James L Adams—People and Products

Do It Yourself

Within the last week I have done the following things, none of them important to society in general.

1 . Cleared out our kitchen sink drain  – a long and dirty job in our 100  year old house, equipped with iron pipe and many right angle bends that do not like snakes.  The coagulated grease, garbage disposal residue, and other miscellaneous material clogged about 12 feet of this. (plumber)

2.  Solved a tricky problem in my wife’s car – would not start even though battery would turn the engine over (mechanic).

3.  Repainted a number of yard chairs- even though they could have been cheaply replaced (painter)

4.  Re-potted some plants – I am in charge of all cactus in our garden (gardener).

5.  Re-wired the lighting in my shop (electrician)

6.  Worked on another tractor I am restoring – (lots of skills needed)

 The media has been making much of the DIY (do it yourself movement), and I am a living example of a long-time member.  I  have enough money to hire people to do all of the above-mentioned work and more.  And in fact, for most of my life people (including my wife) have suggested to me that I should do so, because that would give me more time to do what in their mind they think I should be doing.  But I won’t, until I become too old to do it (my wife some time ago revoked my roofing license after I slipped with no safety line and almost came off of the three-story part of our house— I couldn’t argue with that one.)

 I won’t (can’t?) because I was brought up to do such things and I get great pleasure from doing and having done them.  I grew up in an area of small farmers, who although not considering themselves poor, did not have much cash.  It was routine to make and fix most things themselves, including houses,  yards, equipment, and so on.  I learned much about doing so as a kid, and added to that with my education and career as an engineer and engineering teacher.  I have good hands, know how to use them, and somehow find rewards in doing so —even unplugging the sink, and in fact, perhaps the more difficult the job, the greater pleasure I get from doing it.  My wife has somewhat the same instincts.  She is the sole proprietor of a large and complex garden and has no interest in hiring help to take care of it—perhaps because the gardeners retained by all of our neighbors, seem to have been overcome by machinery, with the result that surrounding gardens seem to all look freshly blown and mowed, and very similar to each other. Ours seems to be the only house that has leaves under the trees —a natural and attractive phenomenon.

 So it is not the money.  It is the satisfaction of doing the job well and having it done.  My very influential grandmother said it very well:  people who have homes, (gardens, automobiles, etc.) who don’t take care of them themselves do not deserve them.  Unlike  my grandmother, I don’t judge other people, but it certainly applies to me, even though Marian points out the seemingly long time (to her) it takes me to get such work done. But she is not very familiar with the hassle and delay of hiring other people, and can’t quite appreciate the importance to me of doing such seemingly mundane things myself, especially when I want her to steady the ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Wonderful One Hoss Shays

Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote a poem entitled “The wonderful One Hoss Shay”, about a shay (buggy) belonging to a minister, that when it finally failed, completely fell apart — all parts broke at once.  It is here. It was given quite a bit of notice when I was in engineering school, because one goal of designing a good product is to ensure that it does not contain weak components that cause early failures.  The last stanza of the poem is the punch line.

 The challenge to minimize weak components in a product is a worthy one, and my experience is that it is not receiving enough attention these days.  As an example, I have had problems the past few years with actuators (the components that convert electrical signals to mechanical outputs) in my cars.  Due to emphasis on reliability in the 1980’s and 1990’s, manufacturers have done a good job on the drive train (engines, transmissions, etc.) and body.  But cars have acquired more and more remote and automatic features.  The integrated circuits and wiring harnesses are quite reliable (until rats, mice, or squirrels chew on the wiring insulation— a common occurrence).  But many of the features (electrically operated door locks, windows, trunk lids, climate control systems, etc.) must at some point turn the electrical signals into a movement, and here the problem seems to lie. 

 A common way to perform this function is through a solenoid, a device that uses an electro-magnet to do the needed work.  But the last Ford pickup I owned had so many solenoid failures, typically in actuators that were difficult to replace, that I bought a Toyota because I could get one with old fashioned mechanical window cranks, door handles, and other features.  So far, so good, but as I write this I am feeling pressure because the front door lock actuator on my wife’s beloved Acura TSX has failed.  Viewing the internet and talking to a mechanic friend, I find that is not unique. Looking at a photo of one, I am not surprised, because the exterior is a very complex plastic injection molding, and I would bet that inside there is a plastic gear or two that has simply worn out.  But to replace this, I will either have to order a replacement from the internet and spend several hours cursing and dropping fasteners inside the door where they are difficult to retrieve, or take the car to a mechanic and give them several hundred dollars for doing so. 

 I was perhaps overly trained when I worked at JPL, since there are no mechanics in interplanetary space, so failures of components before the mission is complete are very bad news to everyone except the media. So attention is paid to all components to ensure that they will not fail and compromise the mission.

 I know from briefly working in the automobile business that the major components of automobiles are thoroughly life-tested for reliability, and much attention is paid to the design and manufacturing quality of them.  But how about things like door lock actuators?  Or if for some reason (cost or whatever) they are of shorter average life, how about making them easier to replace?  Instructions on how to do almost anything are on the internet, but how about ensuring their quality in the case of diagnosing and replacing components of complicated products that are likely to fail?  And how about having nuts and screw heads visible like in the old days with some attention to allowing the use of traditional tools,  rather than special plastic body panel removers, Torx-head drivers, and custom clips?  Arms with extra joints and tiny hands would help also, if maintenance is not better considered in design. 

The Engineer's Lament—Malcolm Gladwell

The May 4, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine contains an article by Malcolm Gladwell entitled The Engineer’s Lament,  with a sub title of Two Ways of Thinking About Automotive Safety.  It is here.

 Like many people, I am a fan of Gladwell, because he is both a terrific writer and capable of focusing on important and provocative topics. As an engineer, especially one who has witnessed controversies resulting from differences in the viewpoints of providers and consumers, I very much appreciated this article.

 My experiences have included working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratories during the early days of space exploration in which failures of the first Ranger missions were greeted with a Congressional Investigation; working at Stanford when a difference in viewpoints as to the purpose of overhead on government contracts lead to a Congressional Investigation; and working in a start up when differences in opinion between the founder and the venture capital firms as to the pricing of the product (help the needy or maximize profit) caused a great deal of strife.  In all cases, from my viewpoint as an engineer, the critical parties, although clearly trying to do good, just didn’t understand.  I am sure they returned the favor.  As a consultant, I have seen this situation occur time and time again both between and within organizations.

 Gladwell’s article is focused on the process of deciding whether or not automobiles should be recalled for reasons of safety.  Recent examples have included the recall of Toyota products because of potential “sticking” accelerators, recall of General Motors products because of ignition switch problems, and the older, but very significant recall of some 1.5 million Ford Pintos (suspected exploding gas tanks in rear-end collisions).    I am sure you saw the plentiful media coverage of at least the more recent ones. 

 From the point of view of the companies, and admittedly many if not most of the engineers,  the products delivered to the public are the best they can do within the monetary and time constraints demanded by competitive pressure.  Automobile companies (I briefly worked for one) are extremely sensitive to issues of safety because they are staffed by humans , aware of their large liability exposure, constantly challenged by the shortcomings of drivers, and brutally attacked by the media when one of their  components fails and kills innocent people.  But being part of one is also to be aware of the very large numbers of components in an automobile, the numbers of automobiles delivered in a year, and limited time to ensure that no “bugs” exist in the final product. After all, the Curiosity explorer now on the surface of Mars has proven to be an extremely reliable product, but required 12 years and 1.8 billion dollars to produce.  Granted that the environment it has been asked to survive is challenging, but so is that in which automobiles operate.  And engineers do not have 12 years and 1.8 billion dollars to develop a single automobile.

 Also, as Gladwell points out, the causes of automobile accidents are primarily due to such things as driver distraction (texting, talking, eating), alcohol, and poor skills, rather than automobile equipment failures.  But victims of such failures (and their eager attorneys) see things very differently.  Most people expect their equipment to be 100% reliable and safe, but not willing to accept the associated penalties.  As near as I can tell, at some level of complexity and change, people (and robots) will screw up and things will fail. But it is possible to improve the situation by striving for simplicity, spending more money, and taking the time to do more testing.  But we don’t want that.  We want spiffy new stuff now with more bells and whistles at low price.

 I am not putting Gladwells’ article in the “recommended book” column at the left of this page, but certainly would if it were a book.  The good news is that it takes much less time to read than a book, and a link to it is in the first paragraph of this post. And it touches on a critical problem where product quality is concerned. Take a look at it. My wife loved the engineer jokes.

 

 

 

 

Sherry Turkle and Alone Together

Sherry Turkle, an excellent writer, is a clinical psychologist and a professor at M.I.T. and has spent her career examining the effects of technology on society.  She has written three books focusing on computers, the first, The Second Self, written in 1984, was dedicated to the interaction of computers and people.  The second, Life on the Screen, was written ten years later and devoted to the use of the computer to form online identities. Both were quite positive about the potential of the computer to help us develop.  Her last one, Alone Together, subtitled Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. was published in 2011, when her daughter was in college, and shows much more worry about the effects of computers on us, particularly on the young.

 Her research subjects for this book ranged from young children through college students, and being a social scientist, she interviewed and interacted with a large number of them. Her findings and associated information about trends in computer application are covered in the very readable book.  I read it when it was first published, but I just re-read it, and found it even more thought provoking, perhaps because my grandchildren now range from 3 years to 17 in age, and I have been able to compare the effects of computers on them with that of my own children, and on my brother and me — three generations of drastically different usage.

 The first section of Turkle’s book talks of robots – computers and computer controlled devices intended not only to serve us, but to evoke emotions in us.  A sizeable business exists in computer controlled toys for both children and adults that do so, ranging from simple toys such as Tamagotchis, Furbies, My Real Babies, AIBO’s,  and Paro’s through the much more “human” appearing and acting products being experimented with at places such as M.I.T.  Turkle discusses the ethical and practical issues associated with machines designed and built to stimulate love and other emotions in humans through such mechanisms as neediness, communication, and aesthetic appeal.  She delves into such issues as their use in caring for and interacting with the aged in nursing homes and with children.  In the case of providing companionship for lonely elders, she points out the value in providing them with something to love and care for, but also questions as to why real humans are not doing this instead. She also responds to an apparent increase in desire for robotic mates on the part of extreme computer believers, by pointing out that robots themselves have no emotions and even though they may seem to love you, they do not care for you at all.

 The second section is about communication and interaction over the internet, and nicely overlaps the first, since although they do not have three dimensional bodies, there is certainly an essence of robot in the avatars we design for ourselves in many games and in the role that social networking can play in our lives.

 Turkle goes into great detail on the positives and negatives of internet communications, and in her usual style tells many stories, good and bad, as examples of what is happening.  Since I still mix with college students, it has been interesting to me to see the progression from telephoning to e-mail to instant messaging to texting.  What next?  More and more messaging of shorter and shallower character?  She tells stories of students texting each of their “friends” 20 times a day and staying away from telephone conversations for fear that they will let their friends know more about them than they would like;  of  hurt feelings and misinterpretations; of overly controlling parents; of treating people more like things and things more like people;  and finally of the tremendous amount of time and energy devoted to social networking.

 When our children were young, my wife liked  the analogy of tree people and phone people.  When tree people had problems, they would climb a tree and try to figure out what to do to solve them.  When phone people had problems, they would instantly get on a phone and call their friends to discuss them.  Now it seem we have progressed past phone people to tweet/text people, and trying to communicate with more and more people by saying as little as possible. Why do we seem drifting toward huge quantities of shallow statements? Is a sound bite mentality the natural defense to a surplus of information?

 In the March issue of The Atlantic magazine, there was an excellent article by Graeme Wood entitled What ISIS Really wants.  We subscribe to The Atlantic, and I had read the article, which was very thoughtful.  But in the May issue, they printed several reader responses, and then, to my amusement they put in a “Tweet of the Month”, which was “Disagree w.parts, but @gcaw’s new Atlantic essay on ISIS is the rare, genuine must-read. I felt challenged, even provoked, through it all”.   The tweet was from @shadihamid, who is a Brookings Institute Fellow, and undoubtedly an expert in this area.  But was I not a subscriber to The Atlantic, and even if I was and had not read the article, Mr. Hamid’s tweet (if I read it, which would have been unlikely) would probably not have convinced me to.  Granted that he is good at restricting himself to 140 characters, I would bet he deserves a few more, and if he had them could convince more people to read the article.

If  you have not read Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together, I recommend it highly.  It is even more pertinent than it was when she wrote it.  If you did read it when it was published, you might find it interesting to read it again.