Thursday, January 4, 2007

Welcome to the "mostly color perception" blog!

This blog is a view from my window — a collection of tidbits I judged relevant to computational color science and in general to the promotion of scientific excellence in areas of major strategic importance for the future of research, economy and society.

I started working in color science in 1986. While performing research in VLSI design tools (my background is in computational geometry), I noticed designers were often making very stupid design errors because they could not decipher well the geometry they were laying out. In the quest of finding a methodology to color-encode layout, I learned color science and radically improved the efficiency of VLSI designers. If you have access to a good library, you may be able to find PARC technical report EDL-88-3 "A New Approach to Imaging IC Layout and Schematics."

A lot of water has flown under the bridge since 1986, but as of 2006 I am back working in a color science project. As part of my work I keep an eye on research in color perception and when I find it of general interest, for example because the result is unexpected, I will post a pointer in this blog.

Having been in this field for many years and having been successful at it, I also have a number of "overhead tasks" for the community, which generally have to do with the governance of research, such as editing journal papers, reviewing and overseeing grants, making recommendations for honours, awards, and prizes, etc. From time to time I will also comment on these topics.

Blog Statement

The Internet is an amalgam of forms blurred under epistemological pressures. In Søren Kierkegaard’s words, under this flat shower of leveled information, where everybody is interested in everything and nothing is too trivial or too important, people just accumulate information and postpone decisions indefinitely, i.e., nobody takes action and nobody is responsible for truth — there is no mastery, just gossip. He called this the æsthetic sphere of existence, exhorting us to evolve to the ethical sphere, where we do not just accumulate information but take action and make commitments. Blogs are instruments to overcome flatness by creating opportunities for vertical activities. In this sense this blog is a view from my window — a collection of tidbits I judged relevant to computational color science and in general to the promotion of scientific excellence in areas of strategic importance for the future of research, economy and society.

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