Ben Shneiderman interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 7th August 2009
0:09:07 Born 1947 in New York City; grew up in a warm environment with parents and a sister who had been born in Paris in 1937; my parents came to New York in February 1940 to escape the oncoming war; I was born after all the turbulence and loss; all four of my grandparents were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto; the community of family that I had when growing up in Manhattan, surrounded by other cousins, was very important to me; I appreciated the environment my parents created as journalists involved in the Jewish community and the New York literary world; they wrote later about their homeland, Poland, and Eastern Europe; my parents used to write together, my father dictating and mother transcribing; my father would cut and paste with glue and scissors many times, and then my mother would retype; I don't have trouble writing as I know how difficult it is; it is difficult because people have a desire to make it perfect on the first try, and to do so takes much reworking; remember Winston Churchill's comment that he would practice his speeches a hundred times until they seemed spontaneous; I think it important to get down the basic ideas and then rework them, a lesson I learned from my parents
3:11:00 I have never been to Poland and it does not attract me; it seems like a country of sadness and loss; my sister has been and has encouraged me to go; I may do so but it has not drawn me; my mother's father was a famous publisher in Warsaw and their home was a cultural centre for writers, particularly Yiddish writers; Poland was the largest Jewish community in the world at that time; my mother was very much the academic and studied widely; she went to Berlin in 1928 to study; her younger brother Didek - the family name was Szymin - became the world famous photographer David Seymour and used the nickname Chim; that remains an important thread and inspiration in my life as I am responsible for his estate and interest in his work continues to grow; the path of being a photo-journalist was one that I considered; my visual orientation was very much inspired by my knowledge of him; he with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa founded Magnum, the photo-cooperative, in 1947, and it continues in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, as a leading and respected creative community of photographers; on my father's side, they were from more humble origins, from a small town called Kazimierz; my grandfather was a shoemaker of the upper shoe, not the sole; my grandfather married Sara (Mandelbaum), had several children, and then she died; he then married her younger sister, Chana, and had further children; my father was the second youngest of eight children by Chana, so I had many uncles and aunts and cousins; my parents left Warsaw in the early 1930s to join the intellectual movements in Paris, as did my uncle David Seymour and other family members; they travelled and wrote in Spain on the Spanish Civil War; my father wrote a book on it in Yiddish in 1938 (Krieg in Spanien - War in Spain) which included ten photos by David Seymour, so there was that collaboration between them; other uncles and cousins came to the US, to Venezuela, France and Spain, as a result of the War; the concentration in New York of family was a very rich source in my growing up; they had a country house in a small place called Lake Peekskill, an hour's drive north of Manhattan; by the time I was four the family had got together and bought a twenty-six acre farm in Flemington, New Jersey, an hour west of Manhattan; the plan was that my oldest first cousin, Paul, and his wife, Judy, who had come out of the Concentration Camps, and were unhappy working in Manhattan in the garment district, should go there; they joined other survivors who had moved to that area; they started an egg farming business where I would go as a child; it was a wonderful opportunity as there were lots of adult figures and cousins; we would work on the farm shoveling manure, collecting eggs, gardening, and was a great experience as a child up to high school years; there were many ways that it formed me positively, with the sense of community and shared experience; I think the parents were drawn together as survivors of the Holocaust and needed each other, and it was not always easy for them, but it was great for us kids; the multiple adult role models were important because my parents had a unique (?) way, working very hard with the demands of their new life; my father had a full time day job doing publicity and his writing was night time work, and there was not a lot of room for other things; my sister recalls that in a less happy way and she wanted more attention; I as a boy was possibly more independent, and had my cousin, George, in the same building; there were nice ways that I could compensate but I certainly saw that my parents were working hard, maybe that was one lesson, and I saw this process of writing and what they were after, their commitment to social causes, social justices, to issues after the Holocaust, important questions that I was inspired by; on the other hand, even from the time of being a teenager I had explicitly set the goal to be not like my father; he was absorbed with his work and his writing and had little time for vacations, hobbies, or anything else; he had little time too for me as a child; I have a few nice memories of him building a sand box for me, walking with me, and taking me to his work at the United Nations where he was a founding member of the UN Correspondents Association, and visits to the Yiddish Press in Manhattan where he worked; I was largely on my own and found my own way, but because of the farm, and early on sharing an apartment with an aunt and uncle, Collette and Chaim (Penchina), and their son Claude who became an important influence on me; he became a physicist and a professor, and was the only academic role model that I had; going through the school system in New York was very good, with the same group of kids from third to sixth grade, and then on through high school; I went to the Bronx High School of Science, a famous school in New York City, one of three where you were admitted by exam.
13:10:22 I went to local public schools - P. S. 75 Emily Dickinson School; we were the first students in that new red brick building which still exists; it was a nice experience; there were wonderful teachers who I still remember, and the constant set of students from third to sixth grade were a special group of about thirty; they all lived within walking distance so I came to know them and their families, and my parents came to know them too; the majority were Jewish as were the teachers; of the teachers I remember, for example, Miss Rosenberg in fifth grade; they were warm, caring types who motivated us to do well; at that time I was a normal boy, taking apart clocks etc., but with cousin Claude as an inspiration I was supposed to be doing science; I did science fairs and built projects while in that school, then in junior high school; in New York there was a special SP (Special Progress) course where you did the seventh to ninth grades in two years, then ten to twelve was high school; there was a competitive atmosphere but a good supportive one; in junior high school I had memorable teachers; Mr Scavone, an Italian, remains a vital figure who pushed us all; he taught social studies but was also our home room teacher; he was into theatre and would study the upcoming Broadway plays; remember Anne Bancroft starring in the Helen Keller story, 'The Miracle Worker', which we went to see soon after it opened; he would take us once or twice a year to plays; I remember the punishment he meted out when one of the students said that they really wanted to go to the play as they would miss regular classes, and he cancelled all the tickets to remind them that devotion to schoolwork was first and that plays were extra; the thirty of us in the special class were sent to another school on the edge of Harlem in a much more difficult neighbourhood, where most of the students were struggling academically; there was an attempt to build up the school and somehow it was hoped that we, bright, motivated kids, would raise the standards; I don't know whether it worked or not; after that I went to the Bronx High School of Science; there were three such schools in New York at that time; one, Stuyvesant, at that time did not take girls, and that decided my choice of Bronx Science even though it was further to travel; it was a wonderful school with inspirational teachers; I remember the physics teacher particularly; I was in that class when someone came in to announce the death of J.F. Kennedy in November 1963, and that is one of my moments frozen in time; by that time I was beginning to concentrate on physics and it was possible to take college level physics in the high school; the advanced placement group of physics students was a wonderful bunch of people; there was one girl in the class whom I took to the high school prom; since we travelled for forty-five minutes on the subway to get to school and back, there was actually little socializing after class, no community of people that were your neighbours as people came from all over the city; then I went to City College of New York
20:17:14 At school we also did plays; I remember playing Nikita Khrushchev in one play and for some reason having to sing 'Yes, we have no bananas'; I also enjoyed P.E. (Physical Education) but I was not especially strong; I liked to play baseball and was pretty good, probably helped by the hours playing on the farm; we would also sometimes play after school near home; when I was in High School I was selected to be on a city wide science radio programme and my mother would take me possibly twice a month for a one hour discussion by students on science topics; I began to develop my voice; I continued doing science projects - building a solar furnace with a Fresnel lens, a thermo-electric pile to generate electricity from heat, and projects of that sort; the construction mechanisms of building and making such devices, also telling the story on posters we would create; somewhere I have various medals given as prizes at these science fairs; science was an attraction, but so was speaking and being on radio; I had seen my father giving public lectures and also talking on radio and TV, so I had his role model and inspiration so it was not a trouble for me and I was effective at doing it; giving a lecture is a form of performance, of theatre, and one has the responsibility to make the work interesting for my classes and students; I do between forty and fifty public lectures a year; I have always been close to music but it wasn't quite my thing; my sister was a pianist and would perform as a college student; my mother would take me to performances of classical music; at one time I was given piano lessons but didn't take to it; I wish I had more skill in performing, although I enjoy singing it is not something an audience would enjoy; I listen to a wide range of music, both classical and folk; I don't work with music in the background nor go jogging with music in my ears
26:26:17 My father had more of a religious training at a traditional Heder, and he was quite knowledgeable and skilled at reading from the Torah in Hebrew; I went to a Hebrew school after regular school and had Bar Mitzvah at thirteen, and was quite absorbed by it; it fitted in with the sense of community in Upper Manhattan at that time; my father's work in Yiddish was also related to Jewish communities; but it was more secular and we never were a Kosher household though we participated in the holidays; I am a member of a rather unorthodox Jewish group in Washington that functions best as a community whose main form of ritual was the pot-luck dinner; that seems a positive thing; I am very proud of my Jewish heritage and background, which I find interesting and I stay connected to it, but it does not take the form of religious practice and I have drawn further away from the God emphasis; I see it as a cultural and community identification; on the question of whether I am an atheist or not, I try to evade it, not even thinking it important enough to worry about; I don't believe in God or an afterlife; I am sympathetic to Richard Dawkins' 'God Delusion', but I don't want to spend the time reading the book; there are important issues in the world; the Jewish notion of tikkun olam which means to mend the world, is one that I attach to most strongly; the sense that the world we have come to is flawed and each one of us has to do their part in mending it; I take that as an important value, and notions of social justice, equality etc. all influence my science and practice as well as the things I choose to work on; that seems the important obligation that each of us has; I try to inspire my students and others in a practical way to take up these causes, to make the world a better place
30:48:03 Although, as a Jew, there is sometimes the feeling of being an outsider, but it is not a dominant issue; I feel very self-confident and clear in my direction; I have a hard time making the choices of what I should and should not do; the group I belong to in Washington has holiday celebrations which I enjoy going to when I can, but it is okay to miss it; it is a very accepting group that feels there is room for diversity, and for people who are not Jewish to participate, intermarry, and so on; I am familiar with the issue but don't find it a troubling one; I am satisfied with my choices in life and what I have accomplished, though of course there are unfulfilled agendas
33:27:02 I followed an understandable and familiar New York trajectory through Bronx Science (High School) to City College; I arrived there in 1964 and spent four years there; it was quite wonderful; it is a well-established institution and it is free; now there is a modest charge, but all my education was free; it was a wonderful intellectual community; at the time there was a lengthy article in the New York Times describing it as the proletarian Harvard which fitted very well; earlier on it was a hotbed of the immigrants of the 1930s and 40s who were more socialist oriented; by the time I arrived it was much more just a strong intellectual source; it had some distinction of more Nobel prize-winners - Salk, for instance, came from there; Blacks, Jews and other minority groups could get an exceptional education, and was distinguished by admission by examination; when I graduated in 1968 they changed the policy to be by open admission and it essentially destroyed the institution; recently they have restored its exclusivity and hence its reputation; it is a troubling issue because we would like to be broad and welcoming to everyone, but there is a great satisfaction of that distinctive community which sought excellence, dealing with students who could not afford the opportunity; choosing college is maybe an interesting point; I see such a difference now with my students or my own children; they talk about all the colleges, they travel and visit them; at the time I was graduating from High School I had no one to guide me and had little choice as I was interested in physics, City College had a strong reputation in physics, so I went there; I didn't visit any other colleges, neither did my parents know much or invest much effort on my behalf; my sister had gone to Brooklyn College, another branch of City University, so it was just the natural thing to do; it was a good experience; I began to exercise my visual side with photography and for three years I was the photo editor for the Year Book and carried my camera every day and photographed sports events, lectures etc.; I built enough of a portfolio to have an exhibit of some forty to fifty photos by the time I graduated; my uncle had sadly been killed in 1956 in Suez while photographing for Newsweek; that was another memorable and tragic moment; my mother heard of the death of her brother on the news and that day still remains in my mind, I was nine years old; the incident was four days after the armistice; the story continues to unfold as just this month we received information about a detailed report on his death which we had not known of before; there are various controversies of whether it was Egyptian fire or British fire; the jeep that he was riding in, driven by Jean Roy of Paris Match who was a kind of wild adventurer, my uncle much more careful type, just drove through the lines and didn't observe the order to stop, and the Egyptian gunner shot their jeep up and it fell into the canal; it remains a story of vivid memories that keeps unfolding; there will be two upcoming exhibits about his work and I spend ten to fifteen percent of my time on his estate; yesterday I was at the V&A where I have donated some vintage prints to their collection; I also work with other museums like the International Center for Photography in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, George Eastman House in Rochester etc., to promote and preserve his work; it is an interesting other side and I like to have multiple aspects to my life and work; this brings me into contact with a completely different set of people
39:19:24 So I was in City College and had a fruitful time, also pushing forward on the physics agenda where I was not doing well; that was a surprise and a challenge; I was supposed to be a smart kid, but I was not enjoying my physics, despite having wonderful teachers; I was doing fine in mathematics and other subjects, but once physics left the physical reality of pendulums and rolling balls and went to more abstract worlds of quantum and electro-dynamics, the abstractions got further away from me; I was working for my junior summer for a group of physicists and that was where I came into computer programming; I was working for this very big group, Bachman, Baumel and Lea, three City College physicists with Brookhaven Laboratories connections, aged eighteen; I was responsible for the computing side, data analysis of these bubble chamber photographs; we got a day at the Brookhaven eighty inch bubble chamber; you take 300,000 photographs and then you have three-dimensional views, and digitise the tracks, and then reconstruct in three dimensions what the path of the particle was, knowing what the magnetic field is, seeing the curvature, you know what has happened with the collisions; I started in the summer, sometime in June, and I was to take over the programming work of another student who had graduated; I had a very hard time getting into it, and learned a lot, and still in my mind is 8/8/66 was the day I finally succeeded in getting the program to work; the magnetic tape reels remained on my desk for two years, reminding me of the day I could begin to call myself a programmer; it was at that time that I met my dear buddy Charles Kreitzberg who was a young programmer working for the Computer Center and he helped me get things done; in the basement of Shephard Hall I had an office, and felt quite the man about campus as a junior and a senior, and at a certain point I became the supervisor of our computer; we got one of the early PDP8 computers, a refrigerator-sized box, and that was where I began to work, processing our own data in addition to the larger IBM mainframe; going to classes began to interfere with my learning; I had become absorbed with learning how to do all this stuff, and it was a great passion and intensity for those few years to make these programs work; there was a contrast between the physics I studied which became increasingly abstract, and the work of the physicists which I saw with Bachman, Baumel and Lea, where we had published a paper on the Y star 1616 resonance based on the data we had accumulated; I am acknowledged at the end; although I worked for very many hours on it I came to understand that the physicists had initiated the work and that I was merely carrying it out; that kind of abstract discovery of the Y star 1616 resonance was then challenged by others who said there was a mistake in our analysis; that abstract world of physics, the time frame of taking the photographs, two years processing, publishing a paper and getting challenged over a long period, was a dramatic contrast to the immediacy of submitting a deck of Fortran programs and it either ran or it didn't; if it didn't run it was my fault and if I fixed it and it did run, it was my success; there was a great sense of mastery and the cause and effect of my activity; I clearly had a capacity with this important skill using Fortran and other kinds of programming so I got quite strongly into this; I was also influenced by a teacher, Richard Hamming, a key figure in the history of computing; he was working in Bell Laboratories across the river in New Jersey and he came to City College to teach; I had two semester courses from him which I remember vividly because he filled the two semesters only with material that he had invented; he was very much in early numerical analysis programming; his book had the quote: "The purpose of computing is insight not numbers"; that has remained and I have used that phrase, and I say the purpose of visualization is insight and not pictures, so I have played on that; Hamming was certainly an inspirational figure who by his leadership in the field and his strong sense of his own contributions, provided a pretty potent example; this was before there were computer science departments or courses anywhere, and so we had a special opportunity to have him as our instructor
46:58:05 I use the word
insight to mean a substantial jump in understanding which has some significance
in the world; a former student of mine, Chris North, has taken that and tried
to make insights his thing, and has measured the number and kinds of insights
that people get using visualization tools; so it has become a notion that
people find important because visualization and insight are natural partners,
you see something, you understand something you didn't understand before;
it might have cause and effect relationships, it might be anomalies, outliers,
clusters, patterns, gaps, relationships - these are the kinds of features
I would say are the components of an insight; I would say the insight needs
to be more than the abstract, statistical or visual detection of an anomaly;
it has to be related to the application domain and the significance of the
insight; a mere insight that notices that one point is away from a cluster
is not significant, but why it is there and how one might use that is important;
I would say overall my perception of science and of my work is about cause
and effect, and about the capacity to take insights and put them to work for
future decisions; an insight is a momentary point, and there might be several
of them which might lead you to a larger paradigm shift; insights are not
mysterious to me, they are sometime 'ah ha' moments that I certainly have
and experience with wonder and glee, but I see that the pursuit of insights
is a much more systematic and methodical process; that we can organize ourselves
so as to make insights, and that most of what I do, whether discoveries or
innovations, are by a systematic way of proceeding and then recognising
when there is something important about an insight; Poincaré
moments are ones of preparation, incubation, illumination, verification; I
very much invest myself in a problem, you become immersed in it and look at
it in many different ways using the large set of skills developed to look,
potentially understand some relationship or anomaly, and at some point you
may have an 'ah ha' experience; the one that is very clear and I have written
about was working on the idea of what have come to be known as tree maps;
I was looking at a way to create a visual representation of the contents of
your hard drive; at the time in the Lab we were running we had a Macintosh
with a large hard drive of 80mb shared by fourteen users; when that filled
up it was a chore to look at all the fourteen users to see how much each person
was using and who should I bother about cleaning up their storage space; I
wanted to have a single visual presentation that showed me the proportional
use; in that case you might think of fourteen rectangles on the screen proportional
to the number of bytes being used, but I was after a richer presentation which
would be a recursive, with the notional fourteen rectangles broken up into
the folders, and folders within folders etc; I had tried many ways of trying
to carve up the screen, space filling so that it would fill the screen with
no space between these rectangles; I had been working on this for months and
drawn many versions but none had really worked; then there I was in the