Archimedes Palimpsest Article for WIRED

My article is entitled "Digital Transcription of the Archimedes Palimpsest" by Derek Walvoord and Roger Easton Jr. As we discussed in class, the Archimedes Palimpsest is an ancient text originally written by Archimedes and overwritten with a prayerbook in the middle ages. Since then, it has been further degraded and overwritten, and it has a fascinating history. If you want to find out more, visit:

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

Over the past decade, scientists have been trying to uncover the original writing of Archimedes using imaging techniques. Greek scholars can then analyze the images. One of the scientists working on the project is Roger Easton Jr., a professor in the Imaging Science department here at RIT. His grad student, Derek Walvoord, developed a character recognition system to assist the scholars in transcribing the text for his Ph.D. thesis (he defends on Feb. 22).

Because there is already a lot published about the imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest, I don't plan to go into too much detail about this topic. Instead, I am going to focus on the development of the character recognition system and how the scholars interact with it. Some of the themes in my article will be:

-Humans and computers working together to solve hard problems. Humans only use their own contextual knowledge to solve problems, but a computer can store data about how others tried to solve the same problem. It can also use algorithms to try to solve the problem automatically. The character recognition system that Derek built uses a Bayesian Network that incorporates all three of these types of knowledge. It then combines them and presents them in a simple way that is useful for the scholars.

-The "digital divide" between different professional fields (classics scholars vs. imaging scientists). Classics scholars don't usually do much work on the computer, and in general, they are more comfortable using a print and a magnifying glass than zooming in on an image on a computer screen.

-Reconciling the above two themes: How do you create an interface between computers and humans who are relatively inexperienced with computers so that they can work together efficiently?

For this assignment, I interviewed Derek about his experiences working with the scholars and with building the interface.

I am going to write for WIRED Magazine, which I would describe as a news magazine for geeks. WIRED explores science, technology, gadgets, electronic gaming, software, geek culture, and politics (usually in a humorous way, with an obvious liberal slant). The average reader is a student, professor, or young professional in a technical field. Although the magazine is not explicitly directed at either gender, the gender distribution among readers is probably similar to that of RIT, with more male readers than female readers. They have features like an entire section devoted to the technology of cars, which I'm guessing more men than women read. The articles are fairly informal. Reading them is like having a conversation, and the authors assume that their readers are "conversational" in the topics discussed--they aren't scared of a little technical jargon, even if they only have a general idea of what it means. Here is an example article, a response to the recent news that the Craig Venter Institute created an artificial genome:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/commentary/dissection/2008/01/dissection_0125

Here is a quote from the article: "I get the impression that I am supposed to be tingling, my heart racing with exaltation or terror or ... something. And yet I feel like I have a lesion in my amygdala, unable to respond to the threat of an electric shock."

They article doesn't discuss amygdalas or electric shocks--the author just uses this analogy to describe his lack of excitement about the announcement. Clearly, this type of analogy works for the WIRED audience but wouldn't work for readers of other publications.