James L Adams—People and Products

Procrastination or Prioritization?

There was an interesting article by Anna Della Subin in the Sunday Sept 28^th New York Times entitled “How to Stop Time”, that was defending procrastination.  It is here.  I not only agree, but feel that procrastination is a good form of setting priorities, because many of us, partially due to computers and the internet, are tempted to take on more tasks than we can do well.  Procrastination is a good way to ensure that the lower priority tasks will be delayed, and eventually passed over.  Also, in these days of focus on efficiency and productivity (as usually measured by quantity of output rather than quality) it is often desirable to slow down.  The mysterious component of thinking sometimes called incubation requires time—the first idea is not necessarily the best one.  Achieving high product quality also requires time.  And of course, so do families and social lives.

 As an engineer, I am a believer in being a late adopter of new products in order to allow time for bugs and production glitches to be fixed, and service people to get used to them.  Also to allow time to see them in use.  I definitely don’t wait in line to be the first with a new Apple product.  In fact, I am still procrastinating on owning a smart phone at all, because I don’t want to either surf the internet or be at the beck and call of large numbers of people when not in my office, and most people seem to be seduced into letting their smart phones usurp increasing amounts of their time.  I fear I would be one of them.

 There was another article in the same paper entitled “Kicking the Facebook Habit”, by Richard Morgan, with the subtitle “It’s had its moments.  But I think I’ve broken the spell”. It is here.  It is about escaping the increasing time demands of social networking. A good way to disengage from burgeoning social networking is to procrastinate on entries and responses.  It may seem rude, especially if you are proud of your visibility, but if your friends are good friends, they will understand.  Maybe they will follow your lead. 

 I seem to have followed a path in life that results in more e-mail messages than I can handle, many of them from people I’ve never met seeking advice about engineering as a career, colleges, admissions criteria, how to become more innovative, etc.  I procrastinate on answering them, and by the time I get around to answering, I focus on those I remember as being written by people who might actually benefit from what I have to say.  I never get around to answering the many from overseas who seek financial support for graduate studies and clever ways to get admitted to highly rated U.S. engineering schools, and that is okay because the same message has gone to dozens, if not hundreds of other professors. 

Musings on Historians, Collectors, Acquirers, and Tinkerers

 I have always liked old things, especially mechanical ones, especially if I find them in an unappreciated, neglected state, covered with rust and missing a few pieces, and if I have had personal experience with them in my life. Repairing them, de-rusting them, perhaps painting them,and getting them running again is one of my major hobbies.   The photo shows a 1920’s orchard sprayer I am restoring to health.  A friend of mine gave me the wagon and tank and a number of components that were in bad shape (see the  photo below, which shows a surge tank with rust).  I happened to have the proper pump which I had restored, shown on the left photo along with the restored surge tank.  I also had the proper engine, although as can be seen from the photo below,it has not yet been restored.  I have de-rusted and painted the main chassis and rebuilt the main wooden tank, which contained boards which were warped and rotten, and am working on the sprayer’s many other components.

As a result of this hobby, I am usually surrounded by such things and the tools necessary to do the work, and my house and yard, are replete with the results, many of which have overflowed to a friends farm. I laugh when I see the many articles about simplifying life by getting rid of stuff, usually featuring a person who acts as a paid consultant to help people do so.   I love my stuff, and usually assume that these consultants are simply obsessive-compulsive people who have figured out a way to make money by spreading their neat-freak approach to life.

 But am I an historian?  Definitely not.  I read what I can about these devices, their application, and the people who make and use them, but as one of my historian friends gently told me, “historians work from original sources—you are an antiquarian”.  My answer, was “why should I spend time looking for original sources, because historians turn them into books, that organize the material and present it in a more easily readable form?”.  I prefer reading books under a tree with a beer in my hand than searching through archives and stacks of papers to find what I want.  My wife, incidentally, was born and trained as an historian and loves to do such things.  She agrees I am not one.

 Collectors are often historians.  I consider myself an acquirer, rather than a collector.  I have veered in that direction a few times, but seem to always become sidetracked by a new interest.  Leo Keoshian, a retired hand surgeon and my friend who gave me the parts for the orchard sprayer does qualify as a collector, because for many years he has collected and restored vintage vehicles (Ferraris, Bugattis, etc.) and agricultural equipment. He leans in the direction of historian.  He learns everything he can not only about the products, but the people involved, the environment in which they were used, and so on. Once I accompanied him on a cross country trip  which he was making to pick up a small rare tractor on the East coast,  and he insisted we go  out of our way to pass through Cleveland Ohio, because the archives of the Cleveland Tractor Company, which at one time had made the one we were trailering, was there.  He happily spent the day in the archives, while I happily checked out the town. But Leo lacks one attribute of most of the historians I know —he doesn’t write books.

 Another person in the area, who is also a collector (see photo in his shop below) and also a historian of old machinery  is Jack Alexander, who lives close to me in Gilroy, Californa.  He is an  engineer who retired from Lockheed, and does write  heavily researched books about old machinery and the people who produced and used it. He has mastered the full range of historian, collector, acquirer, and thinker.

 I simply acquire things I am drawn to and want to work on, although in the process of working on them I learn a great deal about their background and the people and companies who were involved. 

The photo below was taken in  my back yard and shows a bit of agricultural eqipment.  Even though I know a lot about these beautiful things that I saved from death, ( perhaps more beautiful to me than to my gardener wife who might prefer plants),  I guess one of my main joys has always been not only being involved with designing and building machines but also tinkering with sick ones—diagnosing their  problem, making them the necessary  parts, restoring them to health, and painting them to reflect their past glory.  Perhaps necessary therapy to offset the years I have spent as a professor, during which the expectation was that I would use my head rather than my hands. To me, the key to happiness is to use both.

 

 

Nerds and Geeks?

There was an interesting article in the Sunday New York Times entitled We’re All Nerds Now.  It is here. The words nerd and geek have indeed changed in meaning since I was a student at Caltech many years ago.   At that time they were  insult words, implying social ineptness, often based on deep interest in topics that were not considered “in” (usually math, science, and technology), sometimes to the partial exclusion of those that were (pursuit of sex, alcohol, cigarettes, fast cars, athletics, and what was considered “cool” in mannerisms and dress of young people at the time),   The article is celebrating the fact that nerds and geeks now have a certain social cachet, and we are all better off for being more involved with technology. 

 Nerd and Geek definitely have a more positive connotation than they once did.  But I think the author, Noam Cohen, is a bit naïve in thinking that we are all nerd/geeks, simply because many of us surround ourselves with and heavily use digital equipment.  We have always  used complicated products of technology and science, ranging from automobiles and airplanes to telephones and medicine, but that does not mean most of us understand them in depth, or could design and manufacture them, nor does it mean that we are considered to be on the fringes of society.  And we have not  considered ourselves to be nerds or geeks.

 Nerds/geeks at one time had a deep understanding of their favorite technologies or other fields of interest, sometimes deeper than others wanted to hear about, and sometimes to the exclusion of highly developed social graces.  The typical nerd at Caltech in my day was someone  with an overwhelming interest in science, mathematics,  and/or engineering and who was comfortable with the theory and jargon involved, fascinated with them and their application, and fond of discussing them with others of similar interest.  The breed that typified this to me were the amateur (ham) radio people, who not only loved radio communication and related topics, but also were comfortable with the jargon and theory involved, had a clear understanding of how the equipment and systems worked, and in fact often built their own equipment.  And admittedly, if one did not care about grid bias, could occasionally be a drag.

 The self labeled techie nerds and geeks of popular culture typically love digital equipment and the internet, but do not have a deep knowledge of how they work, and certainly could not build them.  Spending time at an Apple store or on social networking, do not lead to much technical sophistication.  I consider such people fans of the digital world, and perhaps skilled users, but not necessarily nerds or geeks.  In fact, many of the people I know whose left hand is usually grasping a smart phone are members of a very large and growing society, feeling good about being connected to a very large number of people, and getting points in their society for their activities. They even sometimes tend to look down upon people who do not have smart phones and pads and whose lives to not hinge on apps.  But if they run into trouble with the technology, rather than better understanding it, they tend to turn to  their friends and family,  customer service pages on the internet, or if they are in an organization, their favorite IT person.  And many of them do not seem to seek out the classic badges of the true technology nerd — mathematics and sophisticated theory.

 When I entered Caltech as a student, we were taken up to a camp in the mountains to become acquainted with the other members of our class and with the philosophy of the school.  Among other things, we were told that we would be considered a nerd/geek, simply because of our affiliation with the school.  We were also given simple rules to follow, such as never wear your slide rule on your belt, never wear shirt pocket pencil protectors, and never talk mathematics at a party.  Since I attended a rather non intellectual high school, I was able to add several to those that served me well socially. (such as talking about cars and not telling people at U.C.L.A parties that I was a Caltech student).

 Fortunately, times have changed.  I was an early champion of not only the advantages of, but in fact the necessity of more widespread knowledge of technology and science  (and of course math beyond calculation) in our society.  I still am.  For those reasons  I am glad to see the acceptance of the terms nerd and geek.  But as long as people are seen as nerds and geeks, we have a ways to go.  Bill Gates and friends have helped by making a lot of money and doing a lot of good.  But we are a long ways from most of my friends wanting me to explain why e, (the base of the Naperian logarithmic system), raised to the power of i (the square root of minus one) times pi (which you have all met) should be equal to minus one—which at one time fascinated we Caltech students.  Even my wife finds me less attractive if I start doing such things around the house. She loves digital equipment, especially if it is white and made by Apple, and as a check of my theory, I gave her a piece of paper with the sentence above beginning with “but”, and she admitted she could hardly bear reading it and had no interest in understanding it. But I must admit that I gain in perceived attractiveness if I fix her broken car or digital equipment, which I can do though not a nerd/geek in the social sense, but probably in the technical one —win some, lose some. 

Smart Technology, Social Inertia

The Sept 6^th, 2014 Technology Quarterly report in the Sept. 6th-12^th issue of The Economist was unusually optimistic.  It spoke of many future accomplishments in a very positive way—the possible successes from the biohackers movement, wondrous devices for improving medicine due to the dropping cost of and access to digital technology, decreasing energy usage by heating individuals, rather than spaces, suspended animation allowing more time for surgical miracles, increasing integration of digital technology into automobiles shortening the time to driverless cars, new air traffic control systems allowing pilots to choose their own direct routes, safer and cheaper methods of demolishing old buildings, improvements in anti-missile systems (and nuclear warheads}, and the rapidly nearing option of genetic improvement of humans. 

 Clever, yes, but are societies smart enough to use these things well?  If we are going to Improve humans, who makes the decisions as to what “improvement” means — The free market system? Government? And who gets it—Wealthy individuals? Everybody?  The race for systems to defend against long range missiles has been going on since Reagan’s ill-fated “star wars” system, (expenses since 2010 are nearing 100 billion dollars) even though there seems to be a consensus that it is easier to build missiles  and decoys than shoot them down. Are we going to forever keep up this arms race, even though it becomes increasingly expensive and creates increasingly unusable products? And when will the makers of these life changing developments  realize that creativity needs to be balanced with control, and innovation with tradition and existing skills and knowledge in the public?.

 One short article in this report is entitled "The Language of the Internet of Things".  It is here. It speaks of a future in which devices increasingly communicate between each other, allowing helpful services like smoke alarms that would notify fire departments of the location and nature of the fire and automatically unlock doors, and appliances that would coordinate the various components of meals and deliver them at a pre- programmed time.

 The article speaks to the necessity of these Things speaking a common language.  Seems obvious.  But unfortunately, history and the present “information revolution” show a long period of competition before this happens.  Even now there are several separate groups of companies seeking to develop this language, but although they is cross talk among them, they are going their own way.  In fact, the final sentence of the article is “Given the huge variety of connected devices, and no doubt the desire of some firms to keep thing proprietary, it is possible that no single standard ever emerges”.

 Earlier in the article, the author speaks of the difficulty of deciding upon this language, partly due to the unknowable nature of future products.  A sentence that caught my attention in this discussion was “People have to get used to smart devices and installing regular software updates even, perhaps, for ovens”.

 It will be a cold day in hell before I install software updates for an oven.  In fact, I am not even sure I want my stove oven communicating with my microwave oven. Brilliant innovators in the digital world should worry a bit about how long the majority of people are going to put up with this continual “upgrading” that often obsoletes perfectly adequate software and hardware, and with the relatively trivial but annoying differences in hardware and software products from different venders that seek advantages in marketing and protection from patent-law suits.  As to yet another sentence in the article, “The real problem may turn out to be not a lack of standards, but too many—and disagreement over which initiative to pursue”. “Too many standards” is a complicated oxymoron and a situation that is presently wasting countless hours of people’s time in now relatively simple cases such as use of the computer.

 Clever individuals are bringing these technological options to us.  Are societies smart enough to demand that they improve the quality of life and free up time, rather than further complicating our existence?  

 

Doing vs. Watching

The Sunday edition of the New York Times usually has rather ho-hum articles on the front page, because they are probably prepared ahead of time so that the staff gets some break in their lives.  Predictably yesterday’s edition had an article about Congress, one about ISIS, one about gambling, and one about medicine.  But the main article definitely got me thinking.  The title was “Virtual Games Draw Real Crowds and Big Money”, by Nick Winfield.  I must admit I was oblivious to this major movement.  Turns out huge crowds are turning out to watch champion gamers compete on big screens—11,000 people filling Seattle’s basketball arena, 40,000 expected at a championship to be held in Korea.  And there is the TV audience—apparently more than 70 million people in the world watch “e-sports”, as gaming competitions are called.  A championship tournament last year attracted 8.5 million simultaneous viewers. As the article pointed out, this was the same number of viewers that watched the deciding game of the Stanley cup finals in hockey.  Prizes are large and celebrity awaits the champions.  Businesses are climbing on these events for advertising and sniffing profits.  If you haven’t been following this development, the article is here.

 I am familiar with the draw of computer games, since I have a step son who has spent years at Electronic Arts and grand kids who indeed love them. But strangely enough, I don’t seem to be attracted to them.  I like reality rather than virtuality.  I guess I am an extreme do-it-yourselfer.  I would rather do things poorly than watch others do them extremely well.  I  liked to play sports, even though I was never that good, more than watching the “pros”. I would rather make and repair things adequately rather than hire people who would do such things more rapidly, and perhaps better. And as a further complication, I prefer the outdoors to the indoors—odd for a professor.

 The N.Y.Times article discusses a champion gamer named Peter Dager and his environment as follows: “When not competing in front of thousands of people, Mr. Drager works from his childhood bedroom in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  At the small desk in the corner sit the tools of his trade, a computer with two displays, a webcam, a keyboard, and a mouse”  That is definitely not me.  My hobby of rescuing unloved heavy machinery requires much of my yard at home, a bit of a friend’s farm (barn and open space), piles of swell tools and materials,  loud cursing, forklifts, and such things as sunburn lotion, mosquito repellant, and occasional bandages.  I am starting to realize that my friends and I who do similar things are perhaps a vanishing species, but I like us. 

 I have always wanted a full life of various experiences, good friends, and accomplishments I could look back on with pride.  Oddly enough, although competitive, I have never wanted to be the best in the world at anything.  I look back happily at the way I have spent my time.  Dilletante?  Perhaps.  But the Times article has a short quote from Mr. Drager on how he reached the pinnacle of gaming: “What most people lack, he said, is a singular focus on games, a willingness to clear away all other distractions”.  Later—“I, and many players like me, sacrificed everything. We gave up on sports and friends and school just so that we can play more”.  Mr. Drager is apparently headed toward an income of $200,000 a year, but like most parents, his father wishes he would finish college.

 But selfishly, I have never wanted to sacrifice everything—especially sports, friends, and school— in order to play games.  And I sometimes worry about we homo sapiens spending more and more of our time “watching” instead of “doing”, I believe that as media becomes more powerful, and people in various parts of the world grow more affluent, there will be more and more powerful opportunities to experience life vicariously—television, travel tours, the internet, following the lives of celebrities. But is this consistent with the way we evolved?  We continue to do damage to ourselves (wars, violence) and nature still speaks out (earthquakes, tornados). Are we going to lose our ability to recover from such things?  Are we going to follow Rome and add lions and tridents to professional football?  If we are going to have gladiators, it is probably better to have them computer generated and presented over big screens.  But are we going to up the ante on  professional performers as a result?

 Enough of this.  The day is dawning and I will get busy on my mundane tasks.  In order to prevent nagging, when my wife wants me to do something, she puts my assignment on a post-it note and sticks it on the mirror I use while shaving.  When I can no longer see my reflection, the rules require I complete the task.  Today they read “put Formica on kitchen shelves over stove, fix fire-escape ladder, paint front and back porches, repair drain pipes in front, find a better home for TV and computer wires, fix screen door so it doesn’t bang, water orchids”  Straight forward common acts, but promising  a feeling of accomplishment when achieved.  Perhaps not as seductive as League of Legends, but the weather is nice, and I am capable of doing a high quality job on such things, and I should shave.  And since my wife is walking around the lake country in England with  a few of her friends, I can sneak away, work on my vintage orchard sprayer restoration, and cover myself with sweat, grease, and perhaps glory in the eyes of some beholders.