Artsy Fartsy

The art culture is seemingly quintessential to the London lifestyle. Prior to moving to London, my own interest and exposure to art was limited to the teenage mutant ninja turtles (yes, Leonardo et. al.). I now know slightly more than what Nickelodeon was able to teach me and have been fortunate enough to view a few galleries in London with a good friend who is a educated in the field. While viewing the works in many of these galleries a lot of different thoughts passed through my mind that essentially boils down to questioning the value of art.

As I walked through the Saatchi Gallery a few weeks ago, viewing pieces of contemporary art, I saw a lot of things that I found to be extremely aesthetically pleasing, and an equal number of items that simply looked like trash. Among the pieces that were actually interesting to look at, the common trend was definitely that there was a unique and creative way of presenting an idea that was easy to connect with. A simple example is a collage that when viewed from afar looks like three women in veils and when you look at it up close, it is all pornographic photos making the collage. The simplicity in the theme and brilliance in its presentation made me appreciate that particular work. On the other hand there was also a bed that had a pile of inflatable mattresses that were partially melted. I saw this and asked around for an explanation and no one could give one. That was when I thought to myself that this was legitimately rubbish. However, someone paid a good deal of money for that to have been made and someone thought it was good enough to show at the Saatchi Gallery!

I can't complain that some pieces are better than others, that is the nature of anything in this world. However, what was important to me was the amount of money being spent on the art, both bad and good. Upon asking my friends how artists find funding and what kinds of prices art can fetch, I was pretty surprised to say the least. Not only do patrons pay a lot of money to sponsor the arts, but rich people pay a lot of money for something as simple as a painting. A lot of art apparently is sold in the region of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. To me those prices don't make economical sense! I can't fathom how someone can expect to get the amount of value from the art that is probably just hanging on a wall in their study.

It may sound like I don't appreciate fine art, but the issue to me is simply one of money not well spent. I honestly believe that there are many other fields that could benefit far more and produce more if given the money. For example, anthropology and sociology are legitimately important, but I've never heard of an anthropologist being paid enormous sums of money for producing work that helps us understand humankind better. I suspect the only reasonable explanation is that of a luxury good, where people want to pay more money for it because of the perception, and unfortunately, perceptions are in fact reality. This is why Damien Hirst will get paid unnecessary sums of money for putting a cow in formaldehyde.

3-D Displays: More than Avatar

One of the most remarkable things about Avatar is that it will be remembered as the milestone that started the era of 3-D entertainment. Soon after the release of the film, not only have other movies been shown in 3-D, but many theatres are also showing sporting events in 3-D. This revolution in the way in which we can receive information has two key interesting aspects, the first being the future of the technology itself and the second being the implications to industries other than entertainment.

Most of us have seen 3-D movies as children. Remember the days of the red and blue images and similarly coloured glasses? Of course when we saw this over 10 years ago, it was amazing. However, the quality of the images produced in this way is very bad. Not only do you give up on contrast and hue in obvious ways, but the 3-D that was produced was not very good. What is amazing is that the movies we watch now use basically the same principle. The key difference is that the two images that make up the 3-D are made with opposite polarisations of the light instead of the blue and red. In this way it is possible to preserve the quality of the image completely while still using the idea of each eye seeing a different angle of the image. This technology has obvious drawbacks associated with it. The first is that the viewer has to wear glasses and an important second is that the screen has to flicker two different images that make the 3-D vision. This is where other ideas can come into play.

In the author's opinion the future of 3-D viewing is going to the using yet another property of the light called the phase in order to make holographic movies. The idea is essentially the same as that used by holographic stickers that make the image 3-D, however in this case the screen would be a continuously changing hologram. As you may have guessed, this system would not require the use of any sort of personal eye-wear and would not have to flicker two different images as the current technology does! Unfortunately, this system is not as simple as it may sound. Among the import challenges are having an entire display built with pixel sized lasers and making lasers of the 3 pixel colours. These are not at all trivial challenges and are in fact the research interests of many scientists around the world.

While, the technical aspects of this issue are important and intriguing, the potential impact of this technology is far more fascinating. While it is currently being used for entertainment due to the large costs, it is only a matter of time before it is viable to own 3-D systems at home. Once 3-D displays appear at home an immediate effect would be on e-commerce. The ability for vendors to display 3-D images to the buyer would be immensely powerful. Other aspects where the impact would be huge is in delivery of news. Having 3-D real time images of major events and happenings would provide an exciting new dimension to peoples' perspective. Yet another incredibly important application would be in web conferencing. Imagine the ability for surgeons in hospitals to conference with someone and explain how to perform a procedure in 3-D! I could go on with other examples of how this technology could be used, but the purpose of this article is simply to get you excited about the opportunities that will arise in the next few years all thanks to 3-D displays.

As a final thought on the impact of the technology, it is exciting to consider the potential of building 'smart' interfaces. Imagine computers that can not only project in 3-D, but also provide you with touch feedback using intelligent tactile response screens. The next step would then be to have a device to simulate smells using a basic chemical/odour repository. The day is not far away when full real world experiences can be had sitting at home in front of your laptop. You might even actually be able to take a bite out of your Apple when you're hungry!

Finance isn't Rocket Science!

While working for a large bank two summers ago, my boss pulled me aside one day to give me feedback on how I was doing and said to me ' Finance isn't Rocket Science, anyone can do this job, you just need to show you want it more than the others.' Given the tough economic climate it was a fair enough comment to be made, I was in fact highly replaceable. However, what is interesting is that while not intended by my boss, that statement helps highlight other large issues in the finance sector.

The first question worth asking is if the job doesn't require the smarts, why is it that large banks recruit only top students from top universities in the world? The answer to this question is multi-fold. First off, it is important to realise that some years ago finance was not the sector for the smartest people, law and medicine were where the 'best' went. However, as pay for the finance industry got larger and education became more expensive, the better students started taking finance jobs. Even today, a large number of the people going into finance straight out of school say that they want to pursue it for a few years to make some money and then switch to something else. Now, it is equally important to consider why banks hire such smart people, and the answer to that is actually rather straightforward, it's good marketing. A huge proportion of the CEOs and CFOs are graduates of top schools and banks want to be able to tell them that their teams are composed of the best from those very universities.

With this huge influx of intelligent people into the banking industry, you must ask the question 'how did these smart people screw things up so badly?' The problem here is simply that some are smarter than others. The problem is that with financial tools getting increasingly more sophisticated, it gets difficult it uncover all of the various risk elements hidden in any one financial product. A lot of very intelligent people make up smart ways of structuring products, unfortunately the people who trade those same tools don't understand them as well! Further, among banks, some have better teams than others and in the doggy dog world of finance, banks actually unload risk onto other banks. To make the issue even more complex, given the extremely bright younger demographic in banks, often the decision making bosses don't understand what the bright analysts have done. This disparity in the understanding of the way different instruments work is in fact what some people point to as the reason why we are in the current economic crisis. Banks didn't appreciate the risk of CMOs and CDOs.

So here is the problem, people are forgetting that 'Finance isn't rocket science!' The industry would do better to bring back the simpler times.