The Iceberg and the Storm (sharing an article)
I really liked this one folks.
If you want to keep up with what the pragmatic, structured, organized, thoughtful people who design build and maintain the behind the scenes critical infrastructure that you, me and all of us count on for EVERY FACET of our daily lives, I highly suggest you add Control Global to your "favorites" list.
A few favorite quotes from the article as a tease to encourage you to read the whole thing :
Engineering solves problems. Innovation creates problems. Most innovation comes from people outside the domain of expertise. Innovators can be anybody.
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We think that this is the innovation age. Not so. We forget fish hooks, fire and the wheel. Twice as many patents were issued in the early 1900s as today. Distance, time and familiarity diminish importance.
My dad would talk to some of my visiting young MBAs. They would complain about the D.C. politics, the latest recession and tax laws. After they left, Dad would say, “Don’t they know this has happened five times before?â€
- and -
What does this mean to the working process engineer? We should not dwell on the latest standards and play in our sandbox. Putting change into a process because we want to try out the latest computer is not progress. We, as well as our management, should think about what we do and why we are doing it. Innovation is not just components, systems and toys. Innovation also is a part of how we think.
Please take a minute to review the whole article here:
http://www.controlglobal.com/articles/2006/232.html
From within the article and for more on the event the author was covering: Go to http://technologyreview.com/events for a multimedia presentation of the event.
Happy New Year folks. Maybe a good goal for 2007 is to move education and informed decision making to the front of the line so we aren't so vulnerable to being taken to the cleaners by snake oil salesman selling myth and hidden agenda (politicians).
Just for fun. Has anyone seen anything in the media lately, or heard our President (or any politicians) speaking about the current state of the Social Security Trust Fund, the projected cash flow, the proposed repayment of the moneys borrowed from the trust fund in recent decades?
Are we too busy for such things because of arguments about saving us from Global Warming by "causing positive changes to the climate direction" or the War on Terror?
Anyone thinking bait and switch?
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Current Events | Engineering | Innovation | Political Correctness | Technology
I think so too
Submitted by SteamGeek on 1 January 2007 - 8:49pm.
A little part to me didnt like the part about innovation causing problems either, at first. But when I re-read it with a few alternative twists I kind of like it.
Some problems NEED to be caused.
An interesting part to me is if we take it within the closing context of innovation also being a way of thinking (or however the author phrased it at the end) - it opens the door to considering that causing problems is a good way of effecting postive change.
For example, along the lines of your teaching environment example: Causing problems to inefficient or outmoded methods is bad for the folks who have vested interests in those antiquated systems, but good for the new generation of participants. Same thing with producers of goods and the customers who use the goods.
Same thing with Politics.
We could explore this from one end of our society to the other and likely come up with near universal examples of how failure to evolve results in the failure of a system.
Every time.
In Nature too.
From an Engineers view, the money people control the purse strings, the politicians make regulations, and the Engineers design build and run the system(s).
How often are decisions made with little or no basis in reality for the implications of the outcomes to the other participants?
Good example. Wholesale EPA ban of Asbestos with no consideration of the various forms of the material, the availability of a suitable replacement, the expense of knee jerk reaction of regulatory process vs ordered and systematic solutions to the known problems etc. Outcome: (among other things) we blew up the space shuttle with the not only a teacher on board but also with all the nation's school children watching.
Obviously there were other related symptoms, but thanks to Richard Feynmen we know about the O-Ring / sealant issues that were directly related to the cold weather launch and the subsequent failure of the (sub standard) O-Ring system.
Edited for styling and clarity
Submitted by liza on 1 January 2007 - 9:06pm.
I will be putting up tonight a new list of style and editorial guidelines for the site, for the new year and in the hopes it's clearer for new members how to contribute to the site.
This post barely passes my standards for front-page material. Since you culled several different quotes from the article, I will let it pass. I mostly prefer articles to go to the forums.
I think though that I should create a new forum holder for "Articles you need to read NOW" or something like that.
Either way, when I edit a post, go into it in edit mode and look at how I edited it. It will give you a great idea of how we style posts at the site.
OK, time to finish the guidelines!
Change is Hard
There still needs to be a balance between the innovators and the engineers, though.
First, because innovators, even when the ideas are very good and sound, are not so hot at follow through.
Second, because sometimes ideas that seem wonderful are just not practical to implement.
Finally, though, nothing smashes innovation as quickly as a change-resistant environment. Nothing.
I have resolved myself that change at my school will be VERY slow until the two staff members with the longest time in retire. They passively-aggresively resist all change. It's frustrating.