The Power of Abstraction

Abstraction is a fairly powerful concept and one that is most used and abused pretty much everywhere, especially within the IT industry. It is difficult, if not impossible to sit in a meeting without hearing the word being used at least ones, mostly incorrectly. The usage is normally more incorrect as the level of the meeting attendees goes up ('pointy-haired boss' anyone?!)

Surprisingly, abstraction is something our brains seem to be happy to handle. In fact, many a research has shown that the brain actually prefers abstraction a lot and uses it as a tool to reduce the amount of information that it needs to hold. One classic example is the Gestaldt diagram you might have seen elsewhere.

Source: http://www.freshbrainz.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Sometimes it does not have to be complicated. Just a couple of strokes should be sufficient to recognize something, however abstract it may be.

Source: Wiki Commons

Like any concept, abstraction can be used for the good or the bad, or even something in between.

Source: http://www.premisemarketing.com/blog/post/got-to-be-real1/

I feel abstraction is quite helpful - it helps simplify things and help me understand the larger picture without having to know everything.

Abstraction has also been used for a long time. Ancient Hindu scriptures used a form of literary abstraction named sutras (or aphorisms) that condensed the meaning of a complex philosophical concept into a few words. Most likely such a mechanism was utilized due to the oral tradition that existed back then - necessitating a condensed format that was easy to remember and pass on to future generations, with the explanation left to the teacher. Such abstractions are similar to some architecture diagrams that I see on a daily basis, generic, somewhat useful, but does not make much sense without someone being available to explain it properly (on the flip side, this has been conveniently been used by business analysts and architects to reuse generic frameworks or concepts pretty much everywhere without much thought to whether it makes sense or not). Proverbs and fables are other forms of literary abstractions that you might have heard in your childhood from your grandmother.

However, abstractions cannot live alone. A good abstraction typically requires a supporting framework - a generic structure that can hold specifics. A classic example of a framework is the periodic table. Having a framework such as the table helped Mendelev find elements that had not even been discovered yet. A good framework - be it an architecture diagram or a process flow or a mind map can help identify gaps and help us move towards the 'right' state.

However, increasingly of late I have been seeing the darker side of abstraction - abstraction used as a means for confusing people or even simplifying things to an extent where the abstraction does not even make sense.

One of the greatest and most recent examples of abstraction being used in the most evil manner is the near collapse of the US financial market. The financial elements that were involved in the financial collapse were highly abstract in nature - most involving three or four levels of abstraction, so much so that the investor had no clue what he was investing in.

Other similar examples can be found in politics elsewhere, such as the Spectrum Scandal in India where the amount of money involved is so huge and so far removed from the common man that people are numb to the extent of the scam or the seriousness of it all.

On the other side, non-abstraction can also be equally bad. A great example is the US news media (which of late, is sadly being copied in emerging nations as well). This situation, perpetrated by the 24x7 news media, is where a simple concept that can be explained in 2 sentences is stretched out across the entire day or multiple days, providing so much redundant detail that the core issue is lost on the user. In most cases, even those who report the news get so bored that you hear them repeating the same questions over and over again, sometimes without even expecting an answer ("How do you feel about this?" "I am sure this is traumatic for you." "Did you feel bad?").

Hope this post was not too abstract for you to grab the idea - "Abstraction can be good or evil - use it for good."