The power of abstractions

Child is the father of man :- its a great saying because while playing with my kid , lot times, i learn a lot.

I work with computers for a long time, but never thought how the art of typewriting came in. Last day while playing with kid, he was asking me to do stamping, and then we did it on different patterns. Then i was talking to wife about Chinese and English languages where Chinese consists of words and not alphabets. I told they have a problems with new words. Wife told it may be really tough to remember all the words.

Then i started thinking, all the key board may started as stamping in a sequence. But what may be the requirement ? different hand writing ?, standardizing the handwriting ? may be. But i am sure people wont be able to do sequence stamping faster than a person writing.

Then somebody came up with an abstraction for sequence stamping - which is called as a key board - Some blog told key board was invented 52 times to reach the current state. Now who needs to think of sequence stamping ?

Time changed, the underlying mechanisms changed still the abstraction remained and found place in the new generation devices like computers.

Same is the case of world. Almost all primary skills changed but the abstractive skills remained. People learned the new abstractive skills and relayed on them for the existence. Then we create derivate abstractions from primary abstractions and the derivate abstraction creates new skills and we learn them and move ahead. Always news skills born then specializations happened and the derivative abstractions occurred. We found design patterns and new abstractions and created new skills. The cycle continues and we move ahead creating/learning and abstracting new skills.


The power of Abstraction leads us to development and new ways of life.

© yankandpaste®