ÇOCUKLUĞUMDAKİ KARANLIK KORKUSU

[5] Vizual

3-4 yaşlarındaydım. Babam Mardin Nusaybin’de Jandarma komutanı idi. Evimiz Nusaybin Derbesiye köyünün tek betonarme eviydi. Köyün dışında küçük bir tepenin üzerindeydi. O zaman Nusabin’de elektrik yoktu. Geceleri zifiri karanlık olurdu. Annem babamın görevi nedeni ile biraz tedirgindi. Babam akşamları kaçakçıları kovalamağa çıkıyordu. O zaman evimizi zifiri bir karanlık sarardı. Zaman zaman evimizin tam karşısındaki mezarlıkta cenazeler defnedilirdi, karanlıkta… Yöre adetine göre… Tüylerim ürpererek gizlice seyrederdim o ışıkları, karanlıkta yürüyen grupları ve merdiven üzerinde taşınan ‘cansız’ vücutları, pek anlamadan ne olup bittiğini…

6 ay sonra annemin ısrarları sonucu, babam kariyerinden vazgeçti ve hak etmiş olduğu emekliliğini istedi. Istanbul’un o zamanki bir sayfiye semtinde bir ev aldık. Evimizin geniş bir bahçesi vardı. Serin yaz akşamlarında ön bahçede yemek yer hoş zaman geçirirdik. Hatırlıyorum, zaman zaman babam beni kasıtlı olarak arkabahçeden bir şeyler almağa yollardı. Geceleyin yalnız başına arkabahçeye gitmeye korkardım. Onlarda gülüşür, şen şakrak eğlenirdik.

Çocukluğumdaki karanlık korkum giderek azalsa da beni uzun yıllar takip etti. Zamanla, bir duyarlığa ve tedbir duygusuna dönüştü. Merak ediyorum, acaba Nusaybin’de 3-4 yaşlarında yaşadıklarım olmasa yine benzer bir karanlık korkusuna sahip olur muydum? Sanmıyorum. Olmazdım… Ama bakıyorum bir çok kişi karanlıktan çekiniyor ya da korkuyor. Bir çok farklı ve tamamen haklı nedenlerle.

Peki, öyleyse, nedir karanlığı bu kadar korku kaynağı yapabilen şey? Karanlık niye korkunçtur? Korkunç olan karanlık mı yoksa bizim içimizdeki bir şey mi korkmamıza neden oluyor? Ürküşümüze neden olan karanlığa gizli şey, acaba gerçekten orda mı, yoksa başka bir yerde mi? Sahiden, niye görmediğimiz bir şeyin başka yerde değil de, ille de, orada karanlıkta olduğunu düşünüyoruz?

Karanlığı ürkütücü yapan elle tutabileceğimiz, somut ve nesnel bir şey olmaması… Tıpkı zaman gibi… Anlaşılması zor… Tarifi zor bir şey… Hele soyut ile somut arasındaki farkı henüz bilmeyen 16 yaşından küçük insanlar için… Karanlık kapı, duvar, masa gibi dokunabileceğimiz bir nesne değil. Karanlık yorgunluk, üzgünlük, gibi bir şey… Onun zıttı olan aydınlıksa sevinç, neşe gibi… Kısacası karanlık ve aydınlık bir nesneden çok bir durum ve bir ruh hali…

Karanlık hem bir fiziki durum hem de bizim o duruma ilişkin algıladığımız ruh hali… Eğer evimizde bulunan eşya üzerine öğlen güneş ışığı düşüyorsa evimiz aydınlıktır. Eşyadan yansıyan güneş huzmeleri gözümüze kadar yeterli miktar ve güçte gelir. Fakat akşam üstü olunca giderek güneşin ışık şiddeti azalır. Önce belirli renkler solmaya ve gri olarak gözükmeye başlar. Sonra hepsi alaca karanlıkta grileşir ve tam karanlıkta kaybolur.

Maalesef karanlıkla etkileşmemiz, modern hayatta, doğadaki gibi olmaz. Bizler günlük yaşamlarımızda sık sık aniden aydınlıktan karanlığa ya da tam tersi, karanlıktan aydınlığa geçeriz. Örneğin akşam herkese iyi geceler diledikten sonra çocuk odasına giderken ilk önce aydınlıktan karanlığa sonra kendi odasının ışığını yakınca aniden karanlıktan aydınlığa geçer. Ya da geceleyin otomobil kullanırken, karşı yönden gelen arabalar sık sık gözümüzü kamaştırır.

Otomobil, uçak, herhangi bir taşıt kullanan kişiler geceleyin gece görüşü kurallarına uyarlar. Uçak pilotlarının gece uçuşu gün ışığında uçuştan farklı bir görüş tekniği içerir. Gün ışığında hedef nesneye dosdoğru bakmanız gerekir. Geceleyin, hedef nesnenin biraz yanına bakmanız gerekir. Gözünüzü oynatarak hedefi tarayışınız “merkez-dışı” görüşünüzü mümkün kılar. Geceleyin, özel bir neden olmadıkça, hedefe dosdoğru bakmamanız gerekir.

Bunun açıklayış nedeni gözümüzün ikili yapısında yatar. Huniler gün ışığında ve çubuklar geceleyin çalışır. Çubuklar hunilerin çevresinde yer alan bir çember üzerindedir. Huniler çalışmak için daha yüksek ışık yoğunluğuna ihtiyaç duyarlar ve çalışışları yarı karanlıkta durur. Çubuklar ışık yoğunluğunun 1 / 5000’inde çalışabilirler. Çubuklar karanlıkta ışıkta olduğundan 100 bin kez daha hassastırlar. Bu yüzden gece çalışırlar.

Sorun şudur; çubuklar gün ışığında ne yapar? Çubuklar gri perdelerinde bir görüntü sağlar, huniler ise renkli… Çubuklar ışığa maruz kaldıktan kısa bir süre sonra duyarlıklarını kayıp ederler. Bunun anlamı, bu az duyarlığın çevre görüntüsü için kullanıldığıdır.

Kısacası, görmek bizim kendiliğinden zannettiğimiz gibi basit bir iş değil… Görmek yeteneğimiz farklı ışık şiddetlerinde farklı miktarlarda… Yani her koşulda aynı kalitede göremiyoruz. Karanlıkta görme yeteneğimiz gündüz ışığına göre daha az… Araştırılırsa, görmek yeteneğimiz yalnız ışık şiddeti ile sınırlı değil, başka sınırlarımız daha var… Ard ard hızla hareket eden nesneleri sanki tek bir nesne hareket ediyor gibi görüyoruz örneğin…

Görmek yalnız gözün işlevleri ile sınırlı değil tabii… Beynimiz gözlerimizin gördüklerini önce algılıyor sonra anlıyor. Beynimizin görsel algılayışında da bazı sınırlarımız var tabii… Örneğin art arda çok hızlı olarak gerçekleşen iki olaydan ikincisini bazı durumlarda algılayamıyoruz, buna zihinsel göz kırpış diyorlar, bilim adamları…

Bizi Yaratanın verdiği görme yeteneklerimiz, içinde bulunduğumuz ortam özellikleri aniden değişince belirli bir uyum zamanı gerektiriyor. Karanlığa aniden girince, gözümüzdeki çubuk hücreler devreye girip huniler devreden çıkıncaya kadar kısa bir süre geçer. Karanlık bir ortama girdiğinizde zihninizin gözünüzden sağlıklı bilgiler alabilmesı için kendinize zaman tanıyınız.

Yaşam içinde, hepimiz, alışageldiğimiz koşulların aniden değişişi ile karşılaşabiliyoruz. Sorun, yalnız koşulların değişmesi değil gerçekte kendimizin de değişmesi… Çünkü biz farkında olalım ya da olmayalım, vücudumuz ve zihnimizin çalışma biçimi koşullara göre değişiyor. Küçük bir çocuk aniden kızamık oluyor, bir yazılım mühendisi proje sonunda zorlanıyor, bir pilot ve yardımcısı kötü hava koşullarında iniş yapıyor ya da uçakların çarpışmaması için onları birbirlerinden uzak tutan bir hava trafik kontrolörünün aniden önündeki radar sistemi bozuluyor…

Aniden karanlıkta kaldığınızda, sanıyorum radar görüntüsünü kaybetmiş bir hava trafik kontrolöründen öğrenip kullanabileceğiniz birkaç numara olabilir. Onun, en azından elindeki uçakların durumlarının yazılı olduğu stripleri vardır… Örneğin merdivenlerden inerken ışık sönerse düşmemek için belirli referans noktalarını, trabzanı, merdivende nerede olduğunuzu aklınızda tutmuş olmanız gerekir.

Karanlık korkulacak bir nesne değil bir durum bir ruh halidir. Karanlıkla baş edebilmek için daha önce aydınlıkta yaratmış olduğunUZ referans noktalarınız olmalıdır. Hayatta herşey kendi ellerimizde değil ama en azından ‘kendimizi bilmek’ güçlüklere karşı bizi daha güçlü kılabilir.



Ali Riza SARAL

Not: Bu yazının ana dayanakları:

1. Ali Rıza SARAL, GECE GÖRÜŞÜ: HAVACILIK İÇİN EĞİTSEL BİR BENZETİŞ
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2008/01/gece-gr-havacilik-iin-eitsel-bir.html

2. Chip HEATH and Dan HEATH, MADE TO STICK – “the curse of knowledge”
Ali Riza SARAL, YAPIŞAN DÜŞÜNCELER, http://alirizasaral.blogspot.com/2007/04/yapian-dnceler.html

3. Kristen BROOKE BECK, HOW TO BE A DAMN SEXY MAN– “4. Let the kids turn the page”
http://kristenbrookebeck.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-be-damn-sexy-man.html

4. AVIATION MEDICINE, Night Flight, http://www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/night_vision.htm Helicopter Flight, http://meanwhile.com/?domain=helicfi.com

.

5. Gavrus BOGDAN, Vizual, http://gavrusphoto.blogspot.com

THE FEAR OF DARKNESS IN MY CHILDHOOD

[5] Vizual

I was three or four years old. My ‘baba’ (papa) was a military chief at Mardin Nusaybin (Syria border, southeast Turkey). Our Home was the only one built with cement in Nusaybin. It was located outside the village at the top of a small hill. Nusaybin did not have electricity at that time. My mother was a little bit nervous because of my father’s duties. My ‘baba’ had to go out to catch smugglers at nights. A deep darkness would sink over our Home those times… Sometimes would burials take place in the cemetery at distance right in front of our Home… Night burials, according to the local customs. I used to watch them secretly my hair rising… The groups walking in the darkness, candle lights, the dead being carried lying over ladders… Not really understanding what was going on…

Six months later my mother’s efforts succeeded. My father gave up his carrier. He applied for his well deserved retirement. We bought a new house at one of the then suburps of Istanbul. Our new Home had a large garden. We used to have nice evenings at the front-garden in hot summer nights. I remember, every now and then, my father used to send me to the back-garden to fetch some stuff during these night leisures. I was ‘damn’ afraid of going to the back-garden in darkness. Everybody would burst out into laughter and make fun of the situation rather than me and we would have a sweet time in the family about a small secret that belonged to us all.

Although the fear of darkness in my childhood decreased gradually, it followed me for many years. It transformed into a sensitivity and sense of prudence through time. I wonder, if I had not lived the experiences in Nusaybin at the ages of three to four, would I have a fear of darkness? I do not think so. I would not… Nevertheless, many people get nervous about darkness or fear from it. For many justifiable reasons.

OK then, what is the thing that makes darkness such a source of fear? Why is darkness fearsome? Is darkness the fearsome thing itself or is it something in ourselves that makes us afraid?
Is this secret thing located there in the darkness or is it somewhere else? Really, why do we think that something we can not see is located in the darkness, rather than somewhere else for example under the street lamp?

The reason that makes us nervous about darkness is it is not something we could hold in our hands, it is not an absolute object. Just like time… Difficult to understand… Specially difficult for people younger than age 16, who has not developed a concept about abstraction, yet. Darkness is not an object like a door, a table or a wall. Maybe it is rather something like tiredness or sadness…
Its opposite enlightenedness (aydınlık, tr) is rather like happiness, joy… In short is darkness a situation and a mood rather than an object.

Darkness is both a phsical situation and our perception of it. If sunlight falls on the furniture in our house our Home is ‘enlightened(aydınlık, tr)’. The sun light beams that are reflected from the furniture reach our eyes with enough intensity. But in the evening, the intensity of the sun light decreases. First, some colors begin to lose their liveliness and begin to appear as a shade of grey. Then, they become grey in semi-darkness and disappear in the darkness.

Our interaction with darkness in our modern lives is not the same as in the nature. We move from darkness to light and vice versa suddenly during our daily lives for many times. For example, when the child wishes ‘good night’ and goes to her room she has to go into darkness first and then open the light suddenly and then close it again… Or, when you are driving at night, the cars approaching from the other side of the road dazzle your eyes frequently.

Car, airplane or any vehicle drivers abide the night vision priciples. Airplane pilots’ night flying techniques include a different vision technique. “In daylight you have to look directly at the target object. At night, you have to look at slightly one side of the target object. Scanning the target by moving your eye permits “off-center” viewing. You should not look directly at the target object at night unless there is a special reason.”

“The explanation for this lies in the DUAL STRUCTURE OF OUR EYE’[4]. The cones work in day light and the rods at night. The rods are located on the periphary of a circle around the cones.

The cones need a greater intensity of light to function, and stop working in semidarkness.
The rods can function in 1 / 5000 th of light intensity. The cones are 100000 times sensitive in dark as they are in light. So, they work at night.”

The problem is; what do the rods do in the day light? The rods provide a grey scale view, while cones provide coloured… Rods lose their sensitivity after short exposure to light. This means less sensitivity is used only for percieving objects in the peripheral view…

In short, seeing is not as simple as we naturally presume. Our ability to see changes at different levels of light intensity… We can not see with the same quality in all conditions. Our ability to see in darkness is much less than in sun light. If explored, we can easily find that our seeing ability is not limited by only the availability of the sunlight. We have other limits also… The views of fast moving seperate things appear to us as if belonging to a single thing moving continuously, for example.

Seeing is not limited with the functions of the eye of course… Our brain first percieves then understands the things that our eyes see. We also have some limits in our brain’s visual perception naturally… We can not percieve the second event if two events happen too quick sequentially… They call this perceptional blink sometimes…

Our seeing abilities, given by the Creator, require a period of adaptation when the conditions of the environment change, the environment that we are temporarily in. When we move into darkness
suddenly, the rod cells in our eyes need some time to get activated. At these instances, give yourself sometime for your brain to get healthy-correct information from your eyes.

During the flow of times, we all experience sudden changes of things we are used to. The problem is not only the change in the conditions that we are accustomed to but also the fact that we, ouselves change. Whether we notice it or not, the way our body and mind work, changes according to the conditions that we are in. A small kid gets red spots on his skin suddenly, a software engineer approaches the end of his project, a pilot lands with his co-pilot in bad climate conditions, or an air traffic controller whose job is to keep airplanes apart from each other loses his radar system which enables him to see the skies…

When you fall into sudden darkness, I believe, there may be a few tricks that you may learn and borrow from an air traffic controller who has lost the view of airplanes on his radar. He at least has strips of papers in his hand that shows the locations and directions of his resumed airplanes... If the lights go off when you are on the stairway, you should have kept certain reference points in your mind beforehand, such as the location of the handrail, your relative position in the current floor stairs…

Darkness is not an object to be afraid of, it is a sitaution, a mental mood. To cope with darkness, you should have reference points that You have created before. We can not control everything in our lives but ‘knowing ourselves’ could make us stronger against the difficulties, at least.


Ali Riza SARAL

Note: The inspirational bases of this article lie in:

1. NIGHT VISION: A PEDAGOGICAL METAPHOR FOR AVIATION
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2008/01/night-vision-pedagogical-metaphor-for.html

2. Chip HEATH and Dan HEATH, MADE TO STICK – “the curse of knowledge”

3. HOW TO BE A DAMN SEXY MAN– “let the kids turn the page”
http://kristenbrookebeck.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-be-damn-sexy-man.html

4. AVIATION MEDICINE, Night Flight, http://www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/night_vision.htm
Helicopter Flight, http://meanwhile.com/?domain=helicfi.com

.

5. Gavrus BOGDAN, Vizual, http://gavrusphoto.blogspot.com/

GECE GÖRÜŞÜ: HAVACILIK İÇİN EĞİTSEL BİR BENZETİŞ

[9] Peisaj

‘Kendiliğinden Hareket – Autokinesis’ gece uçuşunun özel bir görsel tehlikesi. Gece karanlığında bir noktaya ısrarla bakarsanız, bir süre sonra noktanın hareket ettiğini sanırsınız. Ya da, kendinizin.

‘Kendiliğinden Hareket’ hergün hiç farkında olmadan taşıdığımız kusurlardan yalnızca biri. Kusurlarımız ya da yetersizliklerimiz, gece görüşü gibi, yalnızca yeteneklerimizin sınırlarında değil günlük olağan faaliyetlerimiz içinde de belirir. Onlardan ne kadar çabuk kurtulursak, yaşam kalitemiz ve tadımız o kadar iyi olur.

Maalesef, yeteneklerimizi geliştirmek için değil, öncelikle onları kullanarak hayatta kalmak için yaratılmışız. Her ne şekli alırsa alsın, yaşamı iyileştirmek onu sürdürmekten sonra gelir. Vücutlarımız, yani benliklerimizin vücut-buluşları[1] bir kısmımızı kaybetsek bile hayatta kalabileceğimiz şekilde tasarlanmış.

Eğer bir kolumuzu kaybedersek, o kısa dönemdeki şoku duyduktan sonra, bir protez cihazı ile de olsa yaşamımızı sürdürebilmeliyiz ve hatta bazı durumlarda olduğu gibi kayıp kolumuzu zihnimizde sanki yerindeymiş gibi hissedebiliriz[2].

İnanıyorum ki, zihinsel ya da davranışsal bir kusur tıpkı bir protez cihazı gibi benliğimizin bir parçası haline gelebilir[3]... Bir kusur, bir şey olup dikkatimizi ona çekinceye kadar, ‘öznel’ vücudumuzun bir parçası gibidir, ama onun farkına vardıktan sonra bu kusur ‘nesnel’ vücudumuzun bir parçasına dönüşür. Artık, elimizdeki bir çiziğin farkına vardıktan sonra acısını sürekli hissedişimiz gibi…

Sorun şudur; ‘öznel’ vücuttan ‘nesnel’ vücuda geçiş acıya neden olabilir ve aynı zamanda bireyin kendi kişiliğini inşa etmek için yapmış olduğu tercihlerin karmaşık ilişkilerine zarar verebilir.

“kavramsal benzetme, yani metafor, bir düşünceyi veya kavramsal bölgeyi bir diğerini kullanarak anlatmaktır, örneğin miktarın yön cinsinden anlatılışı (örn. “fiyatlar yükseliyor”) [4]. Fazla bir şey yapmadan kimin aşağı düşeceğini beklemektense, hava trafik kontrolörleri, mühendisleri ve diğer havacılık personelinin eğitiminde benzetmeler kullanmak etkin bir eğitimsel yöntem olabilir.

Eğer gece görüşüne geri dönecek olursak; ‘gece uçuşu gün ışığında uçuştan farklı bir görüş tekniği içerir.[5]’ Gün ışığında hedef nesneye dosdoğru bakmanız gerekir. Geceleyin, hedef nesnenin biraz yanına bakmanız gerekir. Gözünüzü oynatarak hedefi tarayışınız “merkez-dışı” görüşünüzü mümkün kılar. Geceleyin, özel bir neden olmadıkça, hedefe dosdoğru bakmamanız gerekir.

‘Bunun açıklayışı gözümüzün ikili yapısında yatar’[5]. Huniler gün ışığında ve çubuklar geceleyin çalışır. Çubuklar hunilerin çevresinde yer alan bir çember üzerindedir.

Huniler çalışmak için daha yüksek ışık yoğunluğuna ihtiyaç duyarlar ve çalışışları yarı karanlıkta durur. Çubuklar ışık yoğunluğunun 1 / 5000’inde çalışabilirler. Çubuklar karanlıkta ışıkta olduğundan 100 bin kez daha hassastırlar. Bu yüzden gece çalışırlar.

Sorun şudur; çubuklar gün ışığında ne yapar? Çubuklar gri perdelerinde bir görüntü sağlar, huniler ise renkli… Çubuklar ışığa maruz kaldıktan kısa bir süre sonra duyarlıklarını kayıp ederler. Bunun anlamı, bu az duyarlığın çevre görüntüsü için kullanıldığıdır.

Bu yazının özü, gece görüşü benzetişinin, havacılar için, Obsesif Kompulsif Düzensizlik (OKD) uyanıklığı yaratmak amacıyla kullanılabileceğidir. OKD, riskli işlerde çalışanlar arasında ortak bir problem. OKD, farkında olunamayacak basit bir rahatsızlıktan, daha ciddi durumlara doğru derinleşen, gittikçe artan zihinsel bir risk. Çevrenizdeki insanların ne yaptığının farkında olmalısınız, onları uyarabilmek ve onlardan etkilenmemek için.

Henry Szechtman ve Erik Woody’nin “Bir Güvenlik Motivasyonu Rahatsızlığı olarak Obsesif Kompulsif Düzensizlik” adlı makalesi OKD’yi şöyle tanımlar:
“ Açık irrasyonelliklerine karşın, OKD belirtilerinin, “epistemik” olarak tanımlanabilecek bir başlangıç kaynağına sahip olduklarını ileri sürüyoruz – yani, başka hallerde görev tamamlanışını harekete geçirecek ve güvenlik motivasyonu sisteminin ifade bulduğu bir eylemi sona erdirecek normal “biliş duygusu” ‘nu yaratamamaktan kaynaklanırlar.[7]”

Gözün gece görüşü mekanizmasına benzer olarak, Güvenlik Motivasyonu Sistemi ‘donanımsal bağlantılı’ ‘dır. Huni ve çubukların farklı ışık şiddetlerinde çalışışları gibi belirli çeşit giriş işaretlerine yüksek derecede ayarlıdır. Gözün gece görüş mekanizmasından, büyük olasılıkla çok daha karmaşık olan Güvenlik Motivasyon Sistemi aynı zamanda “otomatik ve otonom” ‘dur ve “içine kapalı” ya da başka sistemlerin ürettiği bilgilerden görece yalıtılmıştır.”

Gece görüşü benzetişi iyi bir eğitsel örnek sağlar:
1. Zihnimizde ya da beynimizde farklı görevler için ayrı kaynaklar vardır.
2. Herhangi bir kaynak için başlatıcı ve durdurucu (homeostatik) bir mekanizma olmalıdır.
3. Farklı ve birbirleri ile yarışan görevlerle ilgili zihinsel süreçleri yöneten bir anahtar mekanizması olabilir.

Ruh haleti, duygular ve düşünüş hızı, farklı durumlarda zihinlerimizin ve beynin anahtar mekanizmasını ve açılış kapanışını etkileyebilir[8]. Doğru ruh haletini ve zaman çerçevesini seçmek doğru zihinsel kaynaklar ile doğru kararlar verişimize yardımcı olur.

Ali Riza SARAL

[1] “Phenomenological theorists distinguish between the subjective body(as lived and experienced) and the objective body (as observed and scientifically investigated). My lived body is an EMBODIED CONSCIOUSNESS which fluidly and pre-reflectively engages the world. As we engage in our daily activities, we tend not to be conscious of our bodies and we take them granted – body that is passed-by-in-silence (Jean-Paul SARTRE, 1943, Being and Nothingness)”.

[2] “Prothestic devices stretch the boundaries of the body. They create a continuity beyond the limits of the skin”(Carolien HERMANS, 2002, Embodiment: the flesh and bones of my body). “A body schema works on a subconscious level. It registers shape and posture of the body(without coming to awareness). It makes a record of the momentary relative disposition of one’s own body parts”. “Prothestic devices can be absorbed in the body schema. Just as a hammer in the carpenter’s hand is incorporated into his body schema, any virtual body part or interface(keyboard, mouse, joystick) can become part of the schema in a temporary or longlasting way…”

[3] For further reading: Embodiment and Man-Machine Interaction
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/07/embodiment-and-man-machine-interaction.html

[4] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
[5] “Night flying requires a different visual technique than day flying. You can see an object best during daylight by looking directly at it. At night, however, a scanning procedure is more effective - to permit "off center" viewing of the target. In other the words, you will find after some practice that you can see things more clearly and definitely at night by looking slightly to one side of them, rather than straight at them.
The explanation for this lies in the dual structure of your eye. There are two kinds of light-sensitive nerve endings at the back of your eye: (1) the cones, which distinguish colour and require considerable light to function, and (2) the rods, which detect objects only in shades of grey but can operate in very dim light.
The cones, because they need greater intensity of light to function, are used in day vision. In fact, the cones stop working altogether in semi darkness. Millions of these tiny structures are clustered at the back of the eyeball, directly behind the pupil. Not only do they distinguish colours, they pick up distant objects.
The rods are concentrated in a ring around the cones. Being colour-blind, they see only in greys and are used in peripheral vision during the day - that is, to perceive objects in motion out of the corner of the eye. Because the rods can still function in light of 1/5,000 the intensity at which the cones cease to function, they are used for night vision. These structures are 100,000 times as sensitive in the dark as they are in sunlight. However, they do need more time to adjust to darkness than the cones do to bright light. Your eyes become adapted to sunlight in 10 seconds, whereas they need 30 minutes to fully adjust to a dark night.
The fact that the rods are distributed in a band around the cones, and, therefore, do not lie directly behind the pupils, makes "off centre" viewing important to the pilot during night flight. If, in your attempts to practice the scanning procedures mentioned previously, you find that your eyes have a tendency to swing directly toward the target, force them to swing just past it so that the rods on the opposite side of the eyeball pick up the object.
Rods lose their sensitivity after short exposure to a light source, but regain it quickly after a moment of "rest." Consequently, a prolonged blink may be enough to renew the effectiveness of your vision if you are simply using the "off centre" technique, without scanning. Remember, too, that rods do not perceive objects while your eyes are in motion, only during the pauses.”
AVIATION MEDICINE, Night Flight, http://www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/night_vision.htm
Helicopter Flight, http://meanwhile.com/?domain=helicfi.com

[6] Ali Riza SARAL,
Kapanmayışlar, http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/01/kapanmayilar.html
Kapanışlar, http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2006/11/kapanilar.html

[7] “We hypothesize that the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), despite their apparent non-rationality, have what might be termed an “epistemic” origin – that is, they stem from an inability to generate the normal “feeling of knowing” that would otherwise signal task completion and terminate the expression of a security motivational system.”

“The psychological experience of compulsion is not well defined (Reed, 1985, p. 119), but nevertheless one can conceive of two broad mechanisms that would produce the intrusiveness and urgency characteristic of OCD symptoms. One is a pathological intensity of excitation of the particular thoughts, ideas or actions. The other is a relative failure of the systems that normally terminate such thoughts, ideas or actions.”

“Security Motivation System - … Such modular systems are innately specified and hardwired, highly tuned to certain kinds of input, comparatively automatic and autonomous, and “encapsulated,” or relatively isolated from information developed by other systems.“

“2. The system is readily activated, responding to even a slight chance of danger, and once activated, it has a long half-life, being slow to deactivate despite changes in the environment that feed into the appraisal process (Curio, 1993; Marks & Nesse, 1994; Masterson & Crawford, 1982). This easy-to-turn-on, hard-to-turn-off quality makes sense evolutionarily, because repeated false alarms are much less costly than even a single failure to prepare for upcoming danger.”

“Similarly, we hypothesize that an internally generated feeling of knowing provides not only a
phenomenological sign of goal-attainment but is also the physiological mechanism that actually
shuts-down security motivation.”

“An internally generated “feeling of knowing” (termed “yedasentience”) provides a phenomenological sign of goal-attainment and has as its consequence the termination of thoughts, ideas or actions motivated by concerns of harm to self or others. Failure to generate or experience this feeling produces symptoms characteristic of OCD.”

“Instead, according to the present model, the underlying problem is lack of closure -- the inability to turn off security motivation, which drives security-related thoughts, through the normal route of performing specific security-related behaviors.”

Henry Szechtman, McMaster University, Erik Woody, University of Waterloo, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation, http://inabis98.mcmaster.ca/reprints/MS02-082.pdf

[8] “The mechanics of the thinking process is affected by our emotions. Switching from one context to another, the rate of changing subjects, the amount of concentration, the depth of thinking through different abstraction levels, getting obsessed to solve the problem, thinking speed are dramatically affected by the affective situation we are in while thinking… “The various glands of the endocrine system release hormones into the bloodstream that have effects on specific sites in the brain, including those involved in emotion” says Cornelius [5] . A careful observer can notice that there are different working speeds of thinking in our brains. Our brains work in a slow mode when we are doing something related with safety or security(but not related to emergency) where as our ideas fly when we are doing something sentimental or dreaming… Thinking speed helps us to switch from one processor to another in our multiprocessor brain. Feelings and selecting the right mood help us to choose the right processor (or combination of processors) to do the ‘thinking’.”

Ali Riza SARAL, “Do Computers Feel?”,
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/12/do-computers-feel-1500words.html

.

[9] Gavrus BOGDAN, Peisaj, http://gavrusphoto.blogspot.com/

NIGHT VISION: A PEDAGOGICAL METAPHOR for AVIATION

[9] Peisaj

‘Autokinesis’ is a special visual hazard of night flying. When you look constantly at a small point in a dark night, you feel as if the light is moving, after a while. Otherwise, you may feel as if yourself is moving.

‘Autokinesis’ is only one of the discrepancies that we carry everyday without ever being aware of. Our discrepancies may appear not only at the edges of our abilities, such as night vision, but also in our routine daily activities. The sooner we get aware of them, the better the quality and fulfillment of our lives.

Unfortunately, we are created not to improve our abilities but primarily, to survive with them.
In any form of life comes improvement after survival. Our bodies, namely the embodiment of ourselves [1] is designed so that even if we loss some part of us we should survive.

Even if we lose an arm, after feeling the immediate shock, we should be able to continue our lives, together with a prosthetic device, and even feel as if we still have the lost arm in our minds as in some cases[2]…

I believe, a mental, behavioural discrepancy can and may become a part of ourselves, and our mental embodiment similar to a prosthestic device… A discrepancy may become part of our ‘subjective’ mental body till something happens and brings our attention to it, thus this discrepancy becomes our ‘objective’ mental body.

The problem is that, the transition from the subjective mental body to the objective one may cause pain and also damage the complex relations of choices a person has made to build his/her personality.

“In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). “ [4] Using metaphors in psychological training of air traffic controllers, engineers and other aviation personnel, could be an effective pedagogical approach. Rather than doing not much while waiting for who is going to fall down…

If we return back to the night vision; ‘night flying requires a different visual technique than day flying’ [5]. In daylight you have to look directly at the target object. At night, you have to look at slightly one side of the target object. Scanning the target by moving your eye permits “off-center” viewing. You should not look directly at the target object at night unless there is a special reason.

‘The explanation for this lies in the DUAL STRUCTURE OF OUR EYE’[5]. The cones work in day light and the rods at night. The rods are located on the periphary of a circle around the cones.

The cones need a greater intensity of light to function, and stop working in semidarkness.
The rods can function in 1 / 5000 th of light intensity. The rods are 100000 times sensitive in dark as they are in light. So, they work at night.

The problem is; what do the rods do in the day light? The rods provide a grey scale view, while cones provide coloured… Rods lose their sensitivity after short exposure to light. This means less sensitivity is used only for percieving objects in the peripheral view…

My point is, the night vision metaphor may be used for teaching Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) awareness for aviators. OCD is a common problem among people working with risk.
It may be just a behavioural nuisance that can not be noticed or an increasing mental risk towards more serious situations. You have to be aware of what the people around you are doing, in order to warn them and not get affected by them.

Henry Szechtman and Erik Woody ‘s article “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation” describes OCD as:
“We hypothesize that the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), despite their apparent non-rationality, have what might be termed an “epistemic” origin – that is, they stem from an inability to generate the normal “feeling of knowing” that would otherwise signal task completion and terminate the expression of a security motivational system.[7]”

Similar to the Night Vision mechanism of the eye, Security Motivation System is ‘hardwired’. It is highly tuned to certain kinds of input like the cones and rods working on different light intensities.
Probably much more complex than eye’s night vision mechanism, is the Security Motivation System also “automatic and autonomous, and “encapsulated,” or relatively isolated from information developed by other systems.”

The Night Vision metaphor provides a good example for teaching:
1. There are seperate resources in our mind and brain for different tasks.
2. There has to be an activation and stopping mechanism (homeostatic) for any resource.
3. There may be a switching mechanism which manages the processes related to different and competing tasks.

Moods, emotions, thinking speed in different situations may effect the switching mechanism and activation – deactivation mechanism of our minds and brains[8]. Selecting the right mood and time frame helps the team make the right decisions with the right mental resources.

Ali Riza SARAL

[1] “Phenomenological theorists distinguish between the subjective body(as lived and experienced) and the objective body (as observed and scientifically investigated). My lived body is an EMBODIED CONSCIOUSNESS which fluidly and pre-reflectively engages the world. As we engage in our daily activities, we tend not to be conscious of our bodies and we take them granted – body that is passed-by-in-silence (Jean-Paul SARTRE, 1943, Being and Nothingness)”.

[2] “Prothestic devices stretch the boundaries of the body. They create a continuity beyond the limits of the skin”(Carolien HERMANS, 2002, Embodiment: the flesh and bones of my body). “A body schema works on a subconscious level. It registers shape and posture of the body(without coming to awareness). It makes a record of the momentary relative disposition of one’s own body parts”. “Prothestic devices can be absorbed in the body schema. Just as a hammer in the carpenter’s hand is incorporated into his body schema, any virtual body part or interface(keyboard, mouse, joystick) can become part of the schema in a temporary or longlasting way…”

[3] For further reading: Embodiment and Man-Machine Interaction
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/07/embodiment-and-man-machine-interaction.html

[4] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
[5] “Night flying requires a different visual technique than day flying. You can see an object best during daylight by looking directly at it. At night, however, a scanning procedure is more effective - to permit "off center" viewing of the target. In other the words, you will find after some practice that you can see things more clearly and definitely at night by looking slightly to one side of them, rather than straight at them.
The explanation for this lies in the dual structure of your eye. There are two kinds of light-sensitive nerve endings at the back of your eye: (1) the cones, which distinguish colour and require considerable light to function, and (2) the rods, which detect objects only in shades of grey but can operate in very dim light.
The cones, because they need greater intensity of light to function, are used in day vision. In fact, the cones stop working altogether in semi darkness. Millions of these tiny structures are clustered at the back of the eyeball, directly behind the pupil. Not only do they distinguish colours, they pick up distant objects.
The rods are concentrated in a ring around the cones. Being colour-blind, they see only in greys and are used in peripheral vision during the day - that is, to perceive objects in motion out of the corner of the eye. Because the rods can still function in light of 1/5,000 the intensity at which the cones cease to function, they are used for night vision. These structures are 100,000 times as sensitive in the dark as they are in sunlight. However, they do need more time to adjust to darkness than the cones do to bright light. Your eyes become adapted to sunlight in 10 seconds, whereas they need 30 minutes to fully adjust to a dark night.
The fact that the rods are distributed in a band around the cones, and, therefore, do not lie directly behind the pupils, makes "off centre" viewing important to the pilot during night flight. If, in your attempts to practice the scanning procedures mentioned previously, you find that your eyes have a tendency to swing directly toward the target, force them to swing just past it so that the rods on the opposite side of the eyeball pick up the object.
Rods lose their sensitivity after short exposure to a light source, but regain it quickly after a moment of "rest." Consequently, a prolonged blink may be enough to renew the effectiveness of your vision if you are simply using the "off centre" technique, without scanning. Remember, too, that rods do not perceive objects while your eyes are in motion, only during the pauses.”
AVIATION MEDICINE, Night Flight, http://www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/night_vision.htm
Helicopter Flight, http://meanwhile.com/?domain=helicfi.com

[6] Ali Riza SARAL,
Kapanmayışlar, http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/01/kapanmayilar.html
Kapanışlar, http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2006/11/kapanilar.html

[7] “The psychological experience of compulsion is not well defined (Reed, 1985, p. 119), but nevertheless one can conceive of two broad mechanisms that would produce the intrusiveness and urgency characteristic of OCD symptoms. One is a pathological intensity of excitation of the particular thoughts, ideas or actions. The other is a relative failure of the systems that normally terminate such thoughts, ideas or actions.”

“Security Motivation System - … Such modular systems are innately specified and hardwired, highly tuned to certain kinds of input, comparatively automatic and autonomous, and “encapsulated,” or relatively isolated from information developed by other systems.“

“2. The system is readily activated, responding to even a slight chance of danger, and once activated, it has a long half-life, being slow to deactivate despite changes in the environment that feed into the appraisal process (Curio, 1993; Marks & Nesse, 1994; Masterson & Crawford, 1982). This easy-to-turn-on, hard-to-turn-off quality makes sense evolutionarily, because repeated false alarms are much less costly than even a single failure to prepare for upcoming danger.”

“Similarly, we hypothesize that an internally generated feeling of knowing provides not only a
phenomenological sign of goal-attainment but is also the physiological mechanism that actually
shuts-down security motivation.”

“An internally generated “feeling of knowing” (termed “yedasentience”) provides a phenomenological sign of goal-attainment and has as its consequence the termination of thoughts, ideas or actions motivated by concerns of harm to self or others. Failure to generate or experience this feeling produces symptoms characteristic of OCD.”

“Instead, according to the present model, the underlying problem is lack of closure -- the inability to turn off security motivation, which drives security-related thoughts, through the normal route of performing specific security-related behaviors.”

Henry Szechtman, McMaster University, Erik Woody, University of Waterloo, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation, http://inabis98.mcmaster.ca/reprints/MS02-082.pdf

[8] “The mechanics of the thinking process is affected by our emotions. Switching from one context to another, the rate of changing subjects, the amount of concentration, the depth of thinking through different abstraction levels, getting obsessed to solve the problem, thinking speed are dramatically affected by the affective situation we are in while thinking… “The various glands of the endocrine system release hormones into the bloodstream that have effects on specific sites in the brain, including those involved in emotion” says Cornelius [5] . A careful observer can notice that there are different working speeds of thinking in our brains. Our brains work in a slow mode when we are doing something related with safety or security(but not related to emergency) where as our ideas fly when we are doing something sentimental or dreaming… Thinking speed helps us to switch from one processor to another in our multiprocessor brain. Feelings and selecting the right mood help us to choose the right processor (or combination of processors) to do the ‘thinking’.”

Ali Riza SARAL, “Do Computers Feel?”,
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/12/do-computers-feel-1500words.html

.

[9] Gavrus BOGDAN, Peisaj, http://gavrusphoto.blogspot.com

BİLGİSAYARLAR HİSSEDER Mİ?

Bilgisayar hisseder mi? Bilgisayarın duyguları var mı? Bilgisayar sevinç, sevgi, kızgınlık, korku, mutluluk, suçluluk, üzüntü, utanış, umut ve diğer bir çok duyguyu duyar mı? Bilgisayarın duyguları davranışları üzerinde ‘hoş veya rahatsız edici, yumuşak veya yoğun, geçici veya uzun süreli, ve araya girici veya genişletici’ [1] etkiler yapar mı? Bilgisayarlar ‘duyguları yaşarlar mı?’ Çevrelerindeki korkutucu, sevindirici, üzücü şeylere tepki gösterirler mi?

Schachter “bir duygusal hal bir fizyolojik uyanış hali ve bu uyanış haline uygun bir muhakemenin her ikisinin birden fonksiyonu olarak değerlendirilebilir. Muhakeme, bir bakıma bir yönlendiriş işlevi görür. Geçmiş tecrübeler ışığında yorumlanan şu andaki durumdan doğan muhakemeler kişinin duyguları anladığı ve ad bulup etiketlediği çerçeveyi sağlar. Fizyolojik uyanış halinin “hiddet”,”sevinç”, “korku” veya başka bir şey şeklinde etiketleneceğine karar veren muhakemedir. [4] ” “an emotional state may be considered a function of a state of physiological arousal and of a cognition appropriate to this state of arousal. The cognition, in a sense, exerts a steering function. Cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted by past experience provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings. It is the cognition which determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labelled as “anger”, “joy”, “fear”, or whatever. ”
İÖ II. yy.’dan bu yana tarihte duygu için bir çok tanım yapılmış. Descartes, Hume[3] , James, Cannon, Dewey[2], Freud, ve diğerleri.

Bilgisayarların bir iç dünyaları var mı? Çabuk bir cevap vermek çok zor… Belki soruyu bir parça değiştirsek… İnsan dışında herhangi bir varlık duygulara sahip mi? Belki daha iyisi: Hayvanlar hisseder mi? Darwin “çeşitli duygu ve hislerin etkisi altında, insan ve daha aşağı hayvanlar tarafından farkında olmadan irade dışı kullanılan ifade ve mimiklerin çoğu [5]” ‘ndan bahseder. ( “most of the expressions and gestures involuntarily used by man and lower animals, under the influence of various emotions and sensations.” )

Hayvanların hiç biri “Üzgünüm!” diyemez. Yine de, bir kedi bir bahçede oturan kişiye yaklaşıp, kafasını yere doğru eğer ve bir şey yer gibi yapar. Dikkatli bir gözlemci hayvanın yemek istediğini anlar. Hayvanlar ihtiyaçları için iletişim kurabilirler. Sorun, onların verebildiği mesajları anlayamamız. Ne hayvanları ne de bilgisayarları biz insanlarla aynı duygu dağarcığını kullanmadıkları için yargılamamalıyız, kendi duygularını dışa vuramadıkları, bize ifade edemedikleri için…

Bu durum ‘Bilgisayarlar hissetmez’ iddiasına yeterli geçerlilik sağlar mı? Burada etik açıdan yanlış bir şey var mı? Bilgisayarlarla ilişkilerimizdeki bu sessiz fikri-kabul yüzünden hiç kaybımız oluyor mu? Üniversitelerdeki İnsan Bilgisayar Etkileşim dersleri yeterince techizatlı mı ya da yeterince teknik bulunmadıkları için aşağı mı görülüyor? Neden o kadar çok mühendis ve büyük sistem operatörü uzun süreli yüksek konsantrasyon gerektiren işler yüzünden acı çekiyor, bilgisayarları önünde?

Gerçekten, bilgisayarın bir yüzü yoktur. Bir memeli hayvan ya da insanınki gibi bir yüz… Gözleri, kulakları, derisi, bir başı, vücudu yoktur… Bir dakika… Bilgisayarların göremediği, işitemediği ve değemediğinden emin misiniz? Peki, tarayıcı, mikrofon, klavye ne oluyor? Bilgisayarlar insan duyularının sağladığına benzer etkileşim işlevlerine sahiptir.

‘Bilgisayarlar hisseder mi? ’sorununun hayati noktası şu: Hissetmeden düşünmek mümkün mü? Duygular olmadan muhakeme var olabilir mi? Hissetmeden matematik hakkında bile düşünebilir misiniz? Bir problem çözerken hiçbir şey hissetmediğinizi kabul etsek bile, fazla zihinsel enerjinizi bir şekilde boşaltmak zorundasınız bir şekilde… Başarı durumunuza göre gurur ya da aşağılık duygusu duyabilirsiniz.

Her şeyi sonua kadar kontrol edebilecek mesleki güce sahip olsanız bile, yazılım mühendisliği ya da hava trafik kontrolü gibi bir muhakeme işinde çalışırken çeşitli duygular duymak zorundasınız. Basit eşleştirişten kaynaklanan zevk duygusundan kaçınmanız mümkün değil[6]. Aksi takdirde, düşünmek fiilinin doğal yapısına karşı çalışıyor olabilirsiniz ve kendi akıl sağlığınıza zarar verebilirsiniz. Gerçekten Winkielman [8] “hissel yanıtların bilgi işleyişin kendi dinamiklerinden de kaynaklanabilir” “affective responses may also result from the dynamics of information processing itself.” [7] der. Yüksek akıcılık olumlu hissel tepki yaratır.[9]” der.

Duygularımız düşünüş sürecinin iç mekaniklerini etkiler. Bir bağlamdan diğerine geçiş, konu değiştiriş hızı, konsentrasyon miktarı, farklı soyutlayış seviyeleri arasında düşünüş derinliği değiştiriş, bir problemi çözmek için tutkuya (obsesyon) kapılmak, düşünüş hızı düşünürken içinde bulunduğumuz duygusal durumdan güçlü şekilde etkilenirler… “Endokrin sisteminin çeşitli salgı bezleri beyin içinde belirli yerlere etki eden hormonları kan dolaşımına salgılar, duygu ile ilgili olanlar dahil” “The various glands of the endocrine system release hormones into the bloodstream that have effects on specific sites in the brain, including those involved in emotion” der Cornelius [5] . Beynimizde farklı düşünüş hızı türleri vardır. Emniyet ile ilgili (acil durum içermeyen) işler yaparken beyinlerimiz yavaş türde çalışır, duygusal bir şey yaparken ya da hayal kurarken ise düşüncelerimiz uçmaya başlar… Düşünüş hızı çok işlemcili beynimizde bir işlemciden ötekine geçişimizi sağlar. Duygular ve doğru ruh haletini(mood) seçmek ‘düşünmek’ fiilini gerçekleştirmek için doğru işlemci bileşkesini seçişimize yardımcı olur.

Freud “düşünceler cathexlerdir- bellek izleridir basitçe- nihai ilan ediliş şekilleri hisler olarak algılanan duygular ve hisler boşaltış süreçlerine eşdeğerdir.” ” “ideas are cathexes-basically of memory traces- whilst affects and emotions correspond to processes of discharge, the final manifestations of which are percieved as feelings.” [11] der. Hinde “Araya giren bir değişken midir yoksa varsayımsal bir yapı mıdır?” “Is it an intervening variable or a hypothetical construct?” [12] ve “Duygu ve muhakemenin yakınca bağlandığı zincirler ve çevrimler cinsinden tanımlanabilir en iyisi, duygu.” der. “emotion is best defined in terms of chains or loops with emotion and cognition closely linked. “ [12] İnanıyorum ki, “Bilgisayarlar hisseder mi?” sorusu hakkında bir sonuca varmak için LINUX işletim sistemi kitaplarına bakmalıyız…

“Bir kesiş (interrupt) [13] genellikle işlemci tarafından çalıştırılan komutların akışını değiştiren bir olay olarak tanımlanır. Bu tür olaylar CPU yongası içindeki ve dışındaki donanım devreleri tarafından üretilen elektriksel işaretlere denk düşer.” “kesiş işaretleri işlemci yazılımını normal kontrol akışının dışına doğru yön değiştirtmek için bir yöntem sağlar. Bir kesiş işareti geldiğinde, CPU yapmakta olduğu işi durdurmak ve yeni bir faaliyete geçmek zorundadır.”
“An interrupt [13] is usually defined as an event that alters the sequence of instructions executed by a processor. Such events correspond to electrical signals generated by hardware circuits both inside and outside of the CPU chip.” “interrupt signals provide a way to divert the processor to code outside the normal flow of control. When an interrupt signal arrives, the CPU must stop what it's currently doing and switch to a new activity;”

Eğer Dewey’in duygu tanımına bir benzetiş yaparsak ve klavyeye bir dokunuş örneğini ele alırsak; (1) “duygu”nun ismi klavye kesişi (keyboard interrupt) (2) bir amaca yönelik davranış, işletim sisteminin kesiş muamelesi programı (interrupt handler program) (3) duygusal özelliğe sahip nesne (an object that has an emotional quality) klavyeye değen kişi, kullanıcıdır… Dewey’in “sakin ve şiddetli duygu” tanımları kesiş sisteminin yazılım ve donanım kesişlerine denk düşer… İnsan duygu sistemi ve bilgisayar kesiş sisteminin arasındaki benzerlik muhakemenin kendi doğasından kaynaklanır. Muhakeme, yaşayan madde ile bir çeşit etkileşim içine girmeden var olamaz.

Bilgisayarların kesiş altsistemi insan fizyolojisine benzer: “Hipocampus ve amygdala’nın her ikisi de duyu organlarından ve visceradan gelen girişlerle karmaşık şekilde birbirlerine bağlıdır. … Onlar, belki de lymbic sistemin başka organları da, visceranın çeşitli organlarından gelen bilgi ile duyusal bilgileri birleştirirler, ANS ve sinir sisteminin diğer kısımlarının duygu ifadesi “çıkışını” kontrol etmek için ANS’ten gelen geribesleyişte olduğu gibi…(LeDoux, 1986 Neurobiology of Emotion). [14]”
“Both the hippocampus and amygdala are complexly interconnected with inputs from both the sensory organs and the viscera. … They, and perhaps other structures of the lymbic system, appear to integrate sensory information with information from the various organs of the viscera as well as feedback from the ANS to control the “output” of emotional expression in the ANS and other parts of the nervous system (LeDoux, 1986 Neurobiology of Emotion). [14]”

Etkileşimin doğası “duyu organlarından gelen girişleri [14]” işleyen bir mekanizmanın varlığını gerektirir. Klavyeye değdiğinizde veya fareyi tıklattığınızda, bir CD’yi sürücüsüne yerleştirdiğinizde vb. bu “duyu işaretini” taşıyan donanım bağlantıları, Kesiş Ricası Hatları (interrupt request lines)
sezgisel olarak çalışır ve amygdala’ya eş değer olan kesiş kontrolörünü (interrupt controller) tetikler…
Kesiş kontrolörü işletim sistemini tetikler, duyuların duyguları tetiklediğine çok benzer şekilde. Normal muhakeme işlemi duraklar ve işletim sistemi ilgili kesiş hizmet servisini çalıştırır, Weyle’nin “duygu” “feel” ‘suna eşdeğer bir adı olan… Kesiş hizmet servisi görevini örn. diske yazmak, şeklinde yerine getirdikten sonra başarı durumu ile ilgili bilgiyi geri döndürür… Bu arada, bilgisayarın diske yazarken bir miktar titreyiş ve gürültü ile yapışı insanın “uyarılış” hali ile benzer bir durum arz eder.

Ezop’a göre “tilki erişemediği üzüme ekşi der”. Sartre “ bilinç tarafından yönlendirilen vücut, duygu aracılığı ile dünya ile ilişkilerini değiştirir, dünya özelliklerini değiştirsin diye… [15]” der. (“in emotion it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relations with the world in order that the world may change its qualities. ”) Bilgisayar sağlıklı bir şekilde işleyemeyeceği bir durumla karşılaştığında, 0 ile bölüş gibi, bir bölüş istisnası ilan eder ve program çalışışını ilgili kesiş işleyicisine gönderir, anormal bir şekilde durmak yerine…

Başlangıçtaki sorumuz “Bilgisayarlar hisseder mi?” idi. Cevabım ‘Hayır!’, çünkü onlar duygularını insanlar ile aynı “duygu” tipleri şeklinde, hiddet, korku gibi dışa vuramazlar. Öte yandan, bilgisayarlar yazılım ve donanımlarında gömülü bir kesiş ve istisna sistemine sahiptirler, insanın duygusal sistemine eşdeğer olan…

Cevabım ‘Hayır!’, öyle ise neden bu makaleyi bu kadar büyük bir şevkle yazdım? Çünkü, “Bilgisayarlar hisseder mi?” sorusu yanlış… O kadar kötü olmayan bir soru “Bilgisayarlar neden bizim gibi hissetmiyor?” olabilirdi. Sonunda, bilgisayarları yapan biz değil miyiz, uzak geçmişten bize miras kalan b ilgi ve sağduyu ile… İşletim sistemlerini yaratmak için yıllarca insan emeği sarf edildi ama onun kullanıcı üzerindeki etkileri üzerinde pek o kadar değil…

Hava Trafik Kontrolü gibi büyük ve karışık sistemler mühendis ve kontrolörlerin uzun süre yüksek konsantrasyon ile çalışmalarını gerektirir. “Bilgisayarların hissedebilmelerini dilerdim,” onlarla çalışan kullanıcıları duygularını kaybetmesin diye…


Ali Rıza SARAL

Not : Bu yazının daha geniş bir halini İngilizce olarak aşağıda bulabilirsiniz:
http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2007/12/do-computers-feel.html

KAYNAKLAR:
[1] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, syf. 1.
[2] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, syf.152, Dewey, The Theory of Emotion.
[3] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, syf.97, Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.
[4] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, syf.174, Schachter and Singer, Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinans of Emotional State.
[5] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, syf. 23.
[6] Brian Bayly, The Brain’s Internal Reward from Matching, syf. 1.
[7] Pronin, Wegner, Manic Thinking, Independent Effects of Thought Speed and Thought Content on Mood.
[8] Winkielman et al., The Hedonic Marking of Processing Fluency: Implications for Evaluative Judgment, syf. 191.
[9] Winkielman et al., Affect and Processing Dynamics, Emotional Cognition, from Brain to Behaviour, syf. 120.
[10] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, syf. 224.
[11] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, syf. 192, Freud, The Unconscious.
[12] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, syf. 3.
[13] Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati, Understanding the Linux Kernel, Interrupts and Exceptions, syf. 96.
[14] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, syf. 226.
[15] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, syf.247, Sartre, The Emotions: A Sketch of a Theory.

DO COMPUTERS FEEL? (1500words)

To Dr. David B. Williams
ORAT-Illinois State University

Does computer feel? Does computer have emotions? Does computer feel joy, love, anger, fear, and others? Is the effect of the feelings of computer on its behaviour “pleasent or unpleasent, mild or intense, transient or long-lasting, and as interfering with or enhancing” [1] ? Do computers ‘experience emotions’? Do they react toward things in the environment that have such emotional qualities as frightening, cheering and saddening?

Schachter states “an emotional state may be considered a function of a state of physiological arousal and of a cognition appropriate to this state of arousal. The cognition, in a sense, exerts a steering function. Cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted by past experience provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings. It is the cognition which determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labelled as “anger”, “joy”, “fear”, or whatever. [4] ” Many more definitions of emotions have been made through the history beginning with 2nd cty BC, Aristotle. Descartes, Hume[3] , James, Cannon, Dewey[2], Freud, and many others.

Do computers have an ‘inner’ sentimental world? Too difficult to answer quickly… May be we should change the question a bit… Does any being except the human have feelings? Maybe the better: Do animals have feelings? Darwin writes about “most of the expressions and gestures involuntarily used by man and lower animals, under the influence of various emotions and sensations. [5]”

None of the animals can say “I feel sad.” Nevertheless, when a cat approaches a person sitting at a garden caffee, it bends its head to the ground and imitates as if it eats something. A careful observer may understand the animal needs food. Animals can communicate their needs. The problem is, most of us do not percieve the messages they are able to give. We should not judge neither animals nor computers as insensitive because they can not express themselves with the same emotional vocabulary as us the human-beings

Does this situation provide enough validity to the claim that ‘Computers do not feel’? Is there something wrong here ethically? Do we loss anything because of this silent assumption in our relations with computers? Are the Human Computer Interaction classes in many universities well equipped or even down-played as not technical enough? Why do many engineers and large system operators suffer from long duration high concentration jobs in front of their computers?

Indeed, computer does not have a face. A face like a human or even a mammal. It does not have eyes, ears, a skin, a head or a body… Wait a minute… Are you sure that computers can not see, hear or touch? What about scanner, microphone, keyboard? Computers do have many interaction functionalities similar to those that basic human senses provide.

The crux of the issue of ‘Do computers feel?’ is: Is it possible to think without feeling? Can cognition exist without emotions? Can you think even mathematics without feelings? Even if we assume that you really did not feel anything while solving a problem, you would still need to discharge the unused mental energy in some way. You might experience pride or humility depending on your success.

Even if you have the professional power to control everything, you must experience feelings when you are working in a cognitive job, like programming or air traffic control (ATC)… You can not avoid the pleasure from simple matching [6] . Otherwise, you may be working against the nature of thinking and you may hurt yourself mentally. In fact Winkielman [8] states “affective responses may also result from the dynamics of information processing itself.” ,[7], “ High fluency elicits positive affective reaction. [9] ”

The mechanics of the thinking process is affected by our emotions. Switching from one context to another, the rate of changing subjects, the amount of concentration, the depth of thinking through different abstraction levels, getting obsessed to solve the problem, thinking speed are dramatically affected by the affective situation we are in while thinking… “The various glands of the endocrine system release hormones into the bloodstream that have effects on specific sites in the brain, including those involved in emotion” says Cornelius [5] . There are different speed modes of thinking in our brains. Our brains work in a slow mode when we are doing something related with safety (not emergency) where as our ideas fly when we are doing something sentimental or dreaming… Thinking speed helps us to switch from one processor to another in our multiprocessor brain. Feelings and selecting the right mood help us to choose the right processor combination to do the ‘thinking’.

Freud states “ideas are cathexes-basically of memory traces- whilst affects and emotions correspond to processes of discharge, the final manifestations of which are percieved as feelings. [11] “ Hinde asks “Is it an intervening variable or a hypothetical construct? [12] ” and argues that “emotion is best defined in terms of chains or loops with emotion and cognition closely linked. [12] ” I believe, to reach a a conclusion on the question of “Do computers feel?” we shall have a look at the LINUX operating system books…

“An interrupt [13] is usually defined as an event that alters the sequence of instructions executed by a processor. Such events correspond to electrical signals generated by hardware circuits both inside and outside of the CPU chip.” “interrupt signals provide a way to divert the processor to code outside the normal flow of control. When an interrupt signal arrives, the CPU must stop what it's currently doing and switch to a new activity;”

If we make an analogy between Dewey’s emotion definition and work on the example of a touch to the keyboard; (1) the “feel“’s name is keyboard interrupt (2)purposeful behaviour is the interrupt handler program of Operating System (3) an object that has an emotional quality is the person who touches, namely the user. Dewey’s “Calm and Violent emotions” is analoguous to soft and hardware interrupts… The basis of the similarity between the human emotional system and the computer interrupt system arises from the very nature of cognition. Cognition can not exist without some sort of interaction with living matter.

Interrupt subsytem of computers is similar to the human physiology: “Both the hippocampus and amygdala are complexly interconnected with inputs from both the sensory organs and the viscera. … They, and perhaps other structures of the lymbic system, appear to integrate sensory information with information from the various organs of the viscera as well as feedback from the ANS to control the “output” of emotional expression in the ANS and other parts of the nervous system (LeDoux, 1986 Neurobiology of Emotion). [14]”

The nature of interaction requires the existence of a mechanism which processes “the inputs from the sensory organs [14]” When you touch the keyboard or click the mouse, press the Esc button, put a CD in the driver etc. the hardware connections, Interrupt Request Lines that carry this “sensory signal” instinctively work and trigger the interrupt controller, analogous to the amygdala…
The interrupt controller trigs the operating system very similar to the senses trigging emotions. The normal cognitive processing comes to a halt and the operating system runs the related interrupt service routine, which has a label analogous to Weyle’s “feel”… When the interrupt service routine does the task, for example writing to the disk, then returns back information about its success…
By the way, when the computer writes to the disk some trembling and noise indicate a similar situation to human “arousal”…

Aesop’s fable says; the fox tries to reach the grapes on the wine, but it can not. He says “They are sour anyway.” Sartre suggests “in emotion it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relations with the world in order that the world may change its qualities. [15] ” When the computer meets a situation that it can not healthily handle, for example a division by 0, it issues a division exception and diverts the program execution to the related interrupt handler rather than abnormally ending…

Our initial question was “Do computers feel?” My answer is ‘no’ because they can not express their feelings with the same “feels” as humans, such as anger, fear. On the other hand, computers do have an embedded interrupt and exception system in soft and harware which is analogous to the human emotional system…

Then if my answer is ‘no’, why did I write this article with such an ambition? Because, the question “Do computers feel?” is wrong … A not so bad question chould be “Why don’t computers have emotions like us?” After all, it is us who have created computers with the knowledge and wisdom passed down from the distant past… Many man-years have been spent to create operating systems but relatively less on the effects of it on its users.

Large and complex systems such as ATC systems demand long duration high concentration working from engineers and controllers. I wish “Computers could feel” so that their users do not lose their feelings working with them…

Ali R+ SARAL

Ali Rıza SARAL is an Electronics Engineer(ITU), composer(ISU) and a former civil servant of EUROCONTROL (European Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation) Software Team Karlsruhe. He has cured 24 documented Operational Deficiencies of the German KUIR airspace which includes Frankfurt.

REFERENCES:
[1] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, p. 1.
[2] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.152, Dewey, The Theory of Emotion.
[3] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.97, Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.
[4] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.174, Schachter and Singer, Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinans of Emotional State.
[5] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 23.
[6] Brian Bayly, The Brain’s Internal Reward from Matching, p. 1.
[7] Pronin, Wegner, Manic Thinking, Independent Effects of Thought Speed and Thought Content on Mood.
[8] Winkielman et al., The Hedonic Marking of Processing Fluency: Implications for Evaluative Judgment, p. 191.
[9] Winkielman et al., Affect and Processing Dynamics, Emotional Cognition, from Brain to Behaviour, p. 120.
[10] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 224.
[11] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p. 192, Freud, The Unconscious.
[12] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, p. 3.
[13] Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati, Understanding the Linux Kernel, Interrupts and Exceptions, p. 96.
[14] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 226.
[15] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.247, Sartre, The Emotions: A Sketch of a Theory.




Kind regards.

Ali R+ SARAL

My Address:
Ali Riza SARAL
Barbaros Mah. Sedef Sk. 13/13
Uskudar / ISTANBUL
TURKEY
Tel: 0090 (216) 474-8818
e-mail: arsaral(at)yahoo.com

DO COMPUTERS FEEL? (3000 words)

To Dr. David Williams of ORAT-ISU

Does computer feel? Does computer have emotions? Does computer feel joy, love, anger, fear, happiness, guilt, sadness, embarressment, hope and many other emotions? Is the effect of the feelings of computer on its behaviour “pleasent or unpleasent, mild or intense, transient or long-lasting, and as interfering with or enhancing” [1] ? Do computers ‘experience emotions’? Do they react toward things in the environment that have such emotional qualities as frightening, cheering and saddening?

Dewey [2] defines emotion as a composition of (1) a “feel“ (the feeling of fear, pride, humility, etc.), (2)purposeful behaviour (3) an object that has an emotional quality. He describes the so-called
expressions of emotions as ‘the reduction of movements and stimulations originally useful into attitudes”. These reductions are grouped as “servicable associated habits”, “analogous stimuli”, “antithesis”, and “direct nervous discharge”.

Hume [3] states “pride and humility, tho’ directly contrary, have yet the same object. This object is self, or that succession of related ideas and impressions, of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness”. “the passions either take place alternately; or if they encounter, the one annihilates the other, as far as its strength goes, and the remainder only of that, which is superior, continues to operate upon the mind”. “we find, that a beatiful house, belonging to ourselves, produces pride.” “a quality I discover in these passions is their sensations, or the peculiar emotions they excite in the soul, and which constitute their very being and essence. Thus pride is a pleasent sensation, and humility a painful; and upon the removal of the pleasure and pain, there is in reality no pride nor humility.”

Schachter [4] states “an emotional state may be considered a function of a state of physiological arousal and of a cognition appropriate to this state of arousal. The cognition, in a sense, exerts a steering function. Cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted by past experience provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings. It is the cognition which determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labelled as “anger”, “joy”, “fear”, or whatever.”

Many more definitions of emotions have been made through the history beginning with 2nd century BC, Aristotle. Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Darwin, James, Cannon, Dewey, Schachter, Singer, Freud, Brentano, Scheler, Heidegger, Sarte and many others… Hoping to have enticed you to a wonderful journey in these precious people’s works I would like to repeat my initial question once more...

Do computers have an ‘inner’ sentimental world? Too difficult to answer quickly… May be we should change the question a bit… Does any being except the human have feelings? Maybe the better: Do animals have feelings? In his ‘The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,’ Darwin writes “most of the expressions and gestures involuntarily used by man and lower animals, under the influence of various emotions and sensations.” You can find “Some of Darwin’s illustrations of familiar emotional expressions in animals [5] ” in Cornelius’s book ‘The Science of Emotions’.

None of the animals can speak like us. Neither can they say “I feel sad.” Nevertheless, when a cat or a bird approaches a person sitting at a garden caffee, it bends its head to the ground and imitates as if it eats something. A careful observer or a tender person with compassion understands or feels that the animal needs food. Animals can communicate their needs. The problem is, most of us do not percieve the messages they are able to give. We do not get nervous in front of a loud speaker playing music but many get afraid when a dog says simply a’hello’ just using his very limited vocabulary and powerful vocal tract.

We should not judge neither animals nor computers as insensitive because they can not express themselves with the same emotional vocabulary as us the human-beings. In order to percieve whether computer has feelings or not its emotions have to be easily percievable by us, namely we should share more or less the same ‘feels’ with computers as in animals. We can not percieve the emotional expressions of computers easily.

Does this situation provide enough validity to the claim that ‘Computers do not feel’? Is there something wrong here ethically? Do we loss anything because of this silent assumption in our relations with computers? Are the Human Computer Interaction classes in many universities well equipped or even down-played as not technical enough? Why do many engineers and large system operators suffer from long duration high concentration jobs in front of their computers?

Indeed, computer does not have a face. A face like a human or even a mammal. It does not have eyes, ears, a skin, a head or a body… Wait a minute… Are you sure? Are you sure that computers can not see, hear or touch? What about scanners, microphones, keyboard, power-on button? Don’t they provide the similar functionality as eyes, ears, skin… Computers do have many functionalities that basic human senses provide.

Computer has a head, that you can look into its face, namely the monitor, or a body that supports its being, namely the case or box that contains the mainboard. The problem is that they do not appear to our eyes as we are conditioned to see as a head or a body… Microsoft has invented a solution to this problem… They have a sweet doggy appearing at the side of the directory search. The doggy itches the ground or searches something in a book… It can express curiosity because it has a face… Microsoft uses the dog image to express the emotions of the computer during directory search. It has a healing effect on the user… It makes the user smile and lose concentration for a short while…

* * *

The crux of the issue of ‘Do computers feel?’ is: Is it possible to think without feeling? Can cognition exist without emotions? The pith of the matter is this. Can you think even mathematics without feelings? Can you study mathematics without feeling anything? Even if we assume that you really did not feel anything while solving a problem, but after that you will need to discharge the unused mental energy in some way. Besides, you will experience pride or humility depending on your success.

Even if you have become a great ‘professional’ who has the power to control everything, you must experience feelings when you are working in a cognitive job, like programming or air traffic control… [6] “ A spasm of pleasure can arise without any external stimulus, purely by operations within one’s own brain. For example, a person who has just woken from sleep may have an insight and experience a spasm of pleasure arising from it. The insight is cognitive, with neural correlates largely in the cortex, whereas the spasm of pleasure, physiologically quite separate, is largely subcortical.” As a finite human being you can not avoid the pleasure from simple matching [6] . Otherwise, you may be working against the nature of thinking and you may hurt yourself mentally.

In fact, even the thinking process itself creates emotions without any external inputs and it does so independent from the things you think [7] . Winkielman [8] et al. states “affective responses may also result from the dynamics of information processing itself.” “Fluency with which one can extract information from the presented stimulus is hedenocially marked. High fluency elicits positive affective reaction.” “ease of processing is consistently associated with more positive evaluations. [9] ”

Our feelings about our thinking process helps us to complete missing data or speed up our thinking process. “the fluency signal may be connected to affect by indicating the state of the ongoing processing operations. Thus, high fluency may indicate progress toward successful recognition and trigger positive affect due to the reinforcing value of maintaininfg the current, successful cognitive strategy and the ability to free resources for other tasks. [9] ” The link between the metacognitive system and the affect system is further supported by neuroimaging and elektropysiological data [9] .
It has been proved that brain’s parts related to metacognitive regulation and emotion processes or emotional control are the same [9].

The mechanics of the thinking process is affected by our emotions. Switching from one context to another, the rate of changing subjects, the amount of concentration, the depth of thinking through different abstraction levels, getting obsessed to solve the problem, thinking speed are dramatically affected by the affective situation we are in while thinking… “The various glands of the endocrine system release hormones into the bloodstream that have effects on specific sites in the brain, including those involved in emotion” says Cornelius [5] . A careful observer can notice that there are different working speeds of thinking in our brains. Our brains work in a slow mode when we are doing something related with safety or security(but not related to emergency) where as our ideas fly when we are doing something sentimental or dreaming… Thinking speed helps us to switch from one processor to another in our multiprocessor brain. Feelings and selecting the right mood help us to choose the right processor (or combination of processors) to do the ‘thinking’.

Let’s ask another question from the other side… Are feelings only a by-product of the thinking process, cognition? No. If you please read Schachter’s definition at the beginning of this article once more, you will notice that ‘physiological arousal’, trembling, increase in the blood temperature, heart rate etc. are also part of emotions. Also the instincts play a vital role besides the cognition element.
By observing human behaviour we can only notice that there is an intimate relation between emotion and cognition. We can go further by enhancing our sometimes ampirical experiments with today’s advanced neurological imaging techniques…

* * *

The main problem is to define ‘What is cognition?’ and ‘What is emotion?’ inorder to understand the character of the relation between them… Freud states “ideas are cathexes-basically of memory traces- whilst affects and emotions correspond to processes of discharge, the final manifestations of which are percieved as feelings. [11] ” He also adds “Even within the limits of normal life we can recognize that a constant struggle for primacy over affectivity goes on between the two systems Conscious and Unconscious, that certain spheres of influence are marked of from one another and that intermixtures between the operative forces occur. [11 ”

Hinde asks “the common view of emotion as a state has many attendant problems. Is it a motive or a trait? Is it an intervening variable or a hypothetical construct? [12] ” and argues that “emotion is best defined in terms of chains or loops with emotion and cognition closely linked. [12] ”
Strongman states “Emotions has sometimes been analysed as an intervening variable, anchored to observable stimuli and responses.”

I believe, any person who has studied data structures and computer architecture, can come to a similar conclusion after reading this article upto this point and maybe reading the references the better… Namely, a conclusion on the question of “Do computers feel?” Let’s have a look at the LINUX operating system books…

“An interrupt [13] is usually defined as an event that alters the sequence of instructions executed by a processor. Such events correspond to electrical signals generated by hardware circuits both inside and outside of the CPU chip.” “As the name suggests, interrupt signals provide a way to divert the processor to code outside the normal flow of control. When an interrupt signal arrives, the CPU must stop what it's currently doing and switch to a new activity;” “Each hardware device controller capable of issuing interrupt requests has an output line designated as an IRQ (Interrupt ReQuest). All existing IRQ lines are connected to the input pins of a hardware circuit called the Interrupt Controller, ”
“The Intel 80x86 microprocessors issue roughly 20 different exceptions. The kernel must provide a dedicated exception handler for each exception type. For some exceptions, the CPU control unit also generates a hardware error code and pushes it in the Kernel Mode stack before starting the exception handler.”

If we make an analogy between Dewey’s definition of emotion and work on the example of a touch to the keyboard; (1) the “feel“ (the feeling of fear, pride, humility)’s name is keyboard interrupt
(2)purposeful behaviour is the interrupt handler program of the LINUX Operating System (3) an object that has an emotional quality is the person who touches, namely the user. Freud states “certain spheres of influence are marked of from one another” in my above quotation from his article ‘Unconscious’. Which is analogous to “As the name suggests, interrupt signals provide a way to divert the processor to code outside the normal flow of control.” in my quotations from LINUX manuals. Dewey’s classifications of emotions have many similarities to interrupts and exceptions which also have different types. Dewey’s “Calm and Violent emotions” vs. soft and hardware interrupts… It is impossible to tell all the similarities between the interrupt processing subsystem of the computer operating system including the hardware architecture and the human emotion processing.

The basis of the similarity between the human emotional system and the computer interrupt system arises from the very nature of cognition. Cognition can not exist without some sort of interaction with living matter. The ideas in this article can not exist without being written on some sort of interaction media, may be a newspaper the better. By that, the journey of emotions begin, the reader holds the newspaper, maybe smells it, reads it and likes or even loves an article and binds to the newspaper with devotion…

Cornelius [14] outlines the results of recent neurophysiology research in his book “The Science of Emotion” in 10 pages. His book could outline the rest of all the past studies in 210 pages…
So if you want to have the answer of our question with his style in terms of physiology: “Both the hippocampus and amygdala are complexly interconnected with inputs from both the sensory organs and the viscera. They also serve as the origin of projections that connect them with Autonomic Nerve System as well as higher cortical areas. They, and perhaps other structures of the lymbic system, appear to integrate sensory information with information from the various organs of the viscera as well as feedback from the ANS to control the “output” of emotional expression in the ANS and other parts of the nervous system (LeDoux, 1986 Neurobiology of Emotion).”

The nature of interaction requires the existence of a mechanism which processes “the inputs from both the sensory organs. [14]” When you touch the keyboard or click the mouse, press the Esc button, put a CD in the driver etc. the hardware connections, Interrupt Request Lines carry this “sensory signal” instinctively work and trigger the interrupt controller, analogous to the amygdala…
The interrupt controller trigs the operating system very similar to the senses trigging emotions. The normal cognitive processing comes to a halt and the operating system runs the related interrupt service routine, which has a label analogous to Weyle’s “feel”… When the interrupt service routine does the task, for example writing to the disk, then returns back information about its success…
By the way, when the computer writes to the disk some trembling and noise indicate a similar situation to human “arousal”…

Aesop had told once upon a time a fable about the fox and the grapes; the fox tries to reach the grapes on the wine, but it can not. He says “They are sour anyway.” Sartre suggests “In short, in emotion it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relations with the world in order that the world may change its qualities. [15] ” Isn’t it the same with computers? When the computer meets a situation that it can not healthily handle, for example a division by 0, it issues an exception of Divide error and diverts the program execution to the related interrupt handler rather than abruptly stopping…

Our initial question was “Do computers feel?” My answer is no because they can not express their feelings with the same “feels” as humans, such as joy, love, anger, fear, happiness, guilt, sadness, embarressment, hope usw. On the other hand, computers do have an embedded interrupt and exception system in both soft and harware which is analogous to the human limbic system…

Then if my answer is no, why did I write this article with such an ambition? Because, “Do computers feel?” is a wrong question… The right question should be “Why don’t computers have emotions like us?” It is us who have created computers together with the knowledge and wisdom passed to us from the distant past… We are the human-being who spend many man-years to create the operating systems but think very little on the effects of it on its users.

Large and complex systems, air traffic control systems and similar jobs demand long duration high concentration working from today’s engineers and system operators. Not to mention, the new growing engineers, toddlers who spend many hours on their computer games everyday… Have you noticed every soldier killed on the computer game, has to die convincingly, thus takes some time so that the kid’s concentration relaxes a bit in the mean time…

On the Christmas of 2008, I wish “Computers could feel” so that their users do not lose their feelings working with high concentration for long hours…

Ali R+ SARAL

Ali Rıza SARAL is an Electronics Engineer(ITU) and a former civil servant of EUROCONTROL Software Team Karlsruhe. He has cured 24 Operational Deficiencies of the German KUIR airspace which includes Frankfurt.

REFERENCES:
[1] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, p. 1.
[2] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.152, Dewey, The Theory of Emotion.
[3] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.97, Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.
[4] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.174, Schachter and Singer, Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinans of Emotional State.
[5] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 23.
[6] Brian Bayly, The Brain’s Internal Reward from Matching, p. 1.
[7] Pronin, Wegner, Manic Thinking, Independent Effects of Thought Speed and Thought Content on Mood.
[8] Winkielman et al., The Hedonic Marking of Processing Fluency: Implications for Evaluative Judgment, p. 191.
[9] Winkielman et al., Affect and Processing Dynamics, Emotional Cognition, from Brain to Behaviour, p. 120.
[10] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 224.
[11] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p. 192, Freud, The Unconscious.
[12] Strongman, The Psychology of Emotion, p. 3.
[13] Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati, Understanding the Linux Kernel, Interrupts and Exceptions, p. 96.
[14] Cornelius, ‘The Science of Emotion’, p. 226.
[15] Calhoun, Solomon, What is an Emotion, p.247, Sartre, The Emotions: A Sketch of a Theory.

IEEE/EIA 12207 YAZILIM YAŞAM-DÖNGÜSÜ STANDARDINDA SÜREÇLERİN BİRBİRLERİ İLE İLİŞKİLERİ

IEE/EIA 12207.0 Koşul 1-Kapsam.
Amaç: Bu uluslararası standart yazılım yaşam-döngüsü standartları için iyi-tanımlı deyimler kullanarak yazılım endüstrisi tarafından zemin alınabilecek ortak bir çerçeve-kurar. Yazılım ürünlerinin tedarik, geliştirim, işletim ve bakımı sırasında ve kendi-başına yeterli bir yazılım ürünü, ve yazılım hizmeti, ve yazılım içeren bir sistemin alımnda uygulanışı beklenen süreçler, faaliyetler, ve görevler içerir. Yazılım sabit donanımın yazılım kısmını içerir.

Koşul 4- Bu Uluslararası Standardın Uygulanışı
Bu standart bir yazılımın yaşam-döngüsü sırasında yapılışı gereken faaliyetleri bei ana süreç, sekiz destekleyici süreç, ve dört kurumsal süreç olarak gruplar. Her süreç bir dizi faaliyete; her faaliyet bir dizi göreve bölünür.

Beş Ana Süreç
Alım
Bir sistem, yazılım ürünü ya da yazılım hizmeti alan Alıcı’nın faaliyetlerini tanımlar.
Tedarik
Alıcıya bir sistem, yazılım ürünü ya da yazılım hizmeti sağlayan tedarikçi’nin faaliyetlerini tanımlar.
Geliştirim
Yazılım ürününü tanımlayan ve geliştiren kuruluş olan geliştirici’nin faaliyetlerini tanımlar.
İşletim
Bir bilgisayar sistemini kullanıcıları için gerçek ortamda işletim hizmetini sağlayan kuruluş olan işletici’nin faaliyetlerini tanımlar.
Bakım
Yazılım ürününü güncel ve işletim açısından verimli tutmak için bakım hizmetini sağlayan bakımcı’nın faaliyetlerini tanımlar. Bu süreç yazılım ürünün başka ortamlara nakli ve kullanımdan çıkarılışını kapsar.


12207’nin Yaşam-Döngüsü süreçlerinin ilişkileri:
YÖNETİM
TEDARİK
İŞLETİM
BAKIM
GELİŞTİRİM
ALIM
BELGELEYİŞ
ORTAK GÖZDENGEÇİR
DESTEK SÜREÇLERİ
KUR
KAL
PROB. ÇÖZÜMÜ
DENETLEYİŞ
DOĞRULAYIŞ
ONAYLAYIŞ
sözleşme
ALT YAPI
EĞİTİM
İYİLEŞTİRİM
KURUMSAL SÜREÇLER
•

Yaşam-Döngüsünün Dört Destek Süreci
Belgeleyiş
Bir yaşam-döngüsü sürecinin ürettiği bilgilerin kayıdı için yapılan faaliyetleri tanımlar.
Kurulum-Dağılımı Yönetimi
Kurulum-dağılımı yönetimi (configuration management) süreçlerini tanımlar.
Kalite Güvencesi
Yazılım ürünleri ve süreçlerinin belirlenmiş şartlarına uyumlu oldukları ve lurulu planlarına bağlı kaldıklarını nesnellikle güvence altına almak için yapılacak faaliyetleri tanımlar. Birleşik gözden geçirimler, Denetimler, Doğrulayış ve Geçerli Kılış(Onay) Kalite Güvencesi teknikleri olarak kullanılabilir.
Doğrulayış
Yazılım ürünleri ve servislerinin yazılım projesine bağlı olarak değişen derinlikte doğrulanışı (alımcı, tedarikçi, veya bağımsız taraf) için yapılacak faaliyetleri tanımlar.
Geçerlilik Kontrolü
Yazılım projesinin yazılım ürünlerini doğrulamak için (alımcı, tedarikçi, veya bağımsız taraf) yapılacak faaliyetleri tanımlar.
Birleşik Gözdengeçiriş
Bir faaliyetin durumu ve ürünlerini değerlendirmek için yapılan faaliyetleri tanımlar. Bu süreç, bir taraf(gözden geçiren)’ın diğer tarafı(gözden geçirilen) denetlediği durumda herhangi iki tarafça birleşik bir değerlendiriş şeklinde uygulanabilir.
Denetleyiş
Şartname, plan ve sözleşme’ye uyumluluğu belirleyen faaliyetleri tanımlar. Bir taraf(denetleyici) diğer bir tarafın(denetlenen) yazılım ürünlerini ve faaliyetlerini denetler. Bu sürece herhangi bir tarafça başvurulabilir
Sorun Çözümü
Geliştirim, işletim, bakım veya diğer süreçlerin uygulanışı sırasında bulunan sorunların, tabiatı ve kaynağı ne olursa olsun, tahlili ve halli için bir süreç tanımlar.

Yaşam-Döngüsünün Dört Kurumsal Süreci
Yönetim
Bir yaşam-döngüsü sürecinin uygulanışına ilişkin proje yönetimi de dahil olmak üzere yönetimin temel faaliyetlerini tanımlar.
Altyapı
Bir yaşam-döngüsü sürecinin altında yatan yapının kuruluşu için yapılan temel faaliyetleri tanımlar.
İyileştirim
Bir kuruluşun (bir başka sürecin alımcı, tedarikçi, geliştirici, işletici, bakımcı, veya yöneticisi) yaşam-döngüsü süreçlerini kurmak, ölçmek, kontrol etmek, ve iyileştirmek için icra ettiği temel faaliyetleri tanımlar.
Eğitim
Yeterli eğitime sahip personel sağlamak için yapılan faaliyetleri tanımlar.



Kaynaklar:
1. Singh, Raghu, "Introduction to International Standard ISO/IEC 12207: Software Life Cycle Processes," tutorial slides, Oct. 2, 1995.
2. Jim Wells, Software Engineering Process Office at SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego