About Me - An Interview with Peter Vis

I receive a lot of mail from people who have read my articles and liked them. Some of the questions tend to be the same, so I have created this page with the answers, as I am certainly getting very tired of answering them. Also, please do not send me any more silly questions, as I need my email for more important work... Thank you.

What do you sound like?

Lt Cmdr Data in Star Trek :-)

Are you rich?

No, I am quite poor.

What is the colour of your eyes?

Brown

What is the rationale behind The Quantum Archive?

The Quantum Archive is one of few archives that rely on Adsense advertising to sustain it. This is because unlike other archives that receive private donations and government grants, this archive remains independent of these sources, and instead I would like visitors to donate to the USHMM directly. It is my hope that this will enrich the memorial with funding and awareness around the world. This archive is different in many other ways too.

I believe that archiving should be more than just throwing a stack of paper onto a scanner loader at one end and producing 100 MB .pdf files at the other end!

In this archive, quality is more important. The scanned documents are cleaned, optimised, and compressed so they download fast. When a document is clean of artefacts and noise, this increases the quality (the degree to which a product meets customer satisfaction), and simultaneously minimizes the data footprint during fractal compression. In order to do this to a large scale, I am also developing experimental AI algorithms that will automatically perform cleaning routines.

I believe that large documents should be separated into different logical sections so that they are search engine friendly. By organising the documents this way, the information is more easily searchable, and this also saves the visitors bandwidth because they do not have to download the entire document.

I have purposefully tried to keep JavaScript to the bare minimum or large scripts of any sort that require loading before the content. Hence you will not find any frivolous functionality such as a magnifying glass or flick-books that require a mile long of script to load for each page. Instead the pages are kept purely in HTML and CSS showing the content. I believe that functionalities such as magnifying glasses and lazy-loading should be built into the browsers as a standard and I should not have to add extraneous code on each page, which only has the effect of wasting bandwidth and slowing down the page.

Finally, I discourage people from printing articles, and instead encourage them to learn to bookmark. Printing things out on paper is such a waste of precious tree resources, and I for one do not wish to be responsible in any way whatsoever for adding to the carbon footprint.

Why no social media links?

I absolutely love and support all social media. But my father always says that when the poor give to the rich, the angels cry... :-) So until the day I become as rich as Mr Mark Zuckerberg, (which is about never) I will have to refrain from links. But the real truth is that outgoing links are an administrative nightmare and I cannot afford to employ a media relations officer. However I do the National Lottery and Premium Bonds, so one day, you might see them.

How do you find the time to write the content?

I do not sleep. I always find that there is a lot I need to get done and not enough time. I am trying to find solutions to some of the most difficult questions man has ever asked. As a result, I often find myself reading some very complex works late into the hours.

What is your religion?

If I had one, it would most probably be Jedi-ism :-) We all have 'the force' no matter what religion or colour we are and therefore I would like to start from the common basics that will unite everybody on the planet. I like the idea of people of light charged with the duty to uphold the value of all life on the planet. There is only one man who could lead it though... (Elie Wiesel: The Elie Principle)

You make complicated things sound simple, how do you do that?

I try to write in such a way that a 5-year-old can understand. That way, I know that everyone all over the world will be able to understand what I write. Web publishing is about communication with a worldwide audience and not about making oneself look clever. I therefore avoid all the big words and flowery sentences. I work very hard to write in simple plain English, so that when someone lands on my page it is a pleasure for them to read. It is also easier for Google Translate to translate my text to any language with a high degree of accuracy.

Where do you stand on politics?

It serves a useful purpose inside the houses of parliament, and the adversarial process. However, I cannot see much use for it outside except to divide people.

Which groups of people, ethnicity and race do you favour?

I am on the side of DNA, because all those differences that you see in people around the world are simply variables in a large biological program called the DNA. Whether you are tall or short, fat or thin, black or white, how long you will live, how many illnesses you will have, how many disabilities you have, all came from the biological lottery that we call the DNA. Once those little variables are fixed, then that is it. That is who you are and you have to live with it, because living with it together is what it is very much all about. Hence, I figured let's stick with Watson and Crick, and DNA. At least there are some solid ideas based on sound intelligent reasoning that I can understand, thus I am always on the side of the fallen, dying, poor, the persecuted, the ill... You will not see me at any parties I can assure you. :-)

A thriving growing society will normally be the one that accepts this genetic diversity - whatever it may be - The puritan societies that focus on maintaining a particular attribute tend to go on the decline and their population diminishes very fast. I suppose nature hates stupidity, and anyone going against it will go out at night like the dinosaurs... Nature had everything figured out thousands of years before the modern arrogant man emerged. It therefore certainly seems to me that any educated civilised human being ought to embrace these differences and accept them. I believe that Abraham Lincoln was thinking along those same lines at a time when Watson and Crick had not discovered DNA. Nevertheless, he was right and it was the first true step to declaring that all men are equal. Interestingly, this also works with computer systems and business models. Any system that is perfectly fair and free of corruption and meddling by humans will thrive. Google is a success because two people -- Sergey & Page -- decided that they wanted to keep total control of the system and as far away as possible from human meddling. What do you suppose would happen if the control were handed over to one of our 'esteemed' politicians? ... Need I say more?

Why are you so damned responsible?

There was great tragedy and loss in my life, and this experience has made me the person that I am today. In addition, the inequities I experienced brought me a tough and difficult life, which made me stronger. Nothing was given to me easily, and many times I even lost that which was rightfully mine that I had worked hard for. Consequently, prejudice, discrimination, and corruption, are things I cannot stand for, because I have seen all of these in abundance here in the UK.

What will happen to the site after you are gone?

After I die, I would like the site to be taken care of by Google or the USHMM. I would like a person who is as passionate as I am to continue it and take it to the next level, and continue to increase the awareness.