String Theory tells us we live in a 10 dimensional world. It’s easy to understand the first four dimensions, three for space and one for time. However, it gets progressively harder to conceptualise each dimension above. It’s tough enough to reach 10 and then why stop there?

I’ve bumped into this nice flash presentation called “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” that gives an answer. It’s an animated, fun, 10min flash presentation that will help you get a perspective for each of the 10 dimensions and answer the annoying question as to why we are not able to continue on a 11th dimension. There is a text version too for the ones that do not use Flash.

The presentation reminded me that 3 meta levels are enough. I think I managed to glimpse an understanding of this few years ago whilst thinking on software factory designs. A factory of factories of software is as far as you need to go to reach all possibilities. There is nothing that a factory of factories of factories of software (4th level) can do that a factory of factories of software (3rd level) can not.

I see 3 levels of generalisation in the explanation of the 10 dimensions. The first four dimensions are what we easily understand – the first level – the next 3 are in the realm of possibilities of our existing world, and the other 3 are in the realm of possibilities in all other possible existing worlds. By the time we reach the ultimate generalisation -everything that may ever exist- we have nowehere to go so we stop.