Abstraction
This topic is about the distance of reality and our perception. We want to show you the moving way, we see our world. We hope that you have a pleasant read and thoughts.
Abstraction - The Idea
Abstraction is the simplification of an idea or concept. Abstraction must be limiting the amount of information. It makes it easier to generalize and understand those ideas and concepts. That is why we use it all the time, without noticing it.
Abstraction has to exist all the time, because we are not able to conceive all information and discribe it in a complete form. Our limits in understanding a concept makes us abstract the concept.
Layers of Abstraction
The first abstraction isn't even noticed. The world we see, hear, feel, taste and smell is just a simplification of reality. We only see light between two wavelengths and we only hear from 20Hz up to 20kHz. We only feel certain pressures and taste and smell only a limited amount.
The reason for such an abstraction is easy. We don't need more information to live and are able to survive without every detail. An abstraction can be represented as a model to show a problem, in a certain way, that needs to be solved. We only construct an abstraction for needed solutions.
If a problem is found, we make a model to discribe and solve it. But if the solution does not need a lot of detail, because someone else did already have a more detailed model, than an abstraction is made to make it easier to understand and solve the problem.
Examples of Abstraction
We see abstractions every day. Our memory simplifies memories and reduces the amount of information, to make it easier to remember certain details. Money is the abstraction of value and a car is a mechanical abstraction, because we just need to drive it. Most things abstract the process of production, its value and its innerworkings. Knowing this helps you to find things you didn't know.
One field is known to have the highest level of abstraction. That is programming. It hides lower and more complex parts, to ease the use of it. It starts at the hardware level. Silicon wavers are etched to produce logic and structures, which we use with just simple voltages and signals. Those signals are simplified to commands. Those are abstracted to systemcalls. Those are simplified to functions in a programming language. Then there are multiple layers of abstraction between programming languages built on other programming languages. In the end we only know simple functions, that leave out any understanding of the deeper levels.
Our Idea
We want to know if you feel the need to keep this amount of abstraction or if you want to understand more. We at CYT want to understand more, because it helps us make better dicisions.