James L Adams—People and Products

Potential Good News for Lots of People

Most people, especially males, suffer loss of hearing as they age. This is a much larger problem than our society admits. Helen Keller, a woman who lost her hearing and sight at the age of two, and became well known for her ability to overcome these handicaps, claimed that given a choice between one or the other, she would prefer to be blind. A famous quote from her was “Blindness separates people from things: deafness separates people from people”. I have known outstanding teachers who retired because they felt separated from their students, and business people who felt separated from their clients.   I am fortunate in having so far retained my hearing ability , but at my age I am surrounded by people having mild to serious problems engaging in everything from meetings to casual social conversation.

As the two New York Times articles here, and here indicate, this is a widespread problem that will become more severe as populations age. Hearing aids have improved markedly over time, but only a fraction of the people who could benefit from them own one, for reasons ranging from cost to “looking old”. They also can be uncomfortable to wear and have short battery lives. Cost is probably primary, since the top of the line instruments can cost thousands of dollars, partly because of the archaic process needed to obtain one in countries such as the U.S.

In this day and age of technological wonders, especially the shrinkage in cost and size of electronic devices, this should definitely not be the case. But from these articles it looks as though there is hope. If some of the research and development money and talent going into the design of apps, trivial changes in operating systems, “smart watches”, and such things as autonomous cars could be spent on making better, cheaper hearing aids, a very large number of people could remain happily much more engaged in a full life.

The odd thing about this situation is that it seems that hearing aids could be rather easily matched to potential customers by use of tests administered by a computer coupled with a bit of fitting to the geometry of the potential customer’s ears. To throw a medical procedure into the mix without the coverage of insurance seems absurd. But from my own experience being involved in a start-up based on a potentially cheap serum-based test for allergies, I am not naïve about the difficulty of changing tradition. But in this case we are talking about large numbers of people who could be benefited by some of innovation both in the design and the distribution of hearing aids. I read an article about Facebook’s pressure on computer companies to either reduce the cost of the equipment needed to do social networking by a factor of ten, or to make it operate ten times as fast. How about reducing the cost of obtaining a hearing aid by a factor of ten and ensuring that they all have re-chargeable batteries?

Thinking About Science, Technology, and Society

I had the privilege of chairing the Stanford University program in Science, Technology, and Society (S.T.S) for five years in the 1980’s. I was talked into this by the then president and provost of the university, so had some clout, and was able to push a couple of degree programs through the academic senate, raise some money, hire some people, and think much more deeply about the subject matter than I had before. If you are not familiar with such programs, as the name indicates the subject matter is the interaction of these three broad areas, and there are on the order of 100 such programs existing in universities throughout the world (see this link).

I found that there is resistance to such thinking and such programs at many levels and for many reasons. At Stanford, for instance, there are many majors in both the A.B. and B.S. tracks in the S.T.S. program (begun in 1970 by four professors, two in engineering, one in philosophy, and one in religion), but the program is underfunded and understaffed. There are presently 38 faculty members listed as participants, but their appointments (and salaries and often their hearts) are in other departments, And S.T.S. work is highly interdisciplinary, and although interdisciplinary work is in vogue these days in universities, such things as hiring, promotion, and tenure tend to be judged based on traditional disciplines. As a non-Stanford example of the effect of this, in the 1980’s Jerome Wiesner, a man of outstanding accomplishments in government as well as academe, was president of M.I.T., and attempted to establish a whole S.T.S school. An excellent idea. But the faculty turned against this, I think partly because it threatened traditional disciplines.  And to some people, thinking broadly, and especially negatively,  about the nature and usage of science and technology is almost sacrilegious.

In countries such as the U.S. the directions of technology, and even science, are heavily influenced by such things as financial profit and war. Granted, there is tremendous satisfaction in working in the areas, and the results make for exciting media and discussion, but the fit between new science and technology and the quality of human life does not get adequate discussion. If you look at the discussion of S.T.S programs on Wikipedia here (not the best in the world) you can see some of the problems that we should think about more, but do not. One example is the old “tragedy of the commons”, which has to do with the loss in supply and quality of necessary resources if they are free. The original example was free grazing on the town commons. Present examples include using the environment including the atmosphere as a dump, the supply of fresh water, and the internet. Another set or problems comes from what is sometimes called technological determinism. Examples abound, such as the oft-heard comment that “technology must be fed”. Always?

We western cultures are loath to thoughtfully criticize technological developments. Do we really want a sky full of drones delivering packages? Do we really want driverless cars? Certainly we are learning a lot in our attempt to control them, but cars? It seems that traffic problems are due to the large and clumsy nature of individually over powered luxury packages as well as drivers. How about the present activities in the U.S, Russia, and China to develop smaller and faster nuclear weapons? Many years ago nuclear artillery shells were being developed, but people realized that it would not be a good idea to scale nuclear weapons down so they seemed more usable. Is it now a better idea?  We are thinking a bit about CRISPR/Cas9 DNA technology (put it into your browser), but we will undoubtedly forge ahead. Are we smart enough to improve ourselves through DNA technology?

I was motivated to write this blob by an article in the April 16-22^nd edition of The Economist, concerning the decision of Yuri Milner, ((a Russian physicist and investor who intends to spend $100 million on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)), to spend another $100 million on a Laser propelled star ship. I am not criticizing Mr. Milner, since it is his money and he can spend it how he wants and his projects are literally “out there” definitely technologically advanced, and make for good media, but wow! His proposed star ship will tentatively be powered by 10 million 10 kilowatt lasers on earth combined into one 100 gigawatt beam, and reach the planets around other stars in decades rather than hundreds of thousands of years. The catch is that the spacecraft must weigh on the order of one gram. Possible? Read all about it here. But what do you think of it as an expenditure of resources? I wonder whether the wealthy are coming down with Elon Musk envy? But Musk is an idealist and in my opinion getting us to expect zero emission vehicles and re-usable rockets is of more benefit than one gram spacecraft.

I worked on the first lunar and planetary spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the later 1950’s and 60’s, and an early and influential SETI study supervised by Barney Oliver, a pioneer in the effort, was funded by a NASA contract I had in the 1960’s, so I am familiar with the origin of such efforts. And as I said, I believe that the wealthy should spend their money how they choose, but when it comes to government money, shouldn’t we have a bit more discussion? Certainly those involved in such things as SETI have discussed the downsides and upsides of detecting extraterrestrial intelligence, but shouldn’t there be more discussion by the public? We will probably send people to Mars, but it has been proven to be an awful place and will cost a lot of money, even though it will be a real adventure for those few who go, as well as a vicarious one for the rest of us. But is that the best way to spend the money, when there are so many useful things that could be accomplished here on earth?

I am certainly not against science and technology, and in fact lead a wonderful and exciting life by being part of them, but I see their purpose as improving the human condition, and what we are capable of doing is not always something that we should do. My years in the S.T.S program changed my life, and perhaps made me less valuable as a contributor to science and technology, but I have definitely come to think that in many situations we should think more before we leap, and perhaps even more while we are leaping.

Recycling and Deposits

There was a small article in the magazine section of the April 10, 2016 New York Times, which caught my attention. The title is How to Make Money Collecting Bottles and Cans, by Malia Wollan. It is here. Read it, it will make you feel good. It is an interview with Eugene Gadsden, who describes himself as a “canner”. In it, he gives good advice on how to follow his trade. Two of my favorite pearls of wisdom are the advice to find a shopping cart “that rolls smoothly and fits your stature and style”, and “In the beginning, prepare to feel ashamed, humiliated People might yell at you………..Don’t listen, hold your head up, you’re not hurting anybody, It’s honest work.” Gadsden claims in a typical night (1 a.m. to 7 a.m.) to collect on the order of 1000 containers, worth $50 or so in New York City.

One reason that it caught my attention is that it was the way I made money until I was old enough to mow lawns. I had my chores to do, but my parents encouraged me to also earn money to buy necessities such as candy and comic books. Since I lived in the country, there was no garbage service, and in those days (1940’s or so) , not much waste. Food left overs were fed to the cats and dogs, organic garbage went into the grove to be plowed in, bent nails and wire were straightened, cans were either used as is, or flattened for various purposes, and bottles and jars became repositories for small objects or preserves.

Items that could not be used that were flammable were burnt, and anything that was left could be put into the town dump, which was simply an unused ten acre plot. But there was one exception.

In those times, people would throw trash out of car windows, and the population was low enough and the prevailing wind strong enough that it would disappear over time. The one exception was glass bottles. Since roads were narrow, and trees close to the edge, many of them would end up under the nearest trees. But there were also bottles discarded by the orange picking crews, and people such as my father, who were always out patrolling their crops. At that time many bottles were recycled, and often by kids such as me. The economics were attractive to us, although less so to the adults who threw them away. One of the phenomenal marketing stories is that of Coca Cola. The company sold the syrup to bottlers, soda fountains, etc., and they wanted to sell as much as they could. In order to do this they convinced their customers to sell the drink (the syrup and soda water) for five cents a glass (or bottle). This lasted from 1886 to 1959 – some 70 years. The results are apparent today in the presence of the drink all over the world. But the bottles were rather fancy (photo at the left), and heavy, since they were meant to be re-used (the best type of re-cycling). There was therefore a two cent deposit on each.

In most states, there is still a deposit on many bottles, but it is so small in comparison to the cost of the drink (often still 2 cents, or 5 cents), that many people toss their used bottles into the trash can, or in enlightened areas, the re-cycling bin. But two cents was a hot deal to a kid in the 40’s, since it would buy a candy bar, or one fifth of a comic book.

So I hunted bottles and gave them to my mother, who would take them to the grocery store, and bring the cash back to me. The bottles would then go back to the bottling plant in San Bernardino, be washed and steam cleaned, filled, capped, and sent out into the world again. So I made what seemed to be lots of money collecting bottles, the bottling company got them back, and the grove (and those of all our neighbors who did not have kids) stayed clean. I was a young Eugene Gadsden.

I now live in an enlightened area that puts much effort into recycling various products, and it is somewhat successful. But we have three bins, one for yard waste, one for recycled plastics, paper, and metal, and one for garbage. They are emptied into giant trucks each week. The trucks have large automatic arms that pick up the bins, empty them into the truck, and then bang them a few times to make sure that they are empty before returning them to the ground. In the process, they make a lot of noise and exhaust fumes, and block traffic. Not too long ago there were humans with smaller trucks who emptied the bins, but they have been replaced by these large mechanical monsters. There is still a driver, but that too will probably go in a few years. How about autonomous garbage trucks? And they make a separate pass to pick up each bin, thereby competing with the leaf blowers during the day,

And of course, re-cyclable material still ends up in the garbage can, plastic in the paper section of the appropriate bin, etcetera. The result is a noisier, less complete, and more costly way of getting rid of trash than bribing kids to take at least some of it to the grocery store. That approach is good enough to get quite a few adults to take their aluminum cans in, which is good, because aluminum is a most re-cyclable material.

In my coke bottle days, the deposit was two sevenths of the buying price. I just bought a bottle of tomato juice that cost $4.50. Two sevenths of that would be about $1.30. For that I would have definitely taken the bottle somewhere, or even re-sorted my bottles. But I just tossed it into our re-cycle bin, and since it was probably non-biodegradable plastic, and different plastics don’t like to be mixed, it will probably end up living forever in a landfill.

Product Quality and Serviceability

I have several small machines (chain saw, hedge shears, blower, weed whacker) powered by gas engines that no longer work.  For  some time I have intended to go through them and heal their problems, but I keep postponing this, so I made a vow a few days ago that yesterday (a Sunday), I would work on them. But I didn’t. Instead I spent the day happily working on a non-working old tractor I own. It is a late 1920’s Cletrac that has not been run for many years, during which it was rained on enough to develop the nicest uniform coat of rust I have ever seen, and through lack of use was terminally gummed up.    

The small machines, after I repair them, will be immediately useful in the garden. The tractor will not be—in fact it does not even fit in the yard. The small machines will help my wife in her gardening, and will make her happy, even though she hates the sound of small gas engines (as do I – we won’t be pleased when the air is filled with drones). The tractor will not help her. What is with me?

Partly it has to do with when, where, and how I grew up. My parents and great grandparents went through the Great Depression scraping out a living on a small orange orchard plus outside jobs in Southern California, which at the time was occupied by many people doing the same thing. Because of this, no one considered themselves poor, and in fact in terms of satisfaction in life they weren’t, but people made what they could, bought the minimum of what they couldn’t, and repaired everything to the point where many of their possessions they built and maintained are still being employed by my brother, my children and I, including a house they built of materials such as siding from no longer used freight cars and shingles made from old orange boxes (nice house in great shape still lived in by my brother). The reigning ethic was never to throw anything away (hours spent straightening bent nails and bailing wire) and repair anything that broke. I can still hear the voice of my grandmother, sounding like the wrath of God, saying “If you can’t take care of it, you don’t deserve it!

I grew up in the middle of this, and somehow came to love making and fixing things and generally tinkering with them. Probably why I became an engineer and was attracted to hobbies that involve such activities. But I have not been able to escape wondering why these activities seem to appeal to some people (me), and not to others (my wife), and why some of them are more fun for me  than others . For instance, in the case of the tractor vs. the yard machines I can think of several reasons . First of all, to me it is more of an accomplishment to rescue something that is rusted together and hasn’t worked for years, than simply diagnose and repair something fairly new. Secondly, I find older objects, with their history, different ways of accomplishing their function (and often with great aesthetic appeal overall and in their parts), sometimes more interesting than contemporary ones. And strangely enough, the task is often easier.

Why easier? Farmers were the main purchasers of tractors and other such products and they had spare time to maintain them when the weather didn’t allow them to work directly on their crops. They demanded serviceability. As mentioned they often didn’t have enough cash to hire other people to maintain their products. They often liked to work on machinery. And in those days tractors were designed to be assembled in the factory more by hand, rather than by machines, so they were designed to be worked on by humans. Finally, they were less sophisticated technically (no digital circuitry) and manufacturing technology  did not allow the complexity that one finds in such things as modern multi-functional injection molded plastic parts

As a result, the Cletrac is relatively simple to take apart (few fastener types and not that many of them), understand, diagnose, and put back together. A couple of photos might help make the message, even though they are a bit confusing. The first one on the left shows shows my tractor minus its sheet metal parts and a large casting that covers the clutch, gear train, brakes, etc. Stripping it down to that level, despite the rust, took little time and was straightforward. Note the resulting easy access to the various components, compared to access of similar parts in an automobile. The photo on the right below is a close up of the components of the drive train —the differential, the transmission, and the brakes— at the same stage. If you are not familiar with such things, they are beautifully explained on the internet. But take my word for the fact that in old tractors like the Cletrac they are easy to reach and identify, and only a few standard tools are needed for further disassembly and repair, And as you may be able to see, one can work on these things without cranes, special tools, grease pits, or lying on the ground under the machine. Granted the parts are dirty and one becomes so also, but the dirt is easily removable (except perhaps under the fingernails, but dirty fingernails show that one is doing useful work).

The blower could be called more sophisticated, but although cleaner, and with smaller lighter parts, taking it apart and diagnosing what is wrong with it, finding the necessary parts, and putting it back together will be much less fun. Even the meager instructions are less intuitive. One dead giveaway to complexity and strange  fasteners is the phrase “Service on the blower must be performed by qualified repair personnel only”. Another is “Using a Torx screwdriver to….” I would bet that most people buying this sort of product do not own a set of Torx screwdrivers.

It is easy to tell the difference in what is often called serviceability with respect to the tractor and the blower by looking at the manuals that came with each. The blower manual mainly consists of instructions on how to operate it (should be obvious by looking at a good product), warnings about safety, various notices obviously for the purpose of avoiding lawsuits, a full page of exemptions from the warranty, and notices such as “if these solutions do not solve the problem, contact your authorized service dealer”. I happen to have copies of the Instruction Manual and Parts Manual that came with the tractor, and they represent the opposite end of the spectrum. The Instruction Manual spends a bit of time on the tractor operation, but then goes into the details of each sub-assembly of the tractor, how to assemble and disassemble it, and how to maintain it including beautiful drawings. The Parts Manual offers drawings of each part in various exploded views along with part numbers. Neither has warnings about safety, pleas to contact the dealer if anything goes wrong, or statements of how wonderful the product is.  And certainly not instructions to rely on “qualified repair personnel only”. The photo below shows two pages from the Cletrac Instruction Manual as an example. They show a portion of the undercarriage of the tractor and accompany a detailed discussion of how to test the assembly, take it apart, replace parts of necessary, and put it back together.

As I said in a previous post, serviceability is one of the central components of product quality. I am afraid we have lost a great deal of that as products have become more complex and difficult to understand. Or possibly we are considered (are becoming) less capable of taking care of our products. Or lost interest in doing so —throw it away and get a new one (as in "Oh goody, now I can get  a 6S plus with 64 gigs "). Or looking at it more positively, perhaps we would rather outsource the service function to specialists, thus creating more jobs for skilled workers. Maybe I should un-retire and fix things for money for other people instead of working on my own stuff. But then  my grandmother’s voice would be even louder. 

And I will fix the blower tomorrow.