 --> 00:18:43,894
single chance book is effectively flash fiction,

536
00:18:44,950 --> 00:18:48,230
that it relies on pictures and your own

537
00:18:48,230 --> 00:18:49,990
telling to bring it to life. And it

538
00:18:49,990 --> 00:18:51,450
shows you that you can contain

539
00:18:52,069 --> 00:18:53,429
a story. I I think I actually did

540
00:18:53,429 --> 00:18:54,950
a word count of Where the Wild Things

541
00:18:54,950 --> 00:18:55,450
Are,

542
00:18:56,217 --> 00:18:59,005
and that's only that's about 300 to 350

543
00:18:59,005 --> 00:19:00,464
words. That's not very long,

544
00:19:01,085 --> 00:19:03,244
and yet it contains quite literally a world

545
00:19:03,244 --> 00:19:04,544
in it. And that idea,

546
00:19:06,204 --> 00:19:08,284
every every story kind of has a length

547
00:19:08,284 --> 00:19:09,804
that you can tell because people often tell

548
00:19:09,804 --> 00:19:10,924
me when I say, oh, I I write

549
00:19:10,924 --> 00:19:12,950
flash fiction. I say, oh, how can you

550
00:19:12,950 --> 00:19:14,549
tell a story in that? And that's almost

551
00:19:14,549 --> 00:19:16,070
the wrong way of looking at it. It's

552
00:19:16,070 --> 00:19:18,630
like every story has a a length that

553
00:19:18,630 --> 00:19:20,710
does it justice. And some of those stories

554
00:19:20,710 --> 00:19:22,230
are gonna be a hundred thousand words long,

555
00:19:22,230 --> 00:19:24,009
and we publish those and call them novels.

556
00:19:24,375 --> 00:19:25,894
Some of those stories could be even longer,

557
00:19:25,894 --> 00:19:27,674
and those are series or sagas.

558
00:19:28,134 --> 00:19:30,214
But others, we have other word lengths for.

559
00:19:30,214 --> 00:19:31,894
And we say, yeah, there's some of this

560
00:19:31,894 --> 00:19:33,974
story. A a local science fiction author I

561
00:19:33,974 --> 00:19:36,454
know, he was thinking about writing a sequel

562
00:19:36,454 --> 00:19:36,954
to

563
00:19:37,335 --> 00:19:38,714
a a book, he'd written.

564
00:19:39,369 --> 00:19:40,890
And he was kind of done in about

565
00:19:40,890 --> 00:19:42,809
5,000 words. He suddenly thought, no. That's the

566
00:19:42,809 --> 00:19:44,409
right length. That's it's a short story. It's

567
00:19:44,409 --> 00:19:46,429
not a novel. It's it's not a novella.

568
00:19:46,730 --> 00:19:49,230
It it fits at that length. And so

569
00:19:49,609 --> 00:19:51,470
what you're looking for is a

570
00:19:51,914 --> 00:19:54,715
is a short story that fits the length

571
00:19:54,715 --> 00:19:57,195
that is only a few hundred words. So

572
00:19:57,195 --> 00:19:58,795
you you turn it on its head. In

573
00:19:58,795 --> 00:20:00,715
some senses, I I I draw a parallel

574
00:20:00,715 --> 00:20:01,375
with music.

575
00:20:01,994 --> 00:20:03,914
You know, there are songs that are two

576
00:20:03,914 --> 00:20:06,095
or three minutes long, and they just work

577
00:20:06,279 --> 00:20:06,779
fantastically.

578
00:20:07,160 --> 00:20:08,359
There there's, you know,

579
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:11,720
I haven't quite so therefore, there's there's a

580
00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:13,720
lot of punk music in that space. I

581
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:16,440
also quite like, certain prog rock and Pink

582
00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:18,920
Floyd, and there's some magnificent pieces that are

583
00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:20,914
twenty to twenty five minutes long. And you

584
00:20:20,914 --> 00:20:22,595
know what? They work perfectly well. A two

585
00:20:22,595 --> 00:20:24,515
minute a two minute version of that would

586
00:20:24,515 --> 00:20:25,255
not work,

587
00:20:25,634 --> 00:20:27,554
and a twenty five minute version of, of

588
00:20:27,554 --> 00:20:30,134
a of a Clash classic will not work.

589
00:20:30,275 --> 00:20:32,595
So you have these ideas that there's natural

590
00:20:32,595 --> 00:20:33,554
lengths, and we we

591
00:20:34,319 --> 00:20:35,599
you're trying to find the length of the

592
00:20:35,599 --> 00:20:36,659
story. So for me,

593
00:20:37,039 --> 00:20:39,679
it's it's a case of, like, what story

594
00:20:39,679 --> 00:20:42,159
can I tell in this frame? And a

595
00:20:42,159 --> 00:20:44,319
little bit of adjustment, and it's quite fun

596
00:20:44,319 --> 00:20:46,960
and creative because you're dropping bits out. You're

597
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:48,099
working with the reader.

598
00:20:48,544 --> 00:20:50,304
You're basically saying there's no there's no space

599
00:20:50,304 --> 00:20:52,784
for purple prose and paragraphs and paragraphs of

600
00:20:52,784 --> 00:20:54,944
world building. It's I'm gonna rely on you,

601
00:20:54,944 --> 00:20:55,605
the reader,

602
00:20:56,144 --> 00:20:56,644
to,

603
00:20:57,424 --> 00:20:58,865
build this in your head. So I'm going

604
00:20:58,865 --> 00:21:00,865
to so very much the the the word

605
00:21:00,865 --> 00:21:01,619
choice counts,

606
00:21:02,180 --> 00:21:03,779
and can and can change the flavor and

607
00:21:03,779 --> 00:21:05,400
the suggestion in the reader's imagination.

608
00:21:05,859 --> 00:21:07,559
And so you're working with the reader

609
00:21:08,019 --> 00:21:10,019
to do that, and, and that has a

610
00:21:10,019 --> 00:21:11,960
quite different effect. And so reading

611
00:21:12,259 --> 00:21:14,595
a four page story is not like reading

612
00:21:14,595 --> 00:21:17,394
four pages of a 400 page book. It's

613
00:21:17,394 --> 00:21:19,154
a very different pacing, and there's a kind

614
00:21:19,154 --> 00:21:21,315
of a completion that you want to, bring

615
00:21:21,315 --> 00:21:22,775
the reader to at the end.

616
00:21:23,315 --> 00:21:26,115
And so that that idea also lends itself

617
00:21:26,115 --> 00:21:27,654
to, spoken word

618
00:21:28,009 --> 00:21:29,149
events. Poets

619
00:21:29,450 --> 00:21:31,950
poets are normally known for spoken word.

620
00:21:32,649 --> 00:21:34,970
Poetry has the brevity. It also has the

621
00:21:34,970 --> 00:21:36,029
rhythm and the dynamics.

622
00:21:36,569 --> 00:21:38,809
But flash fiction is just about the right

623
00:21:38,809 --> 00:21:40,329
length. It's only normally a few you know,

624
00:21:40,329 --> 00:21:41,769
a couple of minutes long in the reading,

625
00:21:41,769 --> 00:21:43,275
and I've run a number of events,

626
00:21:44,234 --> 00:21:44,974
around this.

627
00:21:45,674 --> 00:21:47,515
And pea people tend to taper off after

628
00:21:47,515 --> 00:21:49,994
about five minutes. So so it fits well

629
00:21:49,994 --> 00:21:50,474
within,

630
00:21:51,115 --> 00:21:53,595
general attention span. So it works well in

631
00:21:53,595 --> 00:21:56,154
a live environment, and that's another aspect to

632
00:21:56,154 --> 00:21:56,654
it.

633
00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:58,680
I I just wanna talk to you about

634
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:01,400
that attention span thing, right, because I it

635
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:03,360
it feels to me again like a a

636
00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:04,940
a comfortable story.

637
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:07,880
I'm not a % convinced that our attention

638
00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:09,500
spans are getting shorter.

639
00:22:10,704 --> 00:22:12,464
There are lots of things that suggest that

640
00:22:12,464 --> 00:22:13,524
there's social media,

641
00:22:14,304 --> 00:22:17,505
etcetera. But there's also Oppenheimer. There's also the

642
00:22:17,505 --> 00:22:18,005
brutalist

643
00:22:18,464 --> 00:22:20,644
to a certain extent. There's adolescence.

644
00:22:20,944 --> 00:22:21,764
There's adolescence

645
00:22:22,065 --> 00:22:24,500
on. Yeah. So, you know, there's an hour

646
00:22:24,500 --> 00:22:26,259
long thing that you can't take your eyes

647
00:22:26,259 --> 00:22:28,099
off because it's one shot and all that

648
00:22:28,099 --> 00:22:29,940
sort of thing. So it it feels to

649
00:22:29,940 --> 00:22:30,680
me like,

650
00:22:31,460 --> 00:22:33,299
yes, there are short forms, but, you know,

651
00:22:33,299 --> 00:22:35,380
as with music, there's long form things as

652
00:22:35,380 --> 00:22:37,299
well. So I I'm I'm not I'm not

653
00:22:37,380 --> 00:22:40,255
I'd convince me, but I'm not convinced that

654
00:22:40,554 --> 00:22:43,194
our attention span is necessarily getting shorter. Oh.

655
00:22:43,194 --> 00:22:45,994
It's just Right. Yes. I'm gonna agree with

656
00:22:45,994 --> 00:22:48,234
you on that because I'm definitely not making

657
00:22:48,234 --> 00:22:50,234
the case that our attention spans are getting

658
00:22:50,234 --> 00:22:50,734
shorter.

659
00:22:51,275 --> 00:22:53,859
It's more a case of there are things

660
00:22:53,859 --> 00:22:55,880
you can do in a particular attention span.

661
00:22:56,099 --> 00:22:56,599
And,

662
00:22:57,140 --> 00:22:59,539
and and so again, it's it's that notion

663
00:22:59,539 --> 00:23:00,039
of

664
00:23:00,659 --> 00:23:03,299
there are and again, the whole attention span

665
00:23:03,299 --> 00:23:03,779
thing.

666
00:23:04,099 --> 00:23:05,399
My kids will quite happily

667
00:23:05,775 --> 00:23:08,015
sit in a cinema for two and a

668
00:23:08,015 --> 00:23:08,755
half hours,

669
00:23:09,615 --> 00:23:11,695
watching something that grabs their attention. That that's

670
00:23:11,695 --> 00:23:12,835
that's not an issue,

671
00:23:14,575 --> 00:23:16,494
at all. But at the same time, we

672
00:23:16,494 --> 00:23:18,494
do have, as it were, different attention spans

673
00:23:18,494 --> 00:23:19,555
for different contexts.

674
00:23:21,250 --> 00:23:23,329
And the if you have so,

675
00:23:24,210 --> 00:23:26,690
for example, if we have somebody reading, if

676
00:23:26,690 --> 00:23:28,470
I'm if anybody's been to

677
00:23:29,089 --> 00:23:32,210
story readings, it's quite it's quite interesting that

678
00:23:32,210 --> 00:23:33,650
people there's a dip. It's a bit like

679
00:23:33,650 --> 00:23:34,470
giving presentations.

680
00:23:35,075 --> 00:23:36,214
There is a dip

681
00:23:36,674 --> 00:23:39,154
in attention around the ten minute mark, if

682
00:23:39,154 --> 00:23:41,555
not before and sometimes after. And that's just

683
00:23:41,555 --> 00:23:43,154
the way that humans we phase in and

684
00:23:43,154 --> 00:23:44,694
out. You know, it's just,

685
00:23:46,115 --> 00:23:47,335
and so therefore,

686
00:23:47,634 --> 00:23:49,795
an animated and anybody who's ever sat in

687
00:23:49,795 --> 00:23:52,730
a lecture and very much experiences this. And

688
00:23:52,730 --> 00:23:53,630
so there is

689
00:23:54,089 --> 00:23:55,470
this notion that we,

690
00:23:56,650 --> 00:23:58,410
we do have attention spans, and it's a

691
00:23:58,410 --> 00:23:59,369
case of what what are you gonna do

692
00:23:59,369 --> 00:24:00,589
with that attention span?

693
00:24:01,130 --> 00:24:02,410
What is it that you're gonna fill it

694
00:24:02,410 --> 00:24:03,929
with? And again, it goes back to what

695
00:24:03,929 --> 00:24:05,369
is the nature of the thing. And it

696
00:24:05,369 --> 00:24:07,125
turns out that there are things that we

697
00:24:07,125 --> 00:24:08,424
would love to read that,

698
00:24:08,965 --> 00:24:11,465
people love talking books, for example, the audiobooks.

699
00:24:12,724 --> 00:24:15,365
So people can consume hours of that. But

700
00:24:15,365 --> 00:24:16,484
I bet if I put you in the

701
00:24:16,484 --> 00:24:18,644
same room as the author reading that, you

702
00:24:18,644 --> 00:24:20,325
would drift off more than a couple of

703
00:24:20,325 --> 00:24:21,670
times. And I don't mean go to sleep,

704
00:24:21,670 --> 00:24:23,130
but your attention would wander.

705
00:24:24,390 --> 00:24:24,890
And

706
00:24:25,190 --> 00:24:26,710
that's just the way that we are. You

707
00:24:26,710 --> 00:24:28,950
know, it it it so it's a case

708
00:24:28,950 --> 00:24:29,690
of understanding,

709
00:24:30,150 --> 00:24:32,549
understanding that, but that's the great thing. Longer

710
00:24:32,549 --> 00:24:33,049
form,

711
00:24:34,244 --> 00:24:36,005
accommodates that. It's got a lot of redundancy

712
00:24:36,005 --> 00:24:38,404
in it. You you well, I'm sure we've

713
00:24:38,404 --> 00:24:39,924
all had the experience. You've you've you've kind

714
00:24:39,924 --> 00:24:41,445
of dozed off reading a chapter, you pick

715
00:24:41,445 --> 00:24:42,805
it up the next day, and it's kinda

716
00:24:42,805 --> 00:24:43,305
like,

717
00:24:43,845 --> 00:24:45,605
maybe you reread the last page or maybe

718
00:24:45,605 --> 00:24:47,205
you just continue. You know what? There's enough

719
00:24:47,205 --> 00:24:49,259
information in the in in the in the

720
00:24:49,339 --> 00:24:51,680
text to make up for that lost context.

721
00:24:53,339 --> 00:24:55,500
But if I'm gonna do this over a

722
00:24:55,500 --> 00:24:58,140
few hundred words, I can't I can't have

723
00:24:58,140 --> 00:25:01,180
that redundancy. I can't there's there's nothing spared.

724
00:25:01,180 --> 00:25:02,940
But the idea is this is this is

725
00:25:02,940 --> 00:25:04,934
more the punk song end. It it it's

726
00:25:04,934 --> 00:25:06,554
all energy. It's all there.

727
00:25:07,255 --> 00:25:08,615
And I don't wanna leave you thinking about

728
00:25:08,615 --> 00:25:09,115
it.

729
00:25:09,894 --> 00:25:11,974
And it turns out that listening to a

730
00:25:11,974 --> 00:25:15,015
a reader in the room, sitting there, just

731
00:25:15,015 --> 00:25:17,174
reading is quite difficult. You know, this is

732
00:25:17,174 --> 00:25:19,000
one of the reasons that a single person

733
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:20,759
plays. You know, you have an actor on

734
00:25:20,759 --> 00:25:21,259
stage.

735
00:25:21,799 --> 00:25:23,900
Those are those are really hard ask.

736
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:26,279
It's not they can't be done, but you

737
00:25:26,279 --> 00:25:27,980
really understand how good

738
00:25:28,279 --> 00:25:29,500
the actor and,

739
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,200
the author were to be able to do

740
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,464
that. So thinking about it from a live

741
00:25:34,464 --> 00:25:34,964
context,

742
00:25:35,585 --> 00:25:37,265
there is a difference in terms of reading

743
00:25:37,265 --> 00:25:38,884
short stories and longer forms,

744
00:25:39,984 --> 00:25:43,184
live. But, again, also, how we consume flash

745
00:25:43,184 --> 00:25:44,884
fiction. So you mentioned the sources.

746
00:25:45,210 --> 00:25:45,710
It's

747
00:25:46,329 --> 00:25:48,329
also grown up a little bit and become

748
00:25:48,329 --> 00:25:48,829
popular.

749
00:25:50,409 --> 00:25:53,210
There's a number of, number of places that

750
00:25:53,210 --> 00:25:54,890
will send you a flash fiction a week

751
00:25:54,890 --> 00:25:57,069
or every day in your inbox.

752
00:25:57,505 --> 00:25:59,744
And that idea of just something that pops

753
00:25:59,744 --> 00:26:00,724
into your inbox,

754
00:26:01,184 --> 00:26:02,544
you're not gonna read it if it's a

755
00:26:02,544 --> 00:26:04,144
few thousand words, but if it's a few

756
00:26:04,144 --> 00:26:05,904
hundred, you're gonna read it.

757
00:26:06,384 --> 00:26:08,224
A few thousand words feels like a a

758
00:26:08,224 --> 00:26:10,079
different kind of commitment of time.

759
00:26:10,799 --> 00:26:12,720
But a few hundred words or something I

760
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:14,399
can fit on my phone screen whilst waiting

761
00:26:14,399 --> 00:26:15,619
for a bus or something,

762
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:17,599
that feels that. So in other words, it's

763
00:26:17,599 --> 00:26:19,679
not necessarily that our attention spans have got

764
00:26:19,679 --> 00:26:21,539
shorter, but they have been,

765
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:24,295
there are slots that are being well, quantized

766
00:26:24,295 --> 00:26:25,515
slots that are being offered.

767
00:26:26,295 --> 00:26:28,634
Here is a shape of slot that would,

768
00:26:28,695 --> 00:26:30,775
you know, would fit before the bus comes.

769
00:26:30,775 --> 00:26:32,455
Here is something to fit while you're having

770
00:26:32,455 --> 00:26:34,375
a cup of coffee, and it's not the

771
00:26:34,375 --> 00:26:36,055
same as a chapter book, and it's not

772
00:26:36,055 --> 00:26:37,815
the same, as something else. I'm sure we

773
00:26:37,815 --> 00:26:38,880
do it when we read,

774
00:26:39,759 --> 00:26:41,279
when we read magazines. I know I do

775
00:26:41,279 --> 00:26:43,039
it, when I when I read magazines,

776
00:26:43,519 --> 00:26:45,359
physical or online. Because I kinda look at

777
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:46,720
that and go, yeah, I I'll read a

778
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:48,079
couple of that. That's a good break from

779
00:26:48,079 --> 00:26:50,000
whatever else I'm doing. But if you told

780
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,125
me, oh, it's a feature article, and maybe

781
00:26:52,125 --> 00:26:53,724
I won't do that. Maybe I'll read something

782
00:26:53,724 --> 00:26:55,964
else instead. So it's more a case of

783
00:26:55,964 --> 00:26:57,345
us trying to fit

784
00:26:57,644 --> 00:26:59,884
into into that and realizing that there is

785
00:26:59,884 --> 00:27:01,664
a different kind of scale and shape.

786
00:27:02,365 --> 00:27:04,285
And although these days, there is a bias

787
00:27:04,285 --> 00:27:05,825
towards the shorter end,

788
00:27:06,809 --> 00:27:08,970
that has kind of been missing in the

789
00:27:08,970 --> 00:27:11,369
story space, in some senses. We've had this

790
00:27:11,369 --> 00:27:12,109
bias towards

791
00:27:12,890 --> 00:27:14,509
novels and long forms,

792
00:27:15,289 --> 00:27:17,369
for quite a for quite a while, and

793
00:27:17,369 --> 00:27:19,289
it's kind of but I'm I'm sure that

794
00:27:19,289 --> 00:27:21,424
most people who've I I I grew up

795
00:27:21,424 --> 00:27:23,744
reading compared to classic science fiction. That was

796
00:27:23,744 --> 00:27:25,205
all in the short story space.

797
00:27:25,744 --> 00:27:27,265
What we think of as the modern novel

798
00:27:27,265 --> 00:27:28,884
is actually a very recent idea.

799
00:27:29,984 --> 00:27:31,505
And, you know, when we we will cite

800
00:27:31,505 --> 00:27:34,005
things like Dickens actually, Dickens was serialized.

801
00:27:34,549 --> 00:27:36,869
He didn't write novels. He wrote series, and

802
00:27:36,869 --> 00:27:38,730
they were then collected as novels.

803
00:27:39,509 --> 00:27:40,970
The modern novel

804
00:27:41,269 --> 00:27:43,429
at around the hundred thousand word mark is

805
00:27:43,429 --> 00:27:45,669
a very recent creation in many ways, and

806
00:27:45,669 --> 00:27:47,429
stories used to exist at a lot of

807
00:27:47,429 --> 00:27:48,315
different scales.

808
00:27:48,875 --> 00:27:50,634
So for me, flash fiction is kind of,

809
00:27:50,954 --> 00:27:53,274
kind of reclaiming and kind of saying there's

810
00:27:53,274 --> 00:27:54,794
a bit of ownership here. There's a there's

811
00:27:54,794 --> 00:27:57,034
a a formal name for it, and, it's

812
00:27:57,034 --> 00:27:58,634
a it's a first class citizen of the

813
00:27:58,634 --> 00:28:01,299
story space. Lovely. Do all of your stories

814
00:28:01,299 --> 00:28:03,299
have science in them? No. No. I I

815
00:28:03,380 --> 00:28:05,460
it's interesting. I if this is in fact,

816
00:28:05,460 --> 00:28:06,660
this is one of the joys of flash

817
00:28:06,660 --> 00:28:08,660
fiction. It's just very easy to experiment with

818
00:28:08,660 --> 00:28:10,180
different forms. You know, if you if you

819
00:28:10,180 --> 00:28:12,099
commit to, you know, I'm gonna write crime

820
00:28:12,099 --> 00:28:15,059
fiction, and therefore, I'm gonna be writing 80,000

821
00:28:15,059 --> 00:28:17,204
plus words of this, maybe, that's a very

822
00:28:17,204 --> 00:28:17,944
different thing.

823
00:28:18,244 --> 00:28:20,565
I'm I don't really read, crime fiction, but

824
00:28:20,565 --> 00:28:23,304
I've certainly written flash fiction that's of that

825
00:28:23,365 --> 00:28:25,525
of that form, and that's quite fun. You

826
00:28:25,525 --> 00:28:27,865
can experiment very easily. So I find

827
00:28:28,325 --> 00:28:29,144
my stories

828
00:28:29,525 --> 00:28:31,525
I'd probably say half of them fit in

829
00:28:31,525 --> 00:28:32,025
the

830
00:28:33,140 --> 00:28:35,539
the SF and fantasy space, and the other

831
00:28:35,539 --> 00:28:36,679
half are kind of like

832
00:28:37,220 --> 00:28:39,960
they're either situational comedy or something slightly darker.

833
00:28:41,859 --> 00:28:42,359
They

834
00:28:42,900 --> 00:28:43,380
are

835
00:28:43,940 --> 00:28:46,505
and and they vary. And sometimes I will

836
00:28:46,505 --> 00:28:46,825
take,

837
00:28:47,464 --> 00:28:49,804
science as a starting point or as a

838
00:28:49,944 --> 00:28:51,964
springboard. So I've written a few,

839
00:28:52,505 --> 00:28:53,865
that are based on that. In fact, the

840
00:28:54,025 --> 00:28:54,904
one of the first,

841
00:28:55,224 --> 00:28:58,680
that I wrote that was quite successful was,

842
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:00,360
I'm allowed to I'm allowed to mention new

843
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:02,200
scientists here. Right? I think so. Yeah. I

844
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:03,799
think yeah. We can get away with that.

845
00:29:04,039 --> 00:29:05,559
They ran a number of years ago. They

846
00:29:05,559 --> 00:29:07,720
ran, a flash fiction competition. They ran it

847
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:08,860
for a couple of years.

848
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:10,759
I've run it 02/2010,

849
00:29:10,759 --> 00:29:11,740
'2 thousand '11,

850
00:29:12,164 --> 00:29:12,965
02/2012.

851
00:29:12,965 --> 00:29:15,365
They they ran a competition, and I, and

852
00:29:15,365 --> 00:29:16,025
I was

853
00:29:16,725 --> 00:29:18,644
placed in the top three for one of

854
00:29:18,644 --> 00:29:20,105
them in the top 10 for another.

855
00:29:20,884 --> 00:29:23,045
And that was quite fun, particularly the first

856
00:29:23,045 --> 00:29:24,105
one, which is basically

857
00:29:25,070 --> 00:29:25,570
take,

858
00:29:26,349 --> 00:29:28,589
take a a theory of take a theory

859
00:29:28,589 --> 00:29:30,130
that's since been dis disproven,

860
00:29:31,070 --> 00:29:32,430
and make it the basis of the story.

861
00:29:32,430 --> 00:29:34,750
What if it were true? So I chose,

862
00:29:34,990 --> 00:29:36,130
what about a,

863
00:29:36,509 --> 00:29:37,970
an earth centered cosmos?

864
00:29:38,505 --> 00:29:40,825
Yeah. So, like, what if that were true?

865
00:29:41,144 --> 00:29:42,445
What can we do with that?

866
00:29:43,224 --> 00:29:45,464
And so therefore, that that's quite fun. So

867
00:29:45,464 --> 00:29:46,984
it's it's it's the idea of, like, let's

868
00:29:46,984 --> 00:29:48,505
take that and then work against it. What

869
00:29:48,505 --> 00:29:50,345
would be the science in that space, and

870
00:29:50,345 --> 00:29:52,019
what story could you tell against it?

871
00:29:52,820 --> 00:29:54,279
In other cases, I've taken

872
00:29:54,820 --> 00:29:56,500
an an inspiration, and then a number of

873
00:29:56,500 --> 00:29:57,480
years ago, I

874
00:29:58,180 --> 00:30:00,660
wrote one for Physics World, which was based

875
00:30:00,660 --> 00:30:01,160
on,

876
00:30:02,580 --> 00:30:03,320
an idea

877
00:30:03,779 --> 00:30:05,825
that somebody had observed, and this was a

878
00:30:05,825 --> 00:30:07,845
soft interesting. This was a software crossover.

879
00:30:08,865 --> 00:30:11,204
What somebody had looked at the structure,

880
00:30:13,264 --> 00:30:15,664
of e coli and basically the genetic structure

881
00:30:15,664 --> 00:30:18,179
and noted, oh, it has a hierarchical structure

882
00:30:18,319 --> 00:30:20,099
and then compared it to,

883
00:30:21,039 --> 00:30:21,539
software,

884
00:30:22,159 --> 00:30:22,659
specifically,

885
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,159
the Linux kernel, which is artificial. It's created

886
00:30:26,159 --> 00:30:28,720
by humans. And the in each case, they

887
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:30,579
teased out a three tier structure,

888
00:30:31,035 --> 00:30:33,375
so a hierarchy of control, if you like.

889
00:30:33,515 --> 00:30:35,115
And they'd they'd drawn this one up. And

890
00:30:35,115 --> 00:30:37,595
so I can't remember what, journalist was published

891
00:30:37,595 --> 00:30:39,115
in, but they did a side by side

892
00:30:39,115 --> 00:30:41,674
comparison. Here's here's what E. Coli looks like,

893
00:30:41,674 --> 00:30:44,075
the architecture, if you like, genetic architecture of

894
00:30:44,075 --> 00:30:46,234
E. Coli. And here is genetic architect or

895
00:30:46,234 --> 00:30:48,450
the structural architecture of of Linux.

896
00:30:48,990 --> 00:30:51,630
And it's fascinating looking at something that was

897
00:30:51,630 --> 00:30:52,130
artificially

898
00:30:52,509 --> 00:30:53,009
constructed

899
00:30:53,390 --> 00:30:55,809
and intentionally constructed versus something accidental.

900
00:30:56,269 --> 00:30:58,589
And, visually, you could see the difference between

901
00:30:58,589 --> 00:31:01,329
the two of them. The the artificial construction,

902
00:31:01,804 --> 00:31:02,365
you have,

903
00:31:03,804 --> 00:31:05,744
you have the idea that, we,

904
00:31:06,125 --> 00:31:07,565
in our disciplines, we can see it in

905
00:31:07,565 --> 00:31:09,164
the way we formulate mathematics, but we can

906
00:31:09,164 --> 00:31:10,605
see it in engineering. We can see it

907
00:31:10,605 --> 00:31:11,265
in software.

908
00:31:12,044 --> 00:31:13,825
We have a number of primitive ideas,

909
00:31:14,525 --> 00:31:16,570
and then we build on those, you know,

910
00:31:17,130 --> 00:31:19,130
you know, whether they are truly axiomatic or

911
00:31:19,130 --> 00:31:21,930
just convenient primitives, building blocks, and then we

912
00:31:21,930 --> 00:31:23,369
build out of that. We we build the

913
00:31:23,369 --> 00:31:25,210
complex things out of the simple things, Lego

914
00:31:25,210 --> 00:31:25,869
brick style.

915
00:31:26,809 --> 00:31:29,934
And that is exactly what the Linux kernel

916
00:31:29,934 --> 00:31:31,695
looks like. It looks like, ah, yeah. Here

917
00:31:31,695 --> 00:31:33,934
are system functions that then fan out to

918
00:31:33,934 --> 00:31:34,434
be,

919
00:31:35,215 --> 00:31:36,735
realized and expressed in a number of different

920
00:31:36,735 --> 00:31:38,335
ways, and then they fan into a number

921
00:31:38,335 --> 00:31:40,174
of system primitives that are found to be,

922
00:31:40,494 --> 00:31:42,654
at the core of your operating system. And

923
00:31:42,654 --> 00:31:44,700
guess what? E coli looks nothing like that.

924
00:31:45,500 --> 00:31:47,659
It's a big old mess, or rather, it

925
00:31:47,659 --> 00:31:49,740
looks more like a rather than, being,

926
00:31:50,700 --> 00:31:52,460
I guess the Linux system looks like a

927
00:31:52,460 --> 00:31:53,359
spinning top.

928
00:31:54,059 --> 00:31:55,519
The E coli structure,

929
00:31:56,380 --> 00:31:58,515
looks like a cone with a broad base.

930
00:31:59,075 --> 00:32:01,075
In other words, nature is messy. It doesn't

931
00:32:01,075 --> 00:32:02,934
specialize a function as a primitive,

932
00:32:04,275 --> 00:32:05,494
with one task.

933
00:32:05,795 --> 00:32:07,555
This is what we do in engineering. We

934
00:32:07,555 --> 00:32:09,234
we we we say, yeah, here is a

935
00:32:09,234 --> 00:32:10,755
thing. It has one target. It have one

936
00:32:10,755 --> 00:32:12,275
job, and it does it well, and we've

937
00:32:12,275 --> 00:32:14,120
tested it to tolerance, and we can build

938
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:15,340
other things out of it.

939
00:32:15,799 --> 00:32:17,820
Nature tends to be a lot messier,

940
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:19,180
and so therefore

941
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:21,559
functions have a certain redundancy. You can in

942
00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:23,320
fact, you can actually see almost physically. You

943
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:25,320
could knock things knock things out of it,

944
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:26,840
and it would still keep on working, which

945
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:28,519
is we we know that this is how

946
00:32:28,519 --> 00:32:31,454
life works. You can actually knock out remarkable

947
00:32:31,595 --> 00:32:33,934
chunks and it still keeps on working.

948
00:32:34,795 --> 00:32:35,295
So

949
00:32:35,994 --> 00:32:37,994
structurally, they look really different. So, again, that

950
00:32:37,994 --> 00:32:40,234
was a springboard for that story. So sometimes

951
00:32:40,234 --> 00:32:42,734
my stories are very, very strongly grounded in

952
00:32:43,049 --> 00:32:44,990
something I have read or come across.

953
00:32:46,090 --> 00:32:48,269
But then that's not itself a story. That's

954
00:32:48,650 --> 00:32:50,410
that's an idea. In fact, some of the

955
00:32:50,410 --> 00:32:52,809
worst worst science fiction stories you can find

956
00:32:52,809 --> 00:32:54,730
are the ones where here's an idea, and

957
00:32:54,730 --> 00:32:56,174
that's kind of where it stops.

958
00:32:57,055 --> 00:32:58,355
You know, and,

959
00:32:59,375 --> 00:33:01,055
it it it's it's known in the traders

960
00:33:01,055 --> 00:33:02,355
here's an idea at the end.

961
00:33:04,335 --> 00:33:05,775
But the idea is like, okay, what can

962
00:33:05,775 --> 00:33:07,375
what can I do with that? What story

963
00:33:07,375 --> 00:33:09,375
could be played out against this? And and

964
00:33:09,375 --> 00:33:10,755
then looking for that possibility.

965
00:33:11,380 --> 00:33:13,059
So so I'd say a number of my

966
00:33:13,059 --> 00:33:13,559
stories

967
00:33:14,259 --> 00:33:16,099
do do that. There's sometimes I can get

968
00:33:16,099 --> 00:33:18,099
a little bit too caught up in that,

969
00:33:18,099 --> 00:33:20,500
I will say. And and by that, I

970
00:33:20,500 --> 00:33:22,019
mean that there is a story that I

971
00:33:22,019 --> 00:33:24,085
didn't write where I was that I never

972
00:33:24,085 --> 00:33:25,765
completed because I got too wrapped up in

973
00:33:25,765 --> 00:33:27,524
what happens to a human body in a

974
00:33:27,524 --> 00:33:28,024
vacuum.

975
00:33:29,284 --> 00:33:30,804
You know, I'll leave everybody else to do

976
00:33:30,804 --> 00:33:31,625
their own research.

977
00:33:32,484 --> 00:33:34,005
You can really go down quite a rabbit

978
00:33:34,005 --> 00:33:35,065
hole with that one.

979
00:33:35,605 --> 00:33:37,539
But, you know, it's a case of that

980
00:33:37,539 --> 00:33:39,460
and that, I think, also tells us that,

981
00:33:40,900 --> 00:33:42,920
also tells us that sometimes that

982
00:33:43,539 --> 00:33:44,839
the the danger,

983
00:33:45,700 --> 00:33:46,759
of knowing something,

984
00:33:47,220 --> 00:33:48,900
or knowing too much about something is that

985
00:33:48,900 --> 00:33:50,420
you want to know everything, and you also

986
00:33:50,420 --> 00:33:52,365
want the reader to know everything, which goes

987
00:33:52,365 --> 00:33:54,525
back to that idea of the frame. It's

988
00:33:54,525 --> 00:33:55,984
useful to have a construct,

989
00:33:57,404 --> 00:33:58,545
like a word limit,

990
00:33:59,644 --> 00:34:00,785
or a page constraint

991
00:34:01,404 --> 00:34:03,825
to prevent you from doing an info dump.

992
00:34:05,399 --> 00:34:07,159
Your your desire is sometimes I've done all

993
00:34:07,159 --> 00:34:08,599
this research. I would like the reader to

994
00:34:08,599 --> 00:34:09,480
know it as well,

995
00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:11,719
but that's not a story. I I want

996
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,300
I wonder what the downsides are to,

997
00:34:14,839 --> 00:34:15,659
this form

998
00:34:16,039 --> 00:34:18,219
and and sort of an extension of that.

999
00:34:19,664 --> 00:34:20,405
Our propensity

1000
00:34:20,704 --> 00:34:22,864
to to want the story and that, you

1001
00:34:22,864 --> 00:34:24,625
know, you've mentioned it already. The,

1002
00:34:25,664 --> 00:34:28,164
the lone genius is is is quite a

1003
00:34:28,385 --> 00:34:30,545
compelling story, but it isn't really the way

1004
00:34:30,545 --> 00:34:32,750
things are. And it also feels to me

1005
00:34:32,750 --> 00:34:35,230
like that that's probably not doing the world

1006
00:34:35,230 --> 00:34:37,489
an awful lot of favors to think of

1007
00:34:37,550 --> 00:34:39,409
this idea of a known genius.

1008
00:34:39,869 --> 00:34:41,710
Yeah. I think and that and that is

1009
00:34:41,789 --> 00:34:43,789
there is a limitation there in terms of

1010
00:34:44,109 --> 00:34:45,889
because you can't show everything,

1011
00:34:46,269 --> 00:34:48,164
you don't show everything, and you pick on

1012
00:34:48,164 --> 00:34:49,844
a few things. And that is the nature

1013
00:34:49,844 --> 00:34:51,704
of of stories at any length.

1014
00:34:52,164 --> 00:34:54,244
But certain qualities, it's a little bit like

1015
00:34:54,644 --> 00:34:56,405
it's it's like turning the volume down on

1016
00:34:56,405 --> 00:34:58,885
something. You know? Our our voice you know?

1017
00:34:58,885 --> 00:35:00,565
As as you turn the volume down, certain

1018
00:35:00,565 --> 00:35:03,739
frequencies drop faster than others from our perception.

1019
00:35:04,519 --> 00:35:06,599
And so certain features in a story will

1020
00:35:06,599 --> 00:35:09,000
also drop, and sometimes you get that with

1021
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:09,980
with flash fiction.

1022
00:35:11,079 --> 00:35:12,780
If you are trying to tell,

1023
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,180
a true and accurate accounting, and

1024
00:35:17,694 --> 00:35:19,954
in other words, this this heads into journalism,

1025
00:35:20,734 --> 00:35:21,875
then you

1026
00:35:22,414 --> 00:35:23,954
then you're going to be

1027
00:35:24,255 --> 00:35:25,155
potentially disappointed,

1028
00:35:25,775 --> 00:35:28,574
or potentially frustrate people. And you have the

1029
00:35:28,574 --> 00:35:30,335
dane you have the danger. And as I

1030
00:35:30,335 --> 00:35:31,554
said, this idea

1031
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:33,679
of the strength is you're trying to work

1032
00:35:33,679 --> 00:35:34,739
with the reader's imagination.

1033
00:35:35,599 --> 00:35:37,380
The danger is that you draw on stereotypes.

1034
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:39,359
The danger is that and and, you you

1035
00:35:39,359 --> 00:35:42,000
know, a very the the the prototypical and

1036
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,400
stereotypical lone genius idea could be very easily

1037
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:46,079
reinforced if we're telling a story from that

1038
00:35:46,079 --> 00:35:46,900
point of view.

1039
00:35:47,954 --> 00:35:50,755
And so you have that idea. You have

1040
00:35:50,755 --> 00:35:52,055
the foe the fact that

1041
00:35:52,434 --> 00:35:53,715
you do end up with,

1042
00:35:54,115 --> 00:35:56,355
making many back characters if you you can't

1043
00:35:56,355 --> 00:35:57,335
put too many characters

1044
00:35:57,675 --> 00:35:58,175
in,

1045
00:35:58,835 --> 00:36:00,434
simply because you can't get close to them.

1046
00:36:00,675 --> 00:36:03,480
You don't have enough time for character development.

1047
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:04,920
So the story that I wrote is very

1048
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:06,840
much about Heisenberg. We we we we see

1049
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:08,460
other people featured and mentioned,

1050
00:36:09,159 --> 00:36:10,300
but you,

1051
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:13,400
you can't get everybody in there because there

1052
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:14,699
simply isn't the space.

1053
00:36:15,815 --> 00:36:17,894
And that's that also, I think, gives way

1054
00:36:17,974 --> 00:36:19,034
let's go back to

1055
00:36:19,335 --> 00:36:20,934
go go back to that notion of of

1056
00:36:20,934 --> 00:36:21,434
music.

1057
00:36:21,894 --> 00:36:24,135
It's the idea of there is, there are

1058
00:36:24,135 --> 00:36:25,734
many stories that could be told against this,

1059
00:36:25,734 --> 00:36:27,574
and you kind of have to hope that

1060
00:36:27,574 --> 00:36:29,210
somebody else is out there doing a a

1061
00:36:29,210 --> 00:36:31,150
different version, particularly if it's about real events.

1062
00:36:31,529 --> 00:36:32,829
But even if it's about,

1063
00:36:33,369 --> 00:36:35,369
shorter things, the idea is that you can

1064
00:36:35,369 --> 00:36:37,069
give a number of different people

1065
00:36:37,849 --> 00:36:39,769
different prompts, and they will each produce a

1066
00:36:39,769 --> 00:36:41,974
different story. The idea is there that perhaps

1067
00:36:41,974 --> 00:36:43,255
there's a little bit of joy to be

1068
00:36:43,255 --> 00:36:45,894
had in recognizing this is a story, not

1069
00:36:45,894 --> 00:36:46,635
the story.

1070
00:36:47,574 --> 00:36:49,574
But, yeah, there are definite you know, we

1071
00:36:49,574 --> 00:36:51,335
could call them disadvantages, but I'll always call

1072
00:36:51,414 --> 00:36:52,534
I I tend to think of it as

1073
00:36:52,534 --> 00:36:54,614
limits because there's both a positive and a

1074
00:36:54,614 --> 00:36:56,215
negative aspect to them. And I think that

1075
00:36:56,215 --> 00:36:58,539
you get that with with any form, but

1076
00:36:58,539 --> 00:37:00,480
particularly if you are looking for,

1077
00:37:01,339 --> 00:37:03,679
you know, I guess my my half qualifies,

1078
00:37:04,300 --> 00:37:05,900
at least the first half, as as an

1079
00:37:05,900 --> 00:37:07,760
attempt at doing a historical story.

1080
00:37:08,139 --> 00:37:09,440
But historical fiction

1081
00:37:11,005 --> 00:37:13,724
is normally, when people think of historical fiction,

1082
00:37:13,724 --> 00:37:14,945
they tend to think of

1083
00:37:15,644 --> 00:37:17,344
much longer form works,

1084
00:37:18,445 --> 00:37:20,465
backed by a certain amount of research, and

1085
00:37:20,605 --> 00:37:22,465
there's a lot of detail and that actually

1086
00:37:23,300 --> 00:37:24,659
in that sense, it's much like,

1087
00:37:25,619 --> 00:37:28,440
the world building we associate with speculative fiction.

1088
00:37:29,139 --> 00:37:31,059
But what somebody's trying to do is recreate

1089
00:37:31,059 --> 00:37:32,900
a world that is foreign to us. Okay?

1090
00:37:32,900 --> 00:37:35,320
That it could be a story about, Victorian

1091
00:37:35,380 --> 00:37:37,380
England. That's foreign to us. None of us

1092
00:37:37,380 --> 00:37:39,325
were alive then. So we don't really know

1093
00:37:39,325 --> 00:37:41,105
what it's like. So somebody has

1094
00:37:41,485 --> 00:37:43,164
to bring to life those things that would

1095
00:37:43,164 --> 00:37:45,405
be ordinary then. But they will they will

1096
00:37:45,405 --> 00:37:47,164
also do it through a lens, and they

1097
00:37:47,164 --> 00:37:49,805
will bias that. And sometimes you can't see

1098
00:37:49,805 --> 00:37:50,945
the author's bias.

1099
00:37:51,325 --> 00:37:52,539
It's just just a little bit more obvious

1100
00:37:52,539 --> 00:37:54,380
that that that there is a lens in

1101
00:37:54,380 --> 00:37:54,859
the in,

1102
00:37:55,420 --> 00:37:57,359
involved when we look at the shorter forms.

1103
00:37:58,380 --> 00:38:00,319
Can I come back to your story? Because,

1104
00:38:00,859 --> 00:38:03,839
I'm interested in this physicists going into software.

1105
00:38:04,175 --> 00:38:06,134
Is that something that you that you I

1106
00:38:06,134 --> 00:38:07,855
I want to go into software development, so

1107
00:38:07,855 --> 00:38:09,375
I'm going to do a physics degree, or

1108
00:38:09,375 --> 00:38:11,135
was it something that you No. No. No.

1109
00:38:11,135 --> 00:38:13,375
That was more that was a really kind

1110
00:38:13,375 --> 00:38:13,614
of,

1111
00:38:14,655 --> 00:38:15,155
series

1112
00:38:15,695 --> 00:38:17,635
a series of, accidents and coincidences,

1113
00:38:17,934 --> 00:38:18,420
really.

1114
00:38:19,380 --> 00:38:21,139
It was a case of, I think, because

1115
00:38:21,139 --> 00:38:22,579
I I think I I wanted to do

1116
00:38:22,579 --> 00:38:24,500
physics at university because I was very interested

1117
00:38:24,500 --> 00:38:26,119
in astronomy and space flight.

1118
00:38:27,460 --> 00:38:27,960
And,

1119
00:38:28,339 --> 00:38:29,319
but I was also,

1120
00:38:30,099 --> 00:38:31,619
this was the year of home computers. I

1121
00:38:31,619 --> 00:38:32,819
spent a lot of time messing about with

1122
00:38:32,819 --> 00:38:34,574
home computers, and that was just something that

1123
00:38:34,574 --> 00:38:36,175
I could do. I never thought about it

1124
00:38:36,175 --> 00:38:36,835
as a profession.

1125
00:38:37,454 --> 00:38:37,954
And

1126
00:38:38,574 --> 00:38:40,255
what I discovered as well as at university

1127
00:38:40,255 --> 00:38:41,614
is that, actually, that was the bit that

1128
00:38:41,614 --> 00:38:43,934
I kind of enjoyed quite a lot. I

1129
00:38:43,934 --> 00:38:45,775
didn't really enjoy studying physics, I'm gonna have

1130
00:38:45,775 --> 00:38:46,815
to say. I was I was more a

1131
00:38:46,815 --> 00:38:47,554
little distracted,

1132
00:38:48,894 --> 00:38:49,320
but,

1133
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:51,019
which is, you know,

1134
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,239
it doesn't mean I'm not I'm not interested

1135
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:55,000
in it, but that just didn't didn't click

1136
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:55,660
for me.

1137
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:58,460
But I also got wrapped up in,

1138
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,460
discussions with people about things like AI, philosophy

1139
00:39:02,519 --> 00:39:04,539
of mind, and things like that. And

1140
00:39:05,675 --> 00:39:06,974
a girlfriend's father,

1141
00:39:08,235 --> 00:39:09,855
before I went to university, recommended,

1142
00:39:10,795 --> 00:39:11,775
Douglas Hofstadter's,

1143
00:39:12,635 --> 00:39:14,414
which is an absolute classic

1144
00:39:14,795 --> 00:39:15,775
of the late seventies,

1145
00:39:16,635 --> 00:39:18,974
in terms of how it brings together

1146
00:39:19,389 --> 00:39:21,309
these questions of how do we think, what

1147
00:39:21,309 --> 00:39:23,090
is it, what does intelligence mean,

1148
00:39:24,030 --> 00:39:27,469
and actually presents a view of philosophy and

1149
00:39:27,469 --> 00:39:27,969
AI

1150
00:39:28,349 --> 00:39:29,090
and mathematics,

1151
00:39:30,750 --> 00:39:31,250
and,

1152
00:39:31,872 --> 00:39:33,394
art that balanced the other. And that was

1153
00:39:33,394 --> 00:39:35,715
an amazing magnum opus that really kind of

1154
00:39:35,715 --> 00:39:38,355
grabbed my attention. And while so I started

1155
00:39:38,355 --> 00:39:40,234
thinking, yeah, maybe I wanna study AI. Maybe

1156
00:39:40,234 --> 00:39:41,715
I maybe this is where I wanna go,

1157
00:39:41,715 --> 00:39:42,695
something in computing.

1158
00:39:43,155 --> 00:39:44,835
They I finished my degree. I had no

1159
00:39:44,835 --> 00:39:46,275
idea what I wanted to do. And somebody

1160
00:39:46,275 --> 00:39:48,030
said, oh, you know, they're advertising for a

1161
00:39:48,110 --> 00:39:50,909
a programmer at an a company nearby. And,

1162
00:39:51,309 --> 00:39:52,989
I said, okay. I'll go on for that.

1163
00:39:52,989 --> 00:39:54,349
And I got the job. But at that

1164
00:39:54,349 --> 00:39:56,750
point, I started becoming even more interested and

1165
00:39:56,750 --> 00:39:57,710
really giving myself,

1166
00:39:59,390 --> 00:40:01,695
learning a lot more about software development. But

1167
00:40:01,695 --> 00:40:03,715
at that point, it was around the

1168
00:40:04,094 --> 00:40:07,375
time, that the world was changing from what

1169
00:40:07,375 --> 00:40:09,635
we would call classic symbolic AI,

1170
00:40:10,815 --> 00:40:13,375
to what is the beginnings of the modern

1171
00:40:13,375 --> 00:40:14,755
paradigm, neural networks.

1172
00:40:15,375 --> 00:40:17,579
And I was I was working during that

1173
00:40:17,579 --> 00:40:20,299
period, and although I started looking at master's

1174
00:40:20,299 --> 00:40:20,799
degrees

1175
00:40:21,339 --> 00:40:23,179
in this space, I started thinking, you know

1176
00:40:23,179 --> 00:40:25,039
what? I think something's changing here.

1177
00:40:25,900 --> 00:40:27,119
And that,

1178
00:40:27,739 --> 00:40:30,704
that had me interested, and I I changed

1179
00:40:30,844 --> 00:40:33,005
intentionally decided, you know, I won't do AI

1180
00:40:33,005 --> 00:40:35,804
because, actually, all the degrees are really they're

1181
00:40:35,804 --> 00:40:38,224
they're they're backward looking. They're very nineteen seventies.

1182
00:40:39,804 --> 00:40:42,525
And so I wanted something that really focused

1183
00:40:42,525 --> 00:40:44,400
on neural networks, and that was that was

1184
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:46,099
what was then the Bristol Polytechnic,

1185
00:40:46,639 --> 00:40:47,460
now UE.

1186
00:40:48,079 --> 00:40:49,839
And there was something on parallel computer systems,

1187
00:40:49,839 --> 00:40:51,920
and I did that because it did neural

1188
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:53,460
networks. The fact that

1189
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:56,000
the fact that I then decided I would

1190
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,079
go into regular software engineering after that was

1191
00:40:58,079 --> 00:40:58,900
a complete tangent,

1192
00:40:59,585 --> 00:41:00,565
surprising myself.

1193
00:41:01,585 --> 00:41:03,824
But that was that story. So,

1194
00:41:04,385 --> 00:41:06,065
but my tutor, he he was the reason

1195
00:41:06,065 --> 00:41:08,144
that, I I I did that. He he

1196
00:41:08,144 --> 00:41:08,964
was an astrophysicist

1197
00:41:09,585 --> 00:41:12,224
and had brought the neural networks in because

1198
00:41:12,224 --> 00:41:14,309
of image processing work that he had done.

1199
00:41:14,550 --> 00:41:16,949
And then he joined, joined the faculty and

1200
00:41:16,949 --> 00:41:20,090
introduced this whole chunk of stuff in there,

1201
00:41:20,469 --> 00:41:21,210
that was,

1202
00:41:22,309 --> 00:41:24,390
so all yeah. The the so for me,

1203
00:41:24,390 --> 00:41:26,570
it's ultimately a physicist that got me involved,

1204
00:41:27,934 --> 00:41:29,875
in that, but I took a different direction

1205
00:41:30,094 --> 00:41:32,514
and remained in software, but with perhaps

1206
00:41:33,215 --> 00:41:34,815
a a a deeper appreciation than I'd had

1207
00:41:34,815 --> 00:41:35,315
before.

1208
00:41:36,014 --> 00:41:38,014
Okay. So what what kind of software development

1209
00:41:38,014 --> 00:41:39,695
have you been doing then? What what's Oh,

1210
00:41:39,695 --> 00:41:41,454
a variety. Well, the the joy the joy

1211
00:41:41,454 --> 00:41:42,835
of being a consultant and,

1212
00:41:43,135 --> 00:41:43,380
and,

1213
00:41:43,940 --> 00:41:45,539
you know, a trainer is that I end

1214
00:41:45,539 --> 00:41:46,980
up doing all kinds of bits and pieces.

1215
00:41:46,980 --> 00:41:48,119
I I I love

1216
00:41:48,460 --> 00:41:48,960
I

1217
00:41:49,299 --> 00:41:51,639
love language, and so programming languages,

1218
00:41:52,339 --> 00:41:54,119
hold a fascination for me. But

1219
00:41:54,819 --> 00:41:57,299
also being, again, the constraints thing. I used

1220
00:41:57,299 --> 00:41:58,099
to work in,

1221
00:41:59,315 --> 00:42:02,355
real time and embedded systems, which, you know,

1222
00:42:02,355 --> 00:42:04,275
we we define a system as real time

1223
00:42:04,275 --> 00:42:06,114
when it has a when time is one

1224
00:42:06,114 --> 00:42:08,114
of the things you really care about, like,

1225
00:42:08,275 --> 00:42:09,795
not as a matter of convenience, but as

1226
00:42:09,795 --> 00:42:10,775
a matter of correctness.

1227
00:42:11,460 --> 00:42:12,940
A late answer is wrong is one way

1228
00:42:12,940 --> 00:42:13,880
of putting it.

1229
00:42:14,340 --> 00:42:16,099
And so therefore, you've got a nice constraint

1230
00:42:16,099 --> 00:42:18,179
there, but often we also associate these things

1231
00:42:18,179 --> 00:42:19,800
and embedded systems with being,

1232
00:42:20,179 --> 00:42:21,079
memory constraint,

1233
00:42:21,539 --> 00:42:23,539
or they are constrained because they're not connected

1234
00:42:23,539 --> 00:42:25,000
to a network. In other words,

1235
00:42:26,315 --> 00:42:28,474
in modern software development, a lot of people

1236
00:42:28,474 --> 00:42:30,715
are used to an environment where, you know,

1237
00:42:30,715 --> 00:42:32,414
we assume everything is connected.

1238
00:42:32,795 --> 00:42:34,875
You're working on the web and that somewhere

1239
00:42:34,875 --> 00:42:37,195
there is a server with a semi infinite

1240
00:42:37,195 --> 00:42:38,095
amount of storage,

1241
00:42:38,795 --> 00:42:39,535
and that,

1242
00:42:40,099 --> 00:42:42,579
effectively, the only limit you're ever really worried

1243
00:42:42,579 --> 00:42:44,019
about is the speed of light over the

1244
00:42:44,019 --> 00:42:44,519
network,

1245
00:42:44,980 --> 00:42:47,539
and that's it. But my background was very

1246
00:42:47,539 --> 00:42:50,019
much more in these other, environments. Probably, I

1247
00:42:50,019 --> 00:42:51,460
would just I would only describe them as

1248
00:42:51,460 --> 00:42:52,679
being closer to the metal.

1249
00:42:54,224 --> 00:42:56,224
And so, therefore, that that always held a

1250
00:42:56,224 --> 00:42:57,525
fascination to me. But

1251
00:42:57,985 --> 00:42:59,585
I do also deal I mean, I've worked

1252
00:42:59,585 --> 00:43:00,625
for banks and,

1253
00:43:01,265 --> 00:43:02,325
directly and indirectly.

1254
00:43:03,345 --> 00:43:05,345
And so I don't think I you know,

1255
00:43:05,345 --> 00:43:07,025
I guess it's like writing. I I didn't

1256
00:43:07,025 --> 00:43:08,704
get stuck in one genre. Although I have

1257
00:43:08,704 --> 00:43:09,525
favorite genres,

1258
00:43:09,900 --> 00:43:11,980
I've seen a lot of different kinds of

1259
00:43:11,980 --> 00:43:12,480
things,

1260
00:43:12,780 --> 00:43:14,239
from high performance computing.

1261
00:43:14,619 --> 00:43:16,699
In fact, a lot of through to data

1262
00:43:16,699 --> 00:43:18,780
analysis, it seems to be a very common

1263
00:43:18,780 --> 00:43:20,059
trend at the moment. I'm getting a lot

1264
00:43:20,059 --> 00:43:20,719
of people

1265
00:43:21,179 --> 00:43:25,135
who are who've grown up through STEM subjects

1266
00:43:25,195 --> 00:43:26,494
that are not computing.

1267
00:43:27,034 --> 00:43:28,175
They've ended up being,

1268
00:43:28,795 --> 00:43:30,554
highly numerate and,

1269
00:43:30,954 --> 00:43:32,494
yeah, pretty computer literate

1270
00:43:32,875 --> 00:43:34,635
and crunching numbers, and they've ended up as

1271
00:43:34,635 --> 00:43:36,554
data scientists, data engineers, and so on. And

1272
00:43:36,554 --> 00:43:38,579
they're going like, well, yeah, but maybe we

1273
00:43:38,579 --> 00:43:40,740
need maybe what we're doing is software development,

1274
00:43:40,740 --> 00:43:42,019
and maybe we need to know how to

1275
00:43:42,019 --> 00:43:43,780
do that rather than just,

1276
00:43:44,340 --> 00:43:46,039
stumbling across numbers in Python.

1277
00:43:46,740 --> 00:43:49,059
And that so so I found I've ended

1278
00:43:49,059 --> 00:43:50,500
up with a little more work in that

1279
00:43:50,500 --> 00:43:52,840
space and teaching software engineering techniques

1280
00:43:53,795 --> 00:43:55,815
to people who've come from outside software,

1281
00:43:56,275 --> 00:43:57,414
but have have

1282
00:43:57,795 --> 00:43:59,335
a a a pretty high degree of literacy

1283
00:43:59,555 --> 00:44:00,775
and are very comfortable,

1284
00:44:01,235 --> 00:44:02,595
with a number of the ideas. But their

1285
00:44:02,595 --> 00:44:04,675
background and their demands are very, very different

1286
00:44:04,675 --> 00:44:07,190
to somebody developing an application for a bank,

1287
00:44:07,190 --> 00:44:07,849
for example.

1288
00:44:08,869 --> 00:44:11,849
How does quantum computing come into your your

1289
00:44:12,150 --> 00:44:13,130
your work? No.

1290
00:44:13,589 --> 00:44:15,670
Interesting enough, the it it kind of

1291
00:44:16,150 --> 00:44:16,650
so

1292
00:44:17,269 --> 00:44:19,530
it it's one of those things that is

1293
00:44:21,030 --> 00:44:22,204
I don't think it's like I don't think

1294
00:44:22,204 --> 00:44:23,425
it's like fusion power

1295
00:44:24,045 --> 00:44:25,565
in the sense of it's always ten years

1296
00:44:25,565 --> 00:44:26,065
away.

1297
00:44:27,405 --> 00:44:27,905
But

1298
00:44:28,844 --> 00:44:29,804
I have been

1299
00:44:30,204 --> 00:44:31,885
I'm trying to think when I first encountered

1300
00:44:31,885 --> 00:44:33,724
the idea of quantum computing. There's a Feynman

1301
00:44:33,724 --> 00:44:35,519
lecture on it, one of his books.

1302
00:44:36,159 --> 00:44:37,440
It there there's a whole load of stuff,

1303
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:39,360
and I encountered that. So that feels like

1304
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:42,079
nineteen nineties from my point of view. And

1305
00:44:42,079 --> 00:44:42,579
then,

1306
00:44:43,679 --> 00:44:46,159
I think Deutsch started talking about stuff in

1307
00:44:46,159 --> 00:44:48,094
the nineties about this. And it kind of

1308
00:44:48,174 --> 00:44:49,855
you know, it's been floating around. In the

1309
00:44:49,855 --> 00:44:52,414
February, I first saw my what I would

1310
00:44:52,414 --> 00:44:54,194
regard as my first proper

1311
00:44:55,214 --> 00:44:57,934
article on quantum computing. I was a a

1312
00:44:57,934 --> 00:45:00,014
magazine that I was reading, somebody actually wrote

1313
00:45:00,014 --> 00:45:02,174
about it from the software perspective. That's great.

1314
00:45:02,174 --> 00:45:03,635
That was over twenty years ago.

1315
00:45:04,230 --> 00:45:06,550
And although we are getting closer and closer

1316
00:45:06,550 --> 00:45:09,030
to it from the mainstream perspective, it's still

1317
00:45:09,030 --> 00:45:11,130
quite remote. It's very much the territory.

1318
00:45:11,590 --> 00:45:11,909
There's

1319
00:45:12,630 --> 00:45:14,070
in the r and d space, there's still

1320
00:45:14,070 --> 00:45:15,269
a lot of r to go.

1321
00:45:15,829 --> 00:45:17,429
Then, actually, there's quite a lot of d

1322
00:45:17,429 --> 00:45:19,724
to go before we get the commercial products.

1323
00:45:20,125 --> 00:45:22,864
And what people are mostly worried about,

1324
00:45:23,325 --> 00:45:24,885
and I and so I would say it's

1325
00:45:24,885 --> 00:45:26,364
a concern. What people are most worried about

1326
00:45:26,364 --> 00:45:27,905
is the implications for security.

1327
00:45:29,164 --> 00:45:30,704
I don't see many people,

1328
00:45:32,190 --> 00:45:33,550
in the domains in which,

1329
00:45:33,949 --> 00:45:34,690
I work

1330
00:45:35,070 --> 00:45:37,230
actually sort of saying, you know, quantum quantum

1331
00:45:37,230 --> 00:45:38,750
computing is something we need to care about.

1332
00:45:38,909 --> 00:45:42,109
Quantum computing is something, we need to have

1333
00:45:42,109 --> 00:45:45,070
a strategy for. It's not yet there. We're

1334
00:45:45,070 --> 00:45:46,289
we're still seeing,

1335
00:45:47,105 --> 00:45:48,164
it's early days.

1336
00:45:48,704 --> 00:45:50,565
Companies are not making direct profits.

1337
00:45:50,944 --> 00:45:52,385
They are, you know, they are there to

1338
00:45:52,385 --> 00:45:52,885
be,

1339
00:45:53,344 --> 00:45:54,964
started up and bought up,

1340
00:45:55,264 --> 00:45:55,764
primarily.

1341
00:45:56,065 --> 00:45:57,505
And there's still a lot of work to

1342
00:45:57,505 --> 00:45:58,565
be done there. But

1343
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:00,440
the security threat is the one that people

1344
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,460
are mostly worried about. The computational aspect

1345
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:04,679
for the majority of people in the software

1346
00:46:04,679 --> 00:46:06,839
space doesn't really make much of an impact,

1347
00:46:06,839 --> 00:46:08,519
and I think that's gonna remain the case

1348
00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:10,440
for quite a while. And I think what

1349
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:12,280
we're gonna see is that when we talk

1350
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:15,244
about that notion of, the computational benefit,

1351
00:46:16,905 --> 00:46:18,844
of using qubits rather than bits,

1352
00:46:19,144 --> 00:46:21,005
that's still gonna be a relative minority

1353
00:46:21,304 --> 00:46:22,764
of what an application does.

1354
00:46:23,625 --> 00:46:26,364
You know, a software application is the majority

1355
00:46:26,424 --> 00:46:28,045
of it is still gonna be

1356
00:46:28,860 --> 00:46:30,380
we need to open a file. We need

1357
00:46:30,380 --> 00:46:32,300
to look at a database. We we need

1358
00:46:32,300 --> 00:46:33,660
to present this to the,

1359
00:46:33,980 --> 00:46:36,800
to the user on screen. None of that

1360
00:46:37,660 --> 00:46:40,059
needs or fits comfortably within the quantum,

1361
00:46:41,385 --> 00:46:43,704
space in that sense, whereas quantum computing is

1362
00:46:43,704 --> 00:46:44,844
very much about efficiency.

1363
00:46:45,224 --> 00:46:47,545
And that's the high performance computing space. That's

1364
00:46:47,545 --> 00:46:49,545
the cryptography space. In other words, people are

1365
00:46:49,545 --> 00:46:50,824
looking at that going like, oh, we could

1366
00:46:50,824 --> 00:46:52,204
reduce we could reduce

1367
00:46:52,505 --> 00:46:52,920
by

1368
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:55,659
many orders of magnitude the computational

1369
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,119
cost of that. But for most of it,

1370
00:46:58,119 --> 00:46:59,880
it's it's it's kind of most of it

1371
00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:02,139
honestly is, is kind of housekeeping,

1372
00:47:03,079 --> 00:47:05,339
and and it doesn't benefit from,

1373
00:47:06,119 --> 00:47:08,505
the performance benefits you would get. So I

1374
00:47:08,505 --> 00:47:09,244
don't see

1375
00:47:09,784 --> 00:47:12,284
I haven't seen anybody really talking about it,

1376
00:47:13,224 --> 00:47:15,404
as interesting outside of those spaces.

1377
00:47:16,424 --> 00:47:17,885
That's interesting. So

1378
00:47:18,744 --> 00:47:21,000
is there a danger then that sort of

1379
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:24,199
the most interesting thing about quantum physics is

1380
00:47:24,199 --> 00:47:25,980
is is the story of Helgoland?

1381
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:30,380
I don't I don't so,

1382
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:32,840
I don't although, I mean, that's a that's

1383
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,000
a good start. Anything that gets anybody interested

1384
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:35,320
in it,

1385
00:47:37,034 --> 00:47:38,795
I think is is a good thing because

1386
00:47:38,795 --> 00:47:39,614
I think that,

1387
00:47:40,474 --> 00:47:41,295
you know, the

1388
00:47:41,594 --> 00:47:44,155
the what's the the popular perception of quantum

1389
00:47:44,155 --> 00:47:45,114
mechanics is either it's,

1390
00:47:46,315 --> 00:47:47,994
it's kinda like a hand wavy thing. It's

1391
00:47:47,994 --> 00:47:49,355
it's kind of it's a plot device.

1392
00:47:50,394 --> 00:47:50,894
And,

1393
00:47:52,619 --> 00:47:54,739
or, you know, and and we had this

1394
00:47:54,739 --> 00:47:56,219
a few decades ago, and I'm I'm sure

1395
00:47:56,219 --> 00:47:57,819
it still continues. It's like it it's a

1396
00:47:57,819 --> 00:48:00,480
it's an excuse for mysticism or whatever because,

1397
00:48:00,699 --> 00:48:02,300
oh, here's a thing that can't be explained.

1398
00:48:02,300 --> 00:48:03,900
Let's try and say that it's like this

1399
00:48:03,900 --> 00:48:05,420
other thing that we don't want to explain

1400
00:48:05,420 --> 00:48:05,920
and

1401
00:48:06,364 --> 00:48:09,164
false false parallels. So anything that gets people

1402
00:48:09,164 --> 00:48:10,224
interested in it,

1403
00:48:10,924 --> 00:48:12,525
I think it's, I think it's no bad

1404
00:48:12,525 --> 00:48:13,984
thing because we

1405
00:48:14,605 --> 00:48:15,105
because

1406
00:48:15,484 --> 00:48:17,405
I think then people will realize that a

1407
00:48:17,405 --> 00:48:19,380
lot of the things, you know, it's it's

1408
00:48:19,539 --> 00:48:20,739
one of these things where people just say,

1409
00:48:20,739 --> 00:48:21,779
yeah, but what's that got to do with

1410
00:48:21,779 --> 00:48:23,779
everyday life? And I think there's a lot

1411
00:48:23,779 --> 00:48:24,279
of,

1412
00:48:24,900 --> 00:48:25,639
a lot of

1413
00:48:26,339 --> 00:48:28,259
the physics of the last century or so.

1414
00:48:28,259 --> 00:48:29,619
I'm gonna put the also in there. It's

1415
00:48:29,619 --> 00:48:30,519
been quite important,

1416
00:48:30,980 --> 00:48:33,059
because I wanna take in relativity here. But

1417
00:48:33,059 --> 00:48:33,719
the last

1418
00:48:34,304 --> 00:48:35,364
century or so

1419
00:48:35,744 --> 00:48:37,204
that is not as

1420
00:48:37,505 --> 00:48:38,644
obvious to people,

1421
00:48:39,824 --> 00:48:41,764
because it's not packaged that way. So,

1422
00:48:42,784 --> 00:48:45,264
LCD displays, one of my favorite examples. That

1423
00:48:45,264 --> 00:48:47,519
that doesn't make that doesn't make sense or

1424
00:48:47,519 --> 00:48:49,840
couldn't be a thing without quantum mechanics. A

1425
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,000
quant quantum mechanical explanation is the only one

1426
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:53,940
you're gonna get for how LCDs work.

1427
00:48:54,559 --> 00:48:56,579
The fact that your GPS,

1428
00:48:57,360 --> 00:48:59,380
relies on general relativity,

1429
00:49:00,344 --> 00:49:01,164
because otherwise,

1430
00:49:01,704 --> 00:49:03,625
the the it turns out the difference in

1431
00:49:03,625 --> 00:49:05,965
time between us and the satellites is enough

1432
00:49:06,025 --> 00:49:07,625
to cause a drift of a few hundred

1433
00:49:07,625 --> 00:49:08,684
meters every day.

1434
00:49:09,065 --> 00:49:10,744
You have to correct for,

1435
00:49:11,224 --> 00:49:12,445
for g r effects.

1436
00:49:12,989 --> 00:49:14,510
So the here is here's the kind of

1437
00:49:14,510 --> 00:49:15,949
the big physics that people think of as

1438
00:49:15,949 --> 00:49:17,309
being like, oh, yeah. These are big names,

1439
00:49:17,309 --> 00:49:19,309
but it doesn't affect my daily life. That's

1440
00:49:19,309 --> 00:49:20,369
all very Newtonian.

1441
00:49:22,349 --> 00:49:24,269
It's like, no. Actually, it's there. It's just

1442
00:49:24,269 --> 00:49:26,414
woven into the fabric of the the technology

1443
00:49:26,414 --> 00:49:28,655
that you're using, but it's very discreetly hidden.

1444
00:49:28,655 --> 00:49:30,015
And the stuff that we deal with in

1445
00:49:30,015 --> 00:49:30,574
terms of,

1446
00:49:31,295 --> 00:49:31,795
miniaturization,

1447
00:49:32,255 --> 00:49:33,695
you know, you pick up a phone, and

1448
00:49:33,695 --> 00:49:36,894
that's got this ridiculous amount of technology inside

1449
00:49:36,894 --> 00:49:39,695
it, including a chip that is very much

1450
00:49:39,695 --> 00:49:41,599
at the limits of miniaturization

1451
00:49:42,220 --> 00:49:44,640
because you make it much smaller and

1452
00:49:45,099 --> 00:49:46,940
you quantum effects start getting in the way

1453
00:49:46,940 --> 00:49:47,840
rather than helping.

1454
00:49:48,460 --> 00:49:50,780
Transistors, they don't make sense without quantum all

1455
00:49:50,780 --> 00:49:52,240
of this kind of stuff. Basically,

1456
00:49:53,195 --> 00:49:54,875
it's it's the stuff that's not visible to

1457
00:49:54,875 --> 00:49:56,474
us, the stuff that we can't kick or

1458
00:49:56,474 --> 00:49:58,394
can't drop. You know? You know, if I

1459
00:49:58,394 --> 00:50:00,235
drop if I drop a drop a cup

1460
00:50:00,235 --> 00:50:00,894
on the floor,

1461
00:50:01,594 --> 00:50:03,594
then that's, you know, yep. This is good

1462
00:50:03,594 --> 00:50:04,255
old fashioned,

1463
00:50:04,715 --> 00:50:06,635
Newton. Yep. There we go. There's g. There's

1464
00:50:06,715 --> 00:50:08,519
and there there's an impact. What was the

1465
00:50:08,519 --> 00:50:09,880
force of the impact? What was you know,

1466
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:11,739
all the kind of questions that you might,

1467
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:13,099
deal with.

1468
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:15,320
But all of this other stuff,

1469
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:16,039
that,

1470
00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:18,920
we've we've kind of stumbled across over the

1471
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:21,204
last hundred years or so is very much

1472
00:50:21,204 --> 00:50:23,525
there. It's just perhaps better hidden. It's and

1473
00:50:23,525 --> 00:50:25,764
as I say, woven into what we use,

1474
00:50:25,764 --> 00:50:27,065
but it's not it's not,

1475
00:50:27,605 --> 00:50:28,964
I don't know. People don't shout about it

1476
00:50:28,964 --> 00:50:29,464
enough.

1477
00:50:29,764 --> 00:50:31,125
I think that's another way of putting it.

1478
00:50:31,125 --> 00:50:33,640
So going back to that, whatever draws people's

1479
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:36,199
attention to how weird and how cool all

1480
00:50:36,199 --> 00:50:38,360
this stuff really is at every scale, the

1481
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:39,659
very act of just

1482
00:50:40,039 --> 00:50:42,140
looking you know, picking up your phone,

1483
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:44,760
to find out where you are and use

1484
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:48,144
Google Maps involves an amazing amount of technology

1485
00:50:48,204 --> 00:50:50,304
that has not come into existence,

1486
00:50:50,765 --> 00:50:52,445
or has only been in existence since 1900.

1487
00:50:52,445 --> 00:50:53,804
And it's not just, oh, this is cool

1488
00:50:53,804 --> 00:50:55,164
technology. It's like, no. No. This is the

1489
00:50:55,324 --> 00:50:57,184
it's not just the engineering. It's the science.

1490
00:50:57,324 --> 00:50:59,505
We simply could if we'd given somebody

1491
00:50:59,829 --> 00:51:01,750
the technology, they wouldn't have had an explanation

1492
00:51:01,750 --> 00:51:02,409
for it.

1493
00:51:02,789 --> 00:51:04,949
That that I think is absolutely fascinating. We

1494
00:51:04,949 --> 00:51:06,230
said, yeah, you can miniaturize it. You can

1495
00:51:06,230 --> 00:51:07,269
do all of this and all the rest

1496
00:51:07,269 --> 00:51:07,849
of it.

1497
00:51:08,630 --> 00:51:09,989
They would not have been able to do

1498
00:51:09,989 --> 00:51:12,329
it because they wouldn't have had the science

1499
00:51:12,344 --> 00:51:13,545
to back it up. And I think that

1500
00:51:13,545 --> 00:51:15,085
itself is is fascinating.

1501
00:51:16,905 --> 00:51:19,724
Let's return briefly to that story again.

1502
00:51:20,664 --> 00:51:22,184
I was on route to the department this

1503
00:51:22,184 --> 00:51:23,704
morning when I must have taken a wrong

1504
00:51:23,704 --> 00:51:25,085
turn from my usual route.

1505
00:51:25,940 --> 00:51:26,440
Imagine

1506
00:51:26,819 --> 00:51:28,659
knowing where I was going but not knowing

1507
00:51:28,659 --> 00:51:29,319
where I

1508
00:51:29,619 --> 00:51:31,779
was. Just last week, I had the opposite

1509
00:51:31,779 --> 00:51:32,279
experience.

1510
00:51:32,579 --> 00:51:34,819
My landlady accosted me just in front of

1511
00:51:34,819 --> 00:51:35,559
the Friedhofskapelle

1512
00:51:36,099 --> 00:51:36,599
Stadfriedhof.

1513
00:51:37,539 --> 00:51:39,139
I was as surprised to see her as

1514
00:51:39,139 --> 00:51:40,199
she was to see me.

1515
00:51:40,715 --> 00:51:42,094
Good day, professor Heisenberg.

1516
00:51:42,635 --> 00:51:44,635
I, long ago, stopped reminding her that I

1517
00:51:44,635 --> 00:51:45,454
was no professor.

1518
00:51:48,155 --> 00:51:50,255
She means well. Where are you heading?

1519
00:51:50,715 --> 00:51:52,735
And you know, I had no idea.

1520
00:51:54,260 --> 00:51:56,179
The full version will be published in our

1521
00:51:56,179 --> 00:51:58,500
free to read quantum briefing, which comes out

1522
00:51:58,500 --> 00:52:00,820
in May. That will be available on the

1523
00:52:00,820 --> 00:52:01,960
physics world website

1524
00:52:02,260 --> 00:52:04,179
and will be packed full of coverage from

1525
00:52:04,179 --> 00:52:06,599
the international year of quantum science and technology,

1526
00:52:07,155 --> 00:52:07,815
the history,

1527
00:52:08,114 --> 00:52:09,574
mystery, and applications

1528
00:52:09,875 --> 00:52:11,015
of quantum mechanics.

1529
00:52:11,474 --> 00:52:13,894
I'd like to thank Kevlin Henney not only

1530
00:52:13,954 --> 00:52:16,835
for writing this wonderful story, but for joining

1531
00:52:16,835 --> 00:52:19,074
me here for this episode of the Physics

1532
00:52:19,074 --> 00:52:21,599
World Stories podcast. We'll be back next month

1533
00:52:21,599 --> 00:52:23,440
with something else from this wonderful world of

1534
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:23,940
physics.

1535
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,639
And until then, thank you very much for

1536
00:52:26,639 --> 00:52:27,139
listening.