People Learn through Experiences: Meeting the Greatest Minds in Computer Science
I just came from an event called ACM’s A. M. Turing Award turns 50: Celebrating 50 Years of Computing’s Greatest Achievements here in San Francisco, California, and I started writing this while waiting for my flight back to the Philippines. I wrote this so that at least I can put my initial experience, process what has happened in written format, and share what I have learned through this experience. This is a bit informal, but still, I will write it. But before that…
It all started with…
An email from Loren Terveen, President of ACM SIGCHI. It was Feb 11, 2017, and I received this email that there’s an opportunity to send some students to an event called “50 Years of the Turing Award”. I thought there’s nothing to lose if I submit an application to attend.
I can’t remember what I answered in my application, but I do remember that I do want to meet people, and hopefully learn from them so I can bring something back to the Philippines. I really love to meet and talk to people, and share to other people what I learned from minds greater than mine. But I didn’t know that I love that part of me… or something that would sort of define me.
After sending my application, I completely forgot all about it. I was too consumed with getting by through the days… until…
The Reply…
While still squinting my eyes after just waking up, I read the first email of the day.
A month after my application, I got an email that practically says this: “I am in”. It is one of those days that I was thinking this…
It was a very early/late birthday gift, given that my birthday is June but the event is after my birthday. But the thing is, I will get to see the Turing Awardees… people who I was just reading as the pioneers of the course that I have taken when I was in undergrad… the people who are just names in my textbooks. I can be with them, meet with them, talk to them, throw my ideas with them, and get feedback from them.
I was still reeling from a very long self-doubt, but I still can’t believe my luck. I am one of the selected few who will be sponsored by the highest body in Computer Science to meet & greet the CS rockstars in the past 50 years.
Fast Forward to…
I arrived Wednesday night in San Francisco, and met a good friend of mine. I toured around a bit (which would be a different story altogether), and then went to Westin St. Francis Hotel to check-in for the night before the event.
Next day comes and I went to the registration. I got my ID badge and went inside. I still can’t believe it. I am here.
The first person I saw was someone who I met when I was starting to do research in HCI. It was Vint Cerf.
I met him when he gave his closing keynote at the CHI 2013 conference at Paris, France. It’s my chance to remind him of it and take a picture with him. I am being more like a fan now rather than a composed student, but I cannot help it.
After a few pleasantries and finding a place to sit (near the front), the program started, and the first panel talk was about Artificial Intelligence or AI…
Of all places to get insight from, I got it from AI…
To give you a context of what I am talking about, my research is about Interactive Platforms for Learning. Specifically, I am looking at how I can help teachers create really good learning content, and what pedagogy-tool framework will help deliver that learning content to students. To do this, I have to understand the underlying principles of how people learn, how people remember what they have learned, and how existing teaching techniques are used to teach people what they need to learn.
Now AI is something I know that tries to mimic human learning. We do have machine learning as part of AI. But the problem with AI for me is I have a love-hate relationship with anything AI, along with image processing techniques (which has some form of machine learning or pattern recognition).
Given the needed principles that I need to understand, I didn’t know that this thing that I am hesitant to learn for so long will become some form of a key to give me some form of a breakthrough to something that I am thinking about: How do people learn?
It is because of this article that I have read that sort of changed my view on how people learn. It posits that the current modeling of a human brain, which is in the form of a computing machine, is inadequate. It also posits that memory is not like binary in a human brain, but a series of interconnected experiences. Add to it with what I know about Constructivism, Narrative methods, and Cognitive learning theories, and it is sort of becoming clear to me: People learn through experiences.
And the panel, although talking about how AI and Machine Learning, sort of gave a more concrete form of that thought: Machine learning and AI cannot really “learn” in its truest sense because it cannot learn context or give meaning out of the patterns it has recognized or categorized.
People learn and apply its learning by making meaning out of what that person has experienced, based on prior experience. Remembering something is not equal to accessing a particular storage part in our brain, but it is more of firing a lot of nerve cells to re-create that experience in our imagination.
I can talk about my research more but I am diverging further from the point of this article (that means another article is on the way), so my point is: I got my insights from an unlikely but similar source — on the first day of the conference.
After the panel, I went to the front stage and got my camera up to get a picture with some of them to memorialize the moment.
And more memories in terms of experiences come in…
And the day went through. I got to meet them, talk a bit with them, and if lucky, get a picture with them. They talked about security and privacy, and deliberated on how government and policies play in the mix.
I get to meet with the creator of The Wayback Machine, Brewster Kahle, and got to learn more from the panel for preserving the past to the future. And got to know more about it and the need to preserve the past, especially the replicability of research through preserving runnable experiments and systems. I got to learn on the limitations and next frontiers of computing when they talked about if Moore’s law is dead, the ethics of computing, the next generation of computing using quantum phenomenon, and using Augmented Reality for cognitive aids, games, and beyond.
People we meet equals stories experienced…
But more than the informative and thought provoking panel discussions, it is meeting with people that I inspire me and what they said to me that I treasure the most.
It was really an honor to finally meet Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the person who made the World Wide Web. I would not be a web developer now if not for his work. And now I am going to dabble on yet another project that he has started: decentralized web. He was really cool and fun to talk to, and he took a picture of me while asking me some questions as well.
I also come across Yvonne Rogers, who also do research on HCI works. I was inspired with her article with other people on being human: HCI in the year 2020. Her thoughts on cognitive and how Augmented Reality is aiding or extending cognition, especially on learning, inspires me to understand more how cognition works.
I also got to meet and know Ed Feigenbaum, who was taking pictures at the stage. I was inspired with his being down to earth and easy to approach to, even if he just pioneered the construction of large scale AI. Actually, every ACM Turing Laureate is easy to approach and is willing to give some sort of advice or idea if you ask nicely, and are willing to take a picture with you.
Which Ivan Sutherland joked when he told me “That’s why we are paid for this (picture sessions)”. But before having his picture taken, he gave me a really good advice that I really needed to battle my self-doubt:
“My advice to you is to get what you like and put it in your work. If you like music, put it in. If you like art, make your work beautiful. I have been doing that and i like my work. I’ve been in the computing world for 60 years and i love it. Take all of these things unique to you and make something out of it, because you are a unique person, and you can create something unique that you can only create.” — Ivan Sutherland
I don’t know why he told me that out of the blue but I really needed that.
We also had a lunch session with the legends: Richard Karp and Donald Knuth, people who were the foundations of what computer science is today. The lunch session was filled with stories and questions that would take another article for me to share. But nevertheless, these sessions are what I miss — to share experiences, thoughts, and ideas with people over lunch. Thoughts that are provoking, enlightening, funny. Funny because Don was the joker of the group, and always have a funny thing or two to say. And yet, he has this high standard that he has set, which hopefully I want to reach. But I don’t know if I can finish 1 program in 1 week, let alone 4.
To end this, I would like to thank Loren, for allowing me to experience this and bring it back with me to the Philippines. Here’s to giving better contributions and impact on research that helps people reach their goals using technology through HCI.
