James L Adams—People and Products

Hello Again

Blog Restart:

I took a bit more time off from writing posts than I thought I would. The last one, announcing that I planned to do so in order to do some thinking, reading, and some work with my hands, was in March of this year. Here we are in November, and here I am again. As I will show you in future blogs, I definitely have done work with my hands.

I have been retired from active duty on the Stanford University faculty for 18 years, and am now 83 years old. I am amazed, and quite pleased to still be alive, because when I was born, the life expectancy for males in the U.S. was 59 years. And my interests seem to still be out of control, with the result that they have changed a bit recently. I am still interested in product quality, creativity and innovation, engineering and technology, business, and all of those good things. But the past year has been eventful, to say the least, including phenomena reaching from Trump to drones, and jihad to crispr-cas9.

In particular, I have become increasingly interested in what brain researchers and cognitive psychologists have been up to, and how that new knowledge helps explain we Homo Sapiens Sapiens (wise wise people) a bit better. As to what I am thinking, we should be calling ourselves Homo Demi Sapiens (half wise people) rather than believing that we can find answers to increasingly complex problems and increasing expectations that please everyone. I am even working on a book with the title of Homo Demi Sapiens.

But I am not yet exercising the degree of curmudgeonishness (how do you like that for a new word) that my age entitles me to.

Unsurprisingly, I am particularly interested in what we are doing to ourselves with the present relatively rapid changes in technology, and with overall rapid change (or at least our attempts to do so. My interests in creativity and innovation began many years ago with an attempt to better understand such things in individuals. But then I was swept along by expanding attention paid to creativity and innovation in groups, probably stimulated in the U.S. by Japan’s successful use of groups who were producing automobiles and electronics products that were giving us a run for the money. Then I became interested in creativity and innovation in organizations, especially as it is affected by growth and success. But then I really bit the bullet and began to try to understand creativity and change in very large groups of people, such as nations. cultures, and religions.

Here we run into some real barriers. I am a firm believer in evolution (which may make some of you less eager to read what I write). It is a slow process, and to the extent that we have deep beliefs, skills, and desires, they do not easily or rapidly change. I recently gave a talk to a 50^th reunion of a Stanford Business School class on change. In that talk I discussed with them 15 aspects of humans that were probably of value before the Neolithic Revolution, when we were hunter gatherers, relatively few in number, and living in tribes. Now they seem to be getting us into trouble Examples are:

1. We focus on the short term
2. We are tribal
3. We like others to think like we do
4. We want simple answers to complicated problems
5. We depend on faith and defend it viciously
6. We ignore expertise if we do not like what it says

And so on.

I was a bit worried when I gave the talk, but to my pleasure they became deeply engaged in the topic. There will be some of that in my posts.

Also I have reading a great deal about what’s going on in brain research that gives new insight to my old friends creativity and change. One book I wholeheartedly recommend is The Undoing Project – A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (W.W.Norton, by Michael Lewis. It is the story of the partnership of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Israelis who have made a huge impact on our understanding of thinking and problem solving —Kahneman (author of the popular book Thinking Fast and Slow) to go on to recently win the Nobel Prize in Economics, even though he is a psychologist. Not only is the story well worth reading, it is beautifully written. Lewis has written books such as Flash Boys, The big Short, Money Ball, and Liar’s Poker. and to my mind is the best there is at explaining complicated concepts to a lay audience.

The other is Behave – The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst(Penguin Press) by Robert M. Sapolsky , a Professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, an incredible teacher, a true polymath, and a proven outstanding writer (A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble With Testosterone, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers). He has studied everything from baboons to neurons, and is outstanding at explaining broad subjects (such as behavior) from many angles. This book is more technical than Lewis’s book, but is fun to read because of Sapolsky’s writing style and humor. His book is organized starting with the small and fast moving (neurons to the large and slow (Cultures) . And his empathy for the reader is unmatched. When one is tempted to quit reading because the content is becoming overly technical, he will often put in a foot-note advising the reader to continue because the discussion of that particular material is almost over, or before the content becomes difficult, warn the reader that it is for the very motivated and not needed to understand the rest of the book. My favorite foot-note referenced a truly difficult to read paragraph. It read “I have no idea what it is that I just wrote”.

One of the reasons I was so pleased to find Sapolsky’s book, is that I have been very interested in the brain and behavior for many years, and the book draws it all together from the viewpoint of many disciplines and many levels. It is not the easiest book I have ever read, but I read it twice and am in the process of going through it a third time. That, from me, is a very high recommendation.

More information on the books in recommended books column

 

 

New Venture

I seem to have written posts for this blog for over 5 years (over 300 of them). I began the blog to discuss product quality, since it is as topic that has always interested me, and after a heroic and successful effort in the U.S. to improve manufacturing quality (which of course reflects on overall product quality), industry drifted off into other traditional directions (profit, grow-the-organization, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, the manufacturing quality goals were nicely described in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to such critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human users. It is also mentioned in my last post, and discussed at more length earlier in the blog.

 I wrote my book partly as a text that I used to teach a course in the Stanford Engineering school (Good Products, Bad Products), that was taken over by Professor Dave Beach when I retired, who did a wonderful job with it until last year, when the course too was retired. The book suffered from lack of publicity, and perhaps a decreased interest in product quality in the U.S. Surprisingly (or not), although the book’s sales in the U.S. have been disappointing, it is doing much better in India, China, South Korea, and Japan —countries that perhaps are presently more sensitive to the value of quality in products. After all, it was Japan that awakened us in the 1970’s and 80’s. China, India, and South Korea are coming up fast.

But over the years, I also wrote posts on subjects I was also thinking about which ranged from the fit between the directions of technology and people, the joy of working with the hands, engineering, management, and so on.

I never sought wide distribution of these posts, as I wrote them to force myself to think more deeply about my areas of interest, and I did not want to become involved in a full-fledged conversation with large numbers of people, although the responses to my posts were thoughtful and flattering. But now I have been talked into a project that sounds difficult, but worth doing, by Tim Keely, a friend of mine who is an IT person of amazing talent at Stanford. The project is for me to go through these posts, pick the ones I think are the best, organize them, edit them, and allow him to make an e-book (or several) from them. I am going to try.

This will make my posts even fewer in number and perhaps more wandering in nature as I come up with new thoughts for the book(s), but I am looking forward to the attempt and hope you will bear with me. I will continue to write posts when I need more material for this project, or when I can’t bear not to —like commenting on ridiculous wastes of technology and money such as Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border, which hopefully will never happen, but should it, will set an all time record for lack of overall product quality.

So wish me luck. I’ll post progress reports as I go.

2016 Christmas books

As I told you in my last post, I received a ton of books for Christmas and am going through them as fast as I can. But this is a report on one of them that is particularly pertinent to this blog, and one that is good for one’s perspective.

The first is Thank You for Being Late, subtitled An Optimist’s Guide to thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman (Farrar,Straus, and Giroux, NY, 2016). If you don’t read Friedman’s books, you should, because they are current, beautifully researched and referenced, and both entertaining and educational. He has spent his life as a journalist, columnist, and book author, heavily in the Mid East (he majored in Arabic in college) and Washington D.C., and has a strong interest in technology and economics, although he spent the last portion of this book extolling the virtues of growing up in a middle class family in Minnesota.

In this book Friedman makes a good case for the fact that technology is accelerating, and we are having trouble keeping up with it. Friedman’s writings includes a large amount of comments from interviews and interactions with people ranging from exalted to victimized, and his title stems from a point in his life a few years ago when he changed from being annoyed by people being late to meetings, to thankful because this gave him a few minutes to think and relax. He has a deep interest in the “digital revolution”, and does an excellent job of describing what it is doing to us, for good as well as evil. He ends by extolling the virtues of units smaller than national governments (he too thinks the U.S. government no longer is covering the bases, partly due to increasing population, expectations, and complexity, and partly because change is occurring at a rate greater than populations, especially large ones, can cope with. His answer is multi-directional, and includes such things as more education and thinking about what is going on, but includes his argument for more action from smaller units (not only states and cities, but parts of cities). A lot of such feelings are going around, but not usually discussed with the breadth that Friedman has.

The other book is entitled I Contain Multitudes, sub titled The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong Harper Collins NT, 2016, also beautifully written and researched, and entertaining as well as educational. It is well worth reading when one looks in the mirror and thinks that what one sees is the center of the world, a member of your culture, your family, or even you

I was an undergraduate at Caltech many years ago, and it was run by physicists, who were then receiving most or the press. As an engineering major, I  definitely did not feel in the front line, and in fact at one point was honored by being asked to visit the president (a physicist), whose agenda was to point out that my grades were quite high and had I considered switching my major to Physics. I had not. But I was flattered.

It has swung to more and more interest in the life sciences and lately has been consumed with what is called the microbiome—the microbes within the body, which number in the trillions (more than the “human” cells we have), and outnumber us in total DNA. I have received so much mention of these in the alumni mail and general media, that I consider myself as a life support system for these microbes, rather than what I used to think of myself (a large single entity). As the book points out, at one point we used to think of these microbes as bad germs, thanks to discoveries of people like Lister and Fleming , and that the goal was to get rid of them all. Consider the modern hospital. And in fact some of them are dangerous, and we have served ourselves well by our attention to getting rid of them. But as you may have been reading, we just may have gone too far. I recently had a bad experience with a bad G.I. microbe, which was finally controlled by a large dose of the drug we know so well that we call it “Cipro”, As those of you know who have gone through this experience know, the Cipro kills the bad bug, but also many, if not most, of the microbes that we need to digest food.

There is presently an evil bug called c-diff moving into the U.S. that likes to take over our G.I. tract while it is in its weakened shape from Cipro, requiring a different drug called Flagyl etc.etc.etc   This approach can eventually lead to death. As my Caltech mags and the media keep telling us, the answer is to quickly re-plant the various necessary microbes in the G.I. tract (there are many varieties, so just yogurt won’t do it). Where is a good source? Heard of the fecal transplant?) So far our overly toilet trained society can’t deal with it (some people call it it a “shit enema”) so we are willing to lose innocent people. But this is the tip of the iceberg. The balance of microbes in our body is being thought more and more to be the key to health, and imbalances responsible for many presently untreatable diseases.

You may know all about it (I thought I knew quite a bit until I read this book), but you will like the book anyway—and go away with a much more realistic self-image.

Happy (hectic?) holidays

I am behind on posts, but Christmas season becomes more and more of a big deal for us.  Marian loves it, has collected Christmas decorations ever since I have known her, and now covers the house with them. It is also the time of many parties and visiting friends.  In addition our family continues to grow and appears in our house Christmas Eve and Day.  But it is wonderful, even though it pretty much consumes us. 

Marian and I are compulsive book readers, and give each other many of them for Christmas, so we will also be consumed by them for the next few weeks.  In addition, as I mentioned in a previous post, I made Marian a take-some-leave-some book box to put in front of our house, because we were acquiring books at an unsustainable rate.  But it backfired, since people leave more than they take.  But we are fortunate in that they seem to have similar taste to us, so we are looking forward to the post-Christmas influx from that source.  I'll give you my reactions as I read them. 

Meanwhile, our Holiday card, with family,  is below.  Incidentally, I used to work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,  and keep up with what is going on there, and Mars is expensive to get to and definitely not a fun place. Better to visit via Photoshop.

Swell Book —The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough

Sorry to be lagging in writing posts, but I am catching up on my reading. I just finished a wonderful book by David McCullough, one of my favorite writers, entitled The Wright Brothers (Simon and Schuster, 2015). He is not only an outstanding story teller, but an amazing researcher, although I expect he has help in his research because he typically gives credit to several people in the Library of Congress. But having won two Pulitzer prizes and twice received the National Book Award, he probably deserves it.

This book is an in depth look at the Wright brothers (Wilbur and Orville— there were two other brothers and a sister Katherine , who became a major supporter and cheer leader), their successful quest for flight, and their friends, family, and others who supported them, as well as those who competed with them. It is an American success story, and, in fact, after they became world famous and people would ask them how they did so, they would tell people to grow up in Ohio in a good family.

The difficulties they overcame were many, including Orville killing his passenger and almost himself in a demonstration flight.   People had wanted to fly like birds for most of recorded history, and at the time of the Wright brother’s effort, there were many people (Lillienthal, Moullard, Chanute, Langley, Cayley, Maxim, Bell, Edison) who were working on the problem, and many people applying for patents on flying machines, most so outrageous that they became a mainstay of humor, but the majority of people in the world simply felt that humans were not meant to fly, and those seeking the ability were perhaps a bit nuts. In the midst of this, the Wright brothers, by then proprietors of a bicycle shop, quietly set about to solve the problem—no wealth, no government support, no college, no brilliant insight, no desire to become rich and famous, just an obsession for flight and long hours of hard work. I could somewhat identify with them, because their life was somewhat like my grandmother prescribed, when sayings such as “the devil finds work for idle hands” and “people who don’t take care of their (garden, farm, horse, house, truck, etc) don’t deserve one” abounded and were laid on kids like me who were found lying in the sun. In fact their very supportive father was a minister, and later a bishop in their church.

I also identified with their ability to work with their hands as well as their mind. There is a quote in the book by a local resident after they built their “home” on Kitty Hawk, a desolate area far from Dayton chosen because of its constant wind. which is “They could do anything they put their hands to. They built their own camp, they took an old carbide can and made a stove of it; they took a bicycle and geared the thing up so that they cold ride it on the sand. They did their own cooking and washing and they were good cooks too.” My kind of guys (although my wife faults me on washing, but hey California is in a drought).

But not only were they wonderful people, but from an engineering standpoint they did everything right, even though not educated as engineers.  There was little usable theory, but they learned what existed and what had been tried, and started from there. Their competitors in the world were trying to concoct theory and arguing with each other, but only making simple fairly uncontrollable unpowered kites and gliders and flying them very little. The Wright Brothers started with a kite, gradually improved it until it could carry them, and flew in the result as much as possible. They continued after they added an engine, built from scratch in a short period by Charlie Taylor, a mechanic friend of the Wrights. The engine added a series of failures, but the process of fixing the problems, improving the machine, and flying continued, in spite of minor and major crashes and other setbacks. This constant testing and improving reminded me of my days working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, because that is how wonders such as the Curiosity Martian Rover are produced. And a major advantage that the Wright Brothers had on December 17^th, 1903, when they made their famous flight (actually they made four of them that day, the last one some 850 feet), was their skill at flying, because each of them had spent many days learning to control their primitive machines and a total of four years achieving this goal.

This experience and  approach to testing and improvement made extending the range of Wright “flying machines” straight forward, so that five years later, the brothers won the newly-minted Michelin Cup with a flight of 2 hours and 20 minutes. They were, by then, touring the world, flying all day to the delight of massive crowds, and taking royalty for rides. They did become rich and famous, but because they wanted to fly like birds, not because they particularly wanted to be rich and famous (although they didn’t mind being in that category.)

It is a feel good book, shedding light on how one of the many advances in technology in the early 20^th century happened, and how many still do —through dogged determination and evolution rather than from one brilliant idea.  The only thing that depressed me about the book was how much better McCullough can write than I can.

U.S. Growth in the Future

I am reading various books and articles concerning future predictions of the U.S. and other countries because of the Homo Demi Sapiens book on which I am presently working. I have just finished reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth, subtitled The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (see recommended books), and loved it, although it is a heavy book, both in weight and in content. The author, Robert Gordon, is an economics professor at Northwestern University, with a deep interest in history, in this case the history of technology and related effects.

He makes two major points in the book: one being that simple measures such as GNP do not adequately describe the effects of technological developments, and the other being that the time period 1870 through 1970, and in particular 1920 through 1970, may be unique in the U.S. as far as growth is concerned.

He includes improvement in the quality of life in his measure of growth, as well as economic data. He particularly addresses a number of what he calls “great” inventions that happened in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, such as electrical light and power, internal combustion engines, the germ theory of medicine, wireless communication, and water, gas, electrical telephone and rail and highway networks. He feels that these inventions and developments, and the resulting exploitation of them, ranging from urbanization to rapid and affordable instant communication and rapid travel to household appliances and mass production rapidly changed the U.S. in remarkable and positive ways, ranging from urbanization, to much longer life expectancy, to education and entertainment.

But he thinks that the huge growth resulting from this activity is unusual, and perhaps is beginning to return to a lower, and more normal rate of growth. This is a rather unpopular view in the U.S., and quite different than the one present candidates for office are promising if they are elected. We fully expect to return to the high rate of growth we attained in the period 1920 to 1970. There are still areas in which great change is happening rapidly, the obvious one being information, communication, and entertainment as a result of digital technology, but Gordon offers a large amount of data and arguments that even this is slowing down, that such activities are allowing us to do things much more rapidly and cheaply than we could before, but we could do them, and information, communication, and entertainment are only a small part of the many factors that define our standard of living.

He finishes the book by specifically pointing out four factors that slow down growth—increased inequality, inadequate education, demographics, and repaying debt— and suggests what we have to do to combat them. But he clearly does not think that we will ever reach the rate and revolutionary effects of the growth that occurred in the period which he discusses in the book.

I found the book very thought provoking, and tend to believe many of the author’s arguments, even though I have been involved in technology (even “high” technology, whatever that means) all of my adult life. But although I am a great fan of Star Wars movies, I don’t think they predict where we are going (I hope).  I think we will figure out how to overcome the obstacles to growth that Gordon identifies to some extent and to help people displaced by digital devices to provide better and more satisfying lives. And too much growth and change can be unsettling to a large and growing population.  Finally according to Gordon, part of our stimulus to rapid growth during the 20^th century was due to recovery from the great depression and the spurt in production and recovery during and after World War II. That was a hard way to grow!

A Great Book About Everything

 Every once in a while I read a book that really impresses me. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari (HarperCollins books, more info on recommended books at left), is one of these. Maybe it is because I am working on a book concerning the influence of our evolution on problem solving. Sapiens is a book about us, including  a bit about the evolution of our brains. Maybe it’s because I learned a lot and tend to agree with what he says.

It also impresses me because Harari writes better than I do, is better at referencing sources than I am, and perhaps is smarter and knows more than I do about the history of the human race. But I will only admit this to those of you who read my posts, because I trust you not to tell anyone. And it doesn’t make me feel too bad, because he is a historian (writing and referencing), and probably doesn’t know as much techy stuff as I do. But his photo doesn’t make him look very old…………..

I have read many books about the origins and evolution of homo sapiens, but none that are as fun to read and that cover as broad a span of material. There is a quote on the front of his book from Jared Diamond, who is definitely no slouch in the knowledge and writing departments, and it pretty well summarizes the book. It is “Sapiens tackles the biggest questions of history and of the modern world, and it is written in unforgettably vivid language”.

The book is divided into four sections, The Cognitive Revolution, The Agricultural Revolution, The Unification of Humankind, and The Scientific Revolution. It’s emphasis is more on relatively recent times rather than primitive (more history available after we developed writing). It gives a few insights into where the author thinks it is all going, and although he leaves open the option that we have that ability to destroy ourselves, and may do so, it is generally positive, although he does point out a few mistakes he thinks we may have made. One example I found interesting, was his questioning of the agricultural revolution. He suggests, for example, after talking about life before and after the Neolithic Revolution, that wheat domesticated us instead of the opposite, turning us into slaves to increase it’s population and health at the expense of our free time and relatively crime and worry free lives.

Another interesting section is his ambivalence about money (economics). He is definitely convinced that money was one of the main reasons that we went through a major change in our material world. When we bartered for our help and goods, we were restricted on what we could get by what we had to offer. When money, which could buy almost anything, came into the picture, we not only had more access to what we wanted, but we could now grow in our ability to do this buying through loans and other financial means.

But as he does a good job of pointing out, modern economic systems are entirely based on faith, require growth, and lead to leveraging. He believes that in the long term the world will become one (if nothing else, business pushes this), and our varying faith in money and financial institutions as to the value of money could cause much more serious and wide-spread panics and crashes.

But enough. If you haven’t already, read the book. You’ll enjoy it, learn some things, and be able to argue with your friends about it.

Thinking and Writing

I am presently working on a couple of books I have been thinking about for years, as well as my “rescue old machinery” projects, house maintenance, and life in general. I will from time to time talk about all of these, but fortunately the title of this blog is People and Products, so I have given myself a lot of room to move.

One of these books is about the benefits of working with one’s hands. I have always had hobbies/jobs that require this, and such activity seems to be necessary to keep me fulfilled. The book is about why working with one’s hands is a good thing to do. It is perhaps a defense of the fact I spend quite a bit of my time in such activities, and of many of my friends who also do so. In my opinion use of the hands becomes more and more necessary as more and more of our lives seem to be focused on interacting with digital devices. To me, typing just doesn’t quite qualify.

The other one has the working title Homo Demi Sapiens (Half Wise Humans). The gist of the book can be seen below, which was the final slide I included in a talk I recently gave to a 50^th reunion class of the Stanford Graduate School of Business,  They agreed with me.

HOMO DEMI SAPIENS
Maybe We’re Not Quite as Smart
As We Think We are

AND MAYBE WE SHOULD FACE IT!

PERHAPS THERE ARE NO PERFECT ANSWERS TO MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS,

OR MAYBE WE AREN’T INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO FIND THEM.

MAYBE WE SHOULD ACQUIRE A BIT MORE HUMILITY ABOUT HOW SMART WE ARE.

MAYBE PEOPLE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDES OF FENCES SHOULD LEARN TO BETTER COMPROMISE

AND COME UP WITH AND IMPLEMENT SOME WORKABLE CREATIVE SOLUTIONS.

 

This book has been years in the making, although I didn’t know it at the time. The initial edition of my Conceptual Blockbusting book was concerned with blocks to individual creativitiy. But as time went by, I included group creativity and organizational creativity. Homo Demi Sapiens is concerned with problem solving in even larger populations —religions, nations, the world, etc. A perhaps grandiose attempt, but fun to try.

A book I have read many times over the years is entitled Sagittarius Rising, and was written by Cecil A. Lewis, who was a World War I fighter pilot, later to become one of the founders of the British Broadcasting Company and a successful writer. The book, which is beautifully written, is a flattering picture of flying, but much of his World War I flying was over the trenches, in which he could look down from the beautiful sky to see people killing themselves in the mud and wreckage. One comment from the book  was “Man individually was sane and reasonable. Only collectively was he a fool.” True?

That comment has stayed with me, and perhaps is one of the reason I am writing this book. Other stimuli are such things as the international situation, replete with such things as the Middle East impasse, the environmental situation, and if we want to remain a credible world power, the war between the democrats and the republicans in the U.S. It is past time for we humans to get our act together. Termites have been around for 250 million years. They have what is sometimes called group intelligence. How long will we last? Our group intelligence as a species has not yet been fully tested. The modern form of humans showed up only 200,000 years ago, The Neolithic revolution (agriculture, settlements) happened only 12,000 years ago. In the past few hundred years we have made major changes in the way we live, but they are leading us in worrisome directions. If C.S. Lewis is right, we had better start worrying more about the “Sapiens” in the title we have given ourselves.

Intelligence and the Computer

Intelligence is a broad word.  If you want to check it out in Wikipedia, it is here.  Of note is that although usually applied to humans, it is also used in conjunction with animals, plants, and increasingly to machines (artificial Intelligence.)  If we consider the word “smart”(perhaps a subset of intelligent), we seem to include everything with a chip in it (smart cars, smart houses, smart thermostats, smart toys, etc.)

 Here in the heart of Silicon Valley, there seems to be increasing confidence that the computer and related information systems will continue to become more intelligent as time passes.  In fact, a few hard-core folk believe that computers will surpass humans in intelligence. There is an educational venture in the Silicon Valley area that calls itself Singularity University and which studies innovation and so-called exponentially accelerating technologies. Singularity in this case refers to digital technology, and is defined in Wikipedia here.   One of the co-founders, and now Chancellor of the  University, is Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and technology visionary..  He has written a book entitled Singularity is Near, and believes this singularity will occur in 2045, and that we should prepare for this time when computers become more intelligent than humans and continue to advance more rapidly than we can.

 Admittedly, I do not have the technical reputation that Kurzweil does, but I do not believe this at all. Computers have steadily taken over activities that humans used to do—calculation, recording and organizing information, controlling machinery, making decisions based on input, and so on.  But I see no way they can take over the ship.   For one reason, we humans, not computers, define intelligence, and we do so selfishly.  Think of how much faith we place in the I.Q. test, which˙ after all merely measures how well one does on a traditional “test”(according to traditional questions) rather than overall intelligence.  Nevertheless we believe in it, But should should computers out perform us at taking the test, we will change the test. As computers do better than humans at various tasks (Big Blue beating Kasparov at Chess, once thought to be a game requiring great intelligence, and speed at calculation, which got me good grades at Caltech), we seem to change our minds as to how much intelligence is necessary to accomplish these tasks. And there is always Dave’s approach to HAL, his misbehaving AI computer, in the 1968 movie A Space Odyssey—shut it down.  

 I first encountered the then large mainframe computer in the 1950’s when I worked first in the Air Force, and then at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  I was fond of these machines because they could do complicated and involved calculations that I really did not like to do, and practically never could have, by hand.  I have worked with computers ever since, and like most people, I consider them not only immensely useful, and wondrously capable of speeds and data handling with which humans cannot compete.  But I don’t think of them as particularly intelligent, any more than I thought of the Library of Congress, adding machines or telephones as Intelligent.   I know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches are being applied in an increasing number of ways. And the role of computers will change a great deal by 2045, which after all is 30 years from now. The digital age is still quite young. The invention of the internet was approximately 30 years ago and of the World Wide Web only 24 years ago. Computers will continue to amaze us , until we take the new miracle for granted, but we humans will continue to lead the movement.

 I am a believer in artificial intelligence when humans are in the loop.  When I joined the Stanford faculty, I worked a bit with the then Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, headed by John McCarthy, one of the early pioneers in AI.  One of the graduate students was working on computer vehicle control ,  and was using a remotely controlled cart I had built for my Ph.D. thesis (remote control by a human with time delays in the loop) a few years before.  It was clear to me then that computers would take over an increasing number of information processing tasks that people had traditionally done, but even then I was skeptical about how far they would go at being truly intelligent.  At some level, we humans have always had to tell digital devices what to do and how to do it.

 In the early days, AI was very interested in the workings of the human mind.  But the human mind is beyond complex.  Yesterday there was an article in the New York Times entitled “Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain, by Kenneth Miller, Co-Director of the Center for Theoretical Neurosciences at Columbia University”. It is here. He wrote it because of the attention being paid to an increasing number of people who seems to want their brain frozen and stored until science has progressed to the time when someone can thaw it out and start it up again. His answer is “maybe centuries from now”.  I have another reaction, and that is “who would want to”?  But the article does give an insight into how far away we are from truly understanding the human mind, despite a great amount of brain and behavior research.

 AI researchers no longer think of duplicating the human mind on silicon, but the search for computer based intelligence that mimics human intelligence is alive and well. In fact, as computers become better and better at crunching numbers and handling “higher” mathematics, and as they are equipped with better sensors and actuators and integrated into more and more nets, they become more and more useful to us (with a few exceptions, such as handling “big data” for marketing purposes and being involved in pranks and crimes). But the more time I spend screwing around with such things as new operating systems and applications, handling the increasing number of people who want to send me e-mails or texts, find things on the ever-increasing internet, or become my friend or contact on social networking sites, the dumber my computer seems at handling information for me,  and I have never considered allowing it to make decisions for me.

 The good news is that I don’t have to worry about Mr. Kurzweil’s singularity, because I will be dead by then.  The bad news is that computers may hasten my death, but only through frustration, and not because they are more intelligent than I.

Job Loss and Support for New Directions

There was a passionate article in last Sunday’s New  York Times by Paul Theroux, a prolific writer of books, and in particular travel books,  He is noted for spending major times in local areas and writing about the lives people live there.  This article was written after he had spent a great deal of time traveling in the U.S. deep south working on his latest book, “Deep South.  Four Seasons on Back Roads”.

 The article was about poverty resulting from the loss of jobs due to the closing factories, which in turn Theroux blames on outsourcing, which he in turn blames on the greed of companies.  This is not a new problem, but Theroux writes with the emotion of having spent time with people (in his words)  “towns with their hearts torn out of them” from factory closings.  This is not a new message, but to read Theroux at this level of anger is unusual.  You should read the article, if you have not.  It is here.

 Among other charges, he delivers blasts at various foundations and wealthy people in business and government in the U.S. who advertise the help they give to poor people in developing countries, but have not helped poor people in these towns he visits in the U.S.  I am a believer, having followed the bankruptcy of San Bernardino California (where I went to high school) from the closing of income producing activities ranging from an air base (Norton) to train maintenance shops (Santa Fe), to a nearby steel mill (Kaiser, which ironically was carefully taken part and moved to China, where it was re-assembled). An article about the collapse of the city is here.  Among other San Bernardino statistics, during the 2012-13 school year, 33,274 students (8.1% of the total) experienced homelessness.

 A large number of people who lost their jobs in San Bernardino have families,  little cash or credit, probably house mortgages, and may not have had  the training or education to easily find other jobs. I was discussing this with a colleague earlier today, and we agreed that somebody should help people in such a situation (and the deep south), because it was not their fault that the income base of the city collapsed. But we could not figure out who.  Should businesses insure their employees against a collapse?  Not much precedence for that, and probably not a lot of support from businesses.  Should the government do more in the way of offering training and education?  But that would possibly result in more tax on businesses, who are already screaming that taxes are too high, and outrage people who think that government aid is already too profligate. 

 And this might only be a preview of future problems.  Although most of the attention has been paid to blue-collar workers, computers have already taken over many tasks formerly done by white collar workers (CPA’s, lawyers, administrators, medical workers, clericals, etc.).  There is a great debate going on as to whether this will cause new work opportunities for white collar workers (“The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies”, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee ) or whether the white collar job loss will eventually be larger and noisier than the blue collar loss.  We will find out, and perhaps the white collar workers will be able to more easily slip into new jobs, but once again, many of them may need help, and who will pay if they do not have the resources to learn new skills, or are at a stage of life where it is extremely inconvenient to re-locate? Or do we thoughtful and sensitive U.S, citizens just say "tough luck"?

Creativity and Control, Innovation and Tradition

 I recently read a book entitled The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson, (see recommended books) who attracted a lot of notice writing a book about Steve Jobs after his death, and is an excellent writer with a good ability to deal with technology, science, and the people involved (although from my viewpoint as an engineer who has put in my time in industry and in academia I think he is a bit biased toward the sciences, although he recognizes the need for the “faceless” engineers, as he calls us, and often confuses engineers with technicians, machinists, and other worthy people). Since I have spent much of my life living and working in Silicon valley and teaching at Stanford, I have had a chance to get to know and work with a few of the heroes and many of the “faceless”, and am very familiar with the truths and myths.  I feel that Isaacson does a reasonably balanced and interesting job of telling his stories and drawing conclusions on the necessary qualities needed to innovate in what is called “high” technology (I am never quite sure what differentiates “high” technology from “low” technology).

 I apologize for not sending this post out at my usual Sunday or Monday time, but like many people, my wife and I took an end-of-the-summer vacation trip around Northern California, and a vacation to me includes severing as many links as possible with the internet.  During our trip, I couldn’t help but consider how much the many miraculous innovations described in Isaacson’s book (the internet, the smart phone smart phone,  computers, and all the features the digital age has brought to me through appliances, entertainment, etc.) have  improved my life.  The conclusion I kept coming to, is that there is good news and bad.  Certainly technical work has been greatly aided by the computer’s ability to calculate and simulate and provide information, although I suspect that one’s understanding of the assumptions and uncertainty in such things may be impaired.  I have much easier access to information, communication, and entertainment although it is all becoming seriously less fun through ever increasing use as a marketing tool.  I also have to put up with expectations of instant response (texting) and endless messages from people I don’t know who want things I cannot or don’t want to provide.

 But to me, the computer and the internet have always been tools to accomplish things I want to do, and like most tools, when I acquire a facility at using them, I resent them being changed, unless there is a major benefit to me.  And here we get into the conflict between the new and the known, because a great amount of the profit in and excitement about digital hardware and software is about creativity, innovation and change.  But as the title of the post implies, these can clash with control and tradition, and effort is needed to accommodate to the new—and time, which is becoming more important to me as I get older,  I am no longer amused by changes in software and hardware because some designer or manager, or entrepreneur has a “better” idea which I am forced to incorporate into my life even though I don’t need or want it.

 In a previous post I think I mentioned my ongoing problems involved in changing from Apple’s operating system 10-6-8 and associated applications, which I had used for years and was very familiar with, to 10-10-5, needed because a major hack had convinced the Stanford University computer people to encrypt all of us.  This, of course, resulted in my need to upgrade many  applications and deal with information such as  a great many photographs that had been re-arranged because Apple (not me) thought they should be.  The more time passes, the more annoyed I become at the time I am still putting into this change.  It is as though one manages to learn to juggle five balls, and then someone changes one of the balls.

 I understand the cost of backward compatibility in software, but when one already has as much capability as one needs/wants, can’t someone figure out how to preserve that?  In the case of Apple going from iPhoto to Photos, since I had not been upgrading my iPhoto (I preferred the older format), the “upgrade” (means change even if it a negative one) included in the new operating system happily re-arranged my images and put them in Photos (the new version that I don’t like as well) and informed me that I could no longer use  iPhoto because my iPhoto software was not the latest issue.  When I tried to download this latest version of iPhoto, I found it was no longer available at the Apple store, and I could not find it anywhere else on the Web.  With the help of a friend, I managed to find the iPhoto upgrade, so I can now access my old iPhoto files, but iPhoto and Photos are not easily compatible.  So I am still up to my neck with re-arranging images, getting information where I want it, and fears of future moves from Apple that will attempt to force me to use Photos, or worse.  The result is that I am going to go through the pain of getting the photos off of my Mac, and am even considering leaving Apple products because it seems to me that they are sacrificing a lot to make operating systems of desktops more compatible with smart phones and their other "portables", and I don’t want to go through endless iterations in which they strip things down so the desktop operating system is compatible with an Apple shirt button, or whatever else will follow their watch.

 I built much of my professional reputation promoting, teaching, practicing,  and consulting in things having to do with creativity and innovation.  I am a believer.  But unless they are properly balanced with control and tradition, over time the loss may be bigger than the gain.  Over time, new goodies tend to become boring, and one should not overlook the costs of change to users. 

 

 

Brains and Minds

There is an increasing fascination,  at least among  media folk, with brains/minds.  I write brains/minds, because brains are the approximately three  pound pieces of complex meat that adults have in their skulls, and to many people, minds are more.  The fascination has to do with how they work, and  is a reaction to the many new insights from instruments (functional MRI scans, Pet scans) and insight into the structure and chemistry of brains.

 There are several problems involved with understanding how brains/minds work.  There is a perhaps cynical view (which I at times hold) that it will take something more powerful than a human brain to understand a human brain.  But to be more charitable to the neurologists, psychologists, computer scientists, and other people who are engaged in this task,  a major problem exists because the various disciplines involved are often not comfortable with each other.  There was an article  in the June 28^th issue of the New York Times entitled “Face It, Your Brain Is a Computer”.  It was written by Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, who has just written a book entitled “The Future of the Brain”.  The article is here,  Happily, the article is not saying that the brain is a computer, as computers are commonly thought of.  Rather the author  is saying that thinking of the brain  as a computer  is perhaps a good way of structuring brain research.

 The magazine section of the same issue of the newspaper contains a section entitled “Head Trips”, which speaks of brain/mind function as seen by people ranging from a talk therapist to a person with a history of bipolar disorder, to a person doing research on the effects on the brain of microbiota that grow in the gut.  There seems to be agreement that  brain research must involve many disciplines, since the brain does seem to exhibit some “digital” behavior, certainly involves chemistry, electrical signals, and biological processes, and is strongly affected by behavior, experience, and emotion.  But many outstanding specialists are biased toward their own discipline.  When I read the article by Professor Marcus, I wondered how many of his friends were bio chemists.  I was very interested in the description of Mark Lyte’s work on the influence of microbiota, but he seemed far from the traditional talk therapists, who seem to be losing ground to the people in the “hard” sciences. In my opinion, theory that does not impress all of the intellectual camps involved, is not adequate.  We need a giant AHA, that sets all parties dancing—the equivalent of the double helix insight.

 Most of the brain/mind theories I am aware of are thought provoking and explain certain aspects of  thinking, responding, interpreting, predicting, and other things brains/minds do. But can the theories be integrated into a satisfying model?  That we shall see.  In the interim, I think brain research is one of the more entertaining things on which to stay current (except for the Golden State Warriors, of course).   

Shadow Work, by Craig Lambert

  This is a short, easy to read, and provocative book by Craig Lambert (more info. at recommended books column at the left), that claims that our leisure time is being eaten up by doing work that used to be done for us.  The reason for this is partly technology (the computer), partly because business has discovered that by off-loading work to customers it can cut its payroll (pumping our own gas), and partly because we honor work in our culture.

 This book got my attention because everyone I know seems to be bemoaning the loss of leisure time, even though supposedly the information revolution is helping us by taking over increasing amounts of work, and because I have just blown away a ridiculous amount of time in first of all, going to an outrageously complex multi level password system needed to use the Stanford server (the university was badly hacked a while ago), and having my computers be encrypted (which of course required "upgrading" the operating systems, which required "upgrading" apps, etc. etc. etc. ) 

 Lambert defines shadow work as work we do without labeling it as work, and for which we are not paid.  One example is the constant mucking around we do with our computer(s), as manufacturers keep “upgrading” them to sell us even more features we don’t want (and remove some we do).  I hate Apple’s new “Photos” program, a supposed improvement over IPhoto.  To me it is a step  backwards enshrouded in meaningless changes and crowned with the loss of useful features.  Even worse, once one allows one’s computer to make the change (mandatory with OS 10-10-3 on), one can’t go back unless one has the latest version of iPhoto on the machine—apparently not known by my favorite IT person who knows everything.  Dumb move by Apple.  And lots of Shadow Work upcoming for me, as I am going to bail out of their photo organization software so I can organize my photos the way I want them, not how Apple thinks I should. In fact, maybe I'll bail out of Apple.

 The book has many examples of this phenomenon.  The replacement of travel agents by web sites, for instance.  Granted one has the ability to compare endless flights, hotels, rental car deals, etc., but the time and effort spent as contrasted with letting a travel agent do this (at one time paid by airlines, hotels, etc) can be huge.  Another is shopping, especially in big box stores, or even large grocery stores, in which it sometimes seems impossible to either find what one wants (especially if everything has re-arranged to be compatible with the now popular marketing technique of forcing the shopper to pass by everything in the store) or find a person to give one a helpful clue.  Another is the time spent figuring out all of the non-standardized kiosks, credit card readers, and other digital “aides”, all slightly different.  I just had a brand new-looking gas pump consistently refuse my credit card, and upon complaining to the one attendant, was told that I had to withdraw the card slowly.  Interesting after years of being told to withdraw it rapidly.

 Lambert also goes into topics such as doing one’s own taxes, legal work, and other activities formerly done by others.  And the time we spend filling out medical forms, and providing information on ourselves to internet vendors so that it can be sold in the Big Data world.  He agrees that many of these activities are cheaper and maybe faster than hiring professionals, and perhaps our time is less valuable than that of the doctor who wants the information, but his main point is that we do an increasing amount of “work” that used to be done for us, without realizing it, and the result is perhaps more frantic lives and less human interaction.  Definitely describes me.

 He also talks about the incredible time and effort spent by parents outside of the home that did not used to occur.  When I went to school in the dark ages of education there were no organized kid athletics, no summer camps, no parents driving  us to school or helping us with our homework (not much homework), no PTA or other volunteer groups, or parents organizing campaigns against teachers and administrators (too much homework—not enough homework).  I look at my children and the time they spend chauffeuring their kids around and attending events, and I think Wow.  I learned to play sports and did well in school without parent involvement, and it worked.  In fact, we would have been uncomfortable if parents were hanging around our ball games and attending out school productions.

 And finally, his argument again reminds the reader of the loss of paying jobs awaiting us in the future.  I went through a divorce many years ago.  It did not include large estates, criminal behavior, or anything that would result in a novel.  In fact it was even called a routine divorce by the judge, who chided the two attorneys for making it into a war and not coming to an agreement.  But they did earn money for a whole year.  An example where computers could have done better, but we do have a lot of attorneys to support.

 I recommend the book.  It is an  easy read and will make you wonder how much “Shadow Work” you are doing.

Computer Hype and Reality

I was glad to see a column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, entitled “The Big Meh”.  It is here.  Krugman is a prolific writer and a major force in economics, having won the Nobel Prize, and having been named the second most influential economist in the world by The Economist.  He points out that despite all of the hype about the information economy, the computer revolution, social networking, computer games, smart phones, and other digital marvels, the U.S. economy is and has been sluggish for the last ten years, and in his mind, except for a few spikes, has been disappointing for the last 40 years. 

 But the hype in the media grows, and here we are, waiting for our virtual reality kits and lining up to buy the latest expensive Apple miracle.  True, Apple, Google, Facebook, and such companies are boasting extraordinary cash flows, but, how much are we actually benefitting from all of these digital miracles? Krugman, in looking for reasons that our dazzling new technology does not seem to be strongly affecting the nation’s economy, states that perhaps the new technology is more fun than fundamental.

 Certainly many Stanford students want to start a company and make a fast pile of money, but most of them won’t.  And how about those unfortunate young people without college training who can’t find jobs —see the last Economist magazine. The cover features a drawing of a young white male sitting in a crashed male symbol, under  text reading “The Weaker Sex; No jobs, no family, no prospects” .  The lead article is entitled “Men Adrift”, and is here.

 We are realizing that there is a social cost from automating work that was formerly done by humans, and will realize it even more when CPA’s, attorneys, truck drivers, and others capable of making more noise begin to be displaced.  It seems to me that driverless trucks make at least as much sense as driverless cars, but clearly the media is a bit shy about taking on the teamsters.  We are also realizing that there is a cost to us in changing our lives to meet the demands of being “connected”, and having our habits known in increasing detail so that we may be more efficiently bombarded with more marketing material, as well as having our attention fractionated in many ways. Psychologists are having a field day with the latter.

 So far new technologies have taken on the order of 50 years to mature.  Tim Berners Lee, a British scientist, is given credit for having invented the World Wide Web (the basis of the internet) in 1989.  That is only 26 years ago.  We have a long way to go before it reaches anything close to maturity.  To me, it is presently becoming more difficult to use, and requiring more and more time to handle features that used to work, but are now overwhelming (e-mail), and more and more time to separate, as they used to say, the wheat from the chaff (ads, gripes, and baseless opinions).  And as a tool, I find that the time I spend using it is highly compromised by the time I spend trying to keep up with changes in the software associated with operating systems, apps, and programs that by now should be mature, but are constantly showing up with new (and to me unnecessary and sometimes negative) bells and whistles.  But I am an optimist, and believe that eventually it will settle down, take its place in our lives (although it will cost us to get rid of the distractions and trash bult into it), and the hype will go away.

 So I agree with Professor Krugman.  Let’s can the hype, figure out what we have and what we need, and make it serve us, instead of us serving it.  Incidentally, I just ordered a book entitled Shadow Work; The Unpaid Unseen Jobs that Fill Your Day, by Craig Lambert.  I'll give you my reactions after I read it.  It concerns work that used to be done by others for you, that you now have been tricked into doing through partial automation and cleverness on the part of companies through digital electronics.  Think of shopping in big box stores.  Remember when there were people to help you in stores?  I, and many of you,  even remember when people didn't  pump their own gas.  When I grew up, working in a "service station" was a sought after first step into the economy.  Now these jobs have gone away, along with the service.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

My Cup Runneth Over

I figure that I have enough projects to keep me happily busy until I am 150 years old.  But judging from my friends and my body, I may not live to be that old.  Clearly trying to complete them more rapidly doesn’t work, because I am becoming slower.  I am still moving reasonably well.  I am well into becoming better organized (my wife will snicker at this), becoming more embroiled in writing my mythical two books, and catching up on my reading (difficult because excellent new books seem to be coming out faster than I can read).  And I am moving along at restoring stuff .  The photos below show the before and after condition of the McCormick mower I mentioned in a previous post.  It is now working well and I am about to take it up to my son’s farm and let him test it with a couple of his huge horses.

The photos below show the before photo of the high-pressure water pump I included in my last post, and the finished restoration, ready to pump. 

But I am still acquiring outstanding old hardware faster than I can restore it. And the hardware I have restored drastically needs more attention.  And of course there is my growing family,  my old and needy house, my failure to succeed in completely cutting my ties with Stanford, and frequent assignments from Marian.

What to do, what to do?  I am going to devote the next post to a book entitled Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle, one of my favorite authors (Basic Books, 2011).  I read this when it was released, but re-read it when I ran across it recently, and it spoke more directly to me now that I am further behind and my grandchildren are older.  Turkle is a psychologist on the M.I.T. faculty, and specializes in the interaction of technology and society.  This is the fifth book she has written during the “information revolution”, the previous ones being quite positive about computers, the internet, and so forth.  Fifteen years had passed since the last one when she wrote Alone Together, and her daughter was now in college.  This book discusses many worries about what the internet is doing to us and our children, and I will recommend it highly if you haven’t read it.

 In particular, it got me thinking about the increasing chunk of time my computer and the internet are requiring from me.  When I wrote my Good Products, Bad Products book, also released in 2011, my publisher talked me, an innocent, into entering the social networking scene in order to publicize the book.  With some reservations I joined Facebook, Twitter, and Linked in, and started this blog.  I enjoy writing this blog, because it makes me think, but have never really felt comfortable with the social networking sites, with the result that I have neither tried to increase the size of the pool of  people who I presumably interact with, nor have I done a good job of interacting with the people in the pool.

 And like many people, my e-mail has gotten out of hand.  I seem to be showing up on lists faster than I can make filters to stop it—probably partly because of my Stanford connection, the exploding number of overseas students looking for financial aid and admission to college in the U.S., an increase in technical meetings and consulting opportunities, and just plain marketing.

 So during the next week I am going to think hard about my interaction with the internet and digital communication in general.  Some years ago, Don Knuth, author of the set of classic book entitled “The Art of Computer Programming”, informed his friends that he was quitting e-mail, in order to have more time to think deeply and work on writing projects.  Since he is a god in the computer field, this attracted a lot of attention.  I am not a god, but I am feeling the same way right now, especially toward social networking.  I am fortunate in that I have a large number of real friends I love, and am not looking for cyber friends  or contacts.  And my computer is demanding an increasing and already far too much of my time.  I am certainly not alone in this feeling.  People are waking up to the downside of all of these digital miracles. More about this in my next blog.

 

Matthew B. Crawford, and the Issue of Manual Skills.

In 2006, Matthew Crawford, (equipped with a Ph.D. in philosophy, an obvious fan of working with his hands and proprietor of a small business of restoring/maintaining vintage motorcycles), wrote an essay entitled Shop Course as Soul Craft, which was published in Atlantis magazine.  A friend of mine, Dave Beach, (who has built and is responsible for a very successful and large activity in the Stanford Engineering School called the Product Realization Lab in which students design and manufacture products), and I found out about it and spread it all around the local community.  It covered the advantages of manual skills in life and the importance to individuals, schools, and organizations of encouraging them.  I am one of a large number of people who are believers, and who take great pride in their ability to make and fix things and I have seen the positive effects of doing such things on the lives of many other people.   I depend on such activities for keeping me from occasionally becoming less likeable from lack of quick feedback and an overdose of mental activities seemingly divorced from reality (yes I am a professor). Dave and I are also both believers, along with many other people, in the contribution of such activities to producing products of high quality.

 Crawford's "Shop Course" essay was later developed into a book of the same name, which made a large splash because it made its way to many people of like mind, and coincided with a time of much worry about the inroads computers were making into skilled jobs.  If you haven’t read the article or the book, you can find the article here.

 Now Crawford has written another book entitled World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, N.Y.).  This one is somewhat broader in reach, having to do with our mental attention in an age in which large numbers of individuals and organizations, backed by powerful media, are competing for for this attention, to the point where we may be paying a cost in individuality and in the ability to focus as well on our main interests.  His “Shop Class” book was broader in reach than his Atlantis article of the same name, and this book is broader still.  I read it and loved it, but it is a more difficult read.  Crawford is now a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, as well as being a fabricator of components for custom motorcycles, and I think he is showing the signs of immersion in an academic scene .  It is difficult for academics to write books that are easy to read, because in a university, life consists of communicating with people in similar disciplines and assuming they have similar backgrounds and familiarity with material—in this case philosophy.  The result is an understandable tendency to refer to people and works that the general reader has not met or read, nor will probably ever do so.  After 50 years of fighting this problem, I know it well.  I even run into it at home because I occasionally find myself trying to explain something that is interesting to me, like quantum computing or the working of make-and-break ignition systems or the physical portions of the internet to my wife, who is brilliant, but was trained as an historian, and seems to  have little need for techie jargon and details.

 But the message in Crawford’s book is straight forward and powerful.  He again makes an argument for hands-on contact with the world,  He begins with the attack upon our attention from all sides, from advertising to internet communications and seductive digital toys.  He then goes into the problems resulting from handling an overload of stimulation by seeing it in terms of broad representations and generalizations rather than reality (“the public”, “government”, “farmers”).  He talks about joint, or group attention, its importance, and the increasing difficulty of obtaining it.  He worries that we are  losing the “real”, by dealing with these generalities and stifling our true nature and individuality in the process.  He finishes the main portion of the book by presenting what he considers an example of good focus—an old and traditional pipe-organ company, in which people learn from the experience of others and gain their pleasure from attaining expertise in the building of their products. Once again, the shop. 

This book is especially timely since many college students now seem to be trying to stay in contact with an ever increasing quantity of people and changing information and are planning to start companies even though they are equipped with little experience and with a minimum of skills learned through practice.  Even some devotees of creativity seem to be swinging away from experience and the learning of skills. I wish them luck.  These are invaluable tools in life.

 If you are interested in things controversial and in modern trends, I recommend you read this book and that you discuss it with your friends, especially if you are neglecting hobbies or work you love that allow you to get your hands dirty.  Dirty hands for me seem to result in a cleaner mind.  I recommend them to all.

 

 

 

 

 

Quality for Free

In my book, Good Products, Bad Products, I briefly discuss cost (to maker) and price (to customer).  These often relate to overall product quality, but not necessarily in a logical or linear manner.  But it is definitely the case that we are all sensitive to price when acquiring products.  But how about products, even reasonably high quality ones, that can be obtained for free? To many of us, especially those of us who do not have the benefit (?) of great wealth, these have a particular cachet.

 I used to like to read Wired magazine, but it has over time become such a promo-piece for expensive products (full page add for Gucci on the back of the Feb 1,2015 issue) and the digital industry that I no longer subscribe to it.  But like many Conde Naste publications, it still comes to my house, probably either because they think I will subscribe again, or because they can keep me in their circulation count (attractive to advertisers).

 This issue has an interesting editorial by Scott Dadich, the editor in chief, which starts out with a mea- culpa on his addiction to “shiny new gadgets”, followed by raves about Microsoft’s Project HoloLens .  But then he brings up the fact that the rapid turnover in new gadgets results in great numbers of still usable devices ending up in landfills.  He then mentions an article in the issue by Randall Sullivan about a person named Matt Malone, an expert in corporate security and a professional dumpster diver, in that he finds products (often new) that have been discarded and resells them at a lower cost.  In fact, he states that if he was to do this full time, he could make at least $250,000 in the Austin. Texas area alone.  The editorial is here, and the article is here.

 I resonate with Matt Malone, even though I have never met him.  First of all, he is adding to the world’s recycling effort, and secondly, I am an amateur dumpster diver and finder of fine objects in trash piles.  I don’t sell them for profit, but rather I either give them away, or keep them because I love them— they appeal to me and they are FREE.

  The photo at the left shows a “free swap” book box I built for my wife for Christmas.  She loves books, and since the area in which we live is full of academics, who in turn have and read lots of books, it gets a heavy trade.  But it is a miracle to my wife and I, because it is an ever-changing source of free books right next to our house (sorry Amazon). 

When I first arrived at Stanford it was "upgrading" and discarding many "old" items.  As an example, they were re-doing teaching spaces and filling dumpster boxes with captains chairs that had been used in the old rooms.  I snagged a half dozen of them for my house, because they were comfortable and showed the patina of history.  Ironically enough, some years later, Stanford was putting brass plaques on the few that were left. and awarding them to major gift donors. And people were so eager to acquire new and "modern" equipment that they did not value the beauty and historical value of some of the old.

 The two photos below show  an old medical instrument that was used for examining tissue sections, and a few rescued objects that are in my office.  The adding machine is of great value because none of our present students have the faintest idea of what it is.  The two instruments are there because I like them.  And I’ll bet you don’t have as good a whiffle ball container as the one in the photo below them.

 

And I do not restrict myself to dumpsters.  My wife is a compulsive gardener, and  has a constant need for pots. The photo below  shows her pot supply.   We never have to buy them, because Stanford has a free trash pickup for all campus homeowners twice a year, and I have a pickup, with which I can easily keep her in pots, as well as miscellaneous yard furniture, shelves, garden tools, and other goodies.

 I must admit that she is somewhat embarrassed that we will be seen by the neighbors as we go through their trash, but I am proud to be helping the ecosphere and our budget, as we acquire objects of high quality that are no longer appreciated by their former owners. 

 

Technology and Dying

I recently read Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.  Also a terrific writer, who has received widespread recognition for his skill with words.  He is one of my favorite writers, and early in the history of this blog, I wrote very positive posts about three of his early books, Complications, Better, and The Check List Manifesto, which were about quality in medical care and how to achieve it.  I recommend them as well as this one.

 Being Mortal discusses the quandary of dying in developing countries.  Most of us in the U.S. say we would like to die at home, And in fact in the 1940’s, most of us did.  But by the 1980’s over 80 % of us died in hospitals, and the odds are that that is where we will draw our last breath, surrounded by sterility and technology.

 Although we realize that we should spend the end of our lives enjoying our lives as much as possible, and looking back with pleasure at our lifetime experiences, we cling to extending them as much as possible.  Hospitals are full of medical talent focused in exactly that direction—to cure, and extend lives.  So we enter a hospital, subject to our hopes, which coincide with those of our doctors.  The result may be that we die in a way that we would not have chosen —drugged and separated from friends and family.

 Gawande argues for more sensitivity to the quality of our lives at the end, but realizes the possible conflicts between this and modern medical care, furnished by organizations of people trained to extend lives and proud of their skills to do so.  This is being widely recognized these days, an appreciation that I am sure will increase as the Boomers reach the ends of their lives.  This can be seen in the increasing visibility of hospice care, POLST (Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) forms, and other means of dying without being connected to a host of tubes and wires, or because they have finally been disconnected.

 Medical care is another situation in which technology has reached a sophistication level that may not always be the answer.  Traditional Navajo indian attitudes toward death were interesting.  When a person died, their negative aspects (lack of harmony with the universe) went into a chindi, or ghost, which would hang around the site of their death and burial and infect those who became close to it with sicknesses perhaps leading to death.  As a result, there was an advantage for a person dying outside of their living quarters,  which otherwise would have to be destroyed to protect others from the chindi, but in an uplifting environment.   Interesting that this approach would help slow down the spread of infections, such as the dreaded antibiotic resistant MRSA bacteria that hang around hospitals. Only a limited number of people (4) were involved with preparing the body for burial and disposing of it, and they were careful to purify themselves afterward.  The chindi was to be avoided at all costs.

 The author Tony Hillerman wrote a wonderful series of mysteries taking place on the Navajo reservation, and in them would occasionally have the hero breaking a dying relative or friend out of a hospital so that they could die at home, hopefully out of doors surrounded by beautiful scenery, not only consistent with their lives, but sparing the hogan from destruction.  The hospital typically would furiously resist this action.  I would think that the hospital would be all in favor of this, because it would soon have been populated by large numbers of chindi, to the detriment of all who entered it, sick or healthy.  But medical people are trained to cure, and technology continues to make them more capable of doing so. And they generally do not believe in chindi.

Quality, Economics, and Jeff Marrick

A book I recently read—Jeff Madrick’s book entitled Seven Bad Ideas, subtitled “How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World” (see suggested readings)—  along with the excellent Ken Burns TV series on the Roosevelts,  have gotten me again thinking about economic theory and its effect on products.  Mainstream economists disagree, of course, but there is wide acceptance of theories that conclude that economics alone can result in good societies.  One is Adam Smith’s theory of the Invisible Hand – that buyers and sellers will converge on the ideal price for a good or service with no input from outside agencies such as governments.  Another is Says Law, which states that supply creates its own demand and has been around for two hundred years, even though major economists, such as Keynes, have put major effort into demonstrating that it does not work in modern society.

 A more contemporary figure that was extremely influential, and who subscribed heavily to pure capitalism with minimum intervention from government, was Milton Friedman, who Madrick vilifies repeatedly in his book.  He also emphasizes the many positive effects of government funding (massive support of research and development) as does the Roosevelt series vis-à-vis such programs as the Works  Progress Administration (WPA), which produced major infrastructure works as well as supporting artists, environmental work, and other socially valuable projects and products that would not have happened if dependent on pure capitalism itself. 

 From my position at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, it seems as though a great number of students and people are captivated with entrepreneurship and start-up companies.  That is good, but most of the start up companies I hear about and see are focused on making money for the founders and investors, and may or may not add a great deal to society.  The sale of WhatsApp, a then small software company, to Face Book for $19 billion certainly had economic ramifications, but what does it add to the quality of life in the U.S.?  On the other hand, many highways and other roads in California seem to be falling apart, and I meet few people who talk about starting a company to repair roads.  Neither does pure capitalism seem to care much about preserving the environment, global warming, or aid for the poor. 

 Faith in the market and such things as supply and demand curves simplify thinking about money and perhaps national economies, but modern economies are not simple.  Madrick points out that perhaps different cultures and countries in various stages of development may need devices that bias the market—tariffs, local incentives, and other such things  that are anathema to those who believe in the “free” market .  And products may be economically successful, but perhaps not important.  I was reading this weekend about two apps that tell the owner how often she/he use their smart phones each day. Economically successful, and  perhaps an aid to breaking overly time-consuming habits, but ????????

 

The Hand and Product Quality

 I am going to give a talk to the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto this coming week extolling the virtues of working with the hands, an activity which has been an important part of my life, even though I have earned my income as an engineer and a professor.  But manual work has brought me the pleasure and quick positive feedback that has enabled me to sail happily through the ups and downs of my mental work. And thinking about my upcoming talk is causing me to become even more impressed with hands.

 The other night my wife and I attended a Beethoven recital by Richard Goode, one of the top pianists of the world. I played the piano quite a bit in my youth, beginning with lessons in a small town and by the time I was in high school playing in the region.  I played quite a bit until I was in my 30’s, but more and more for social groups, and finally at one point quit, because I realized I had good hands, but was neither a musician nor willing to devote the time and effort required to become really good.  Goode is really good.  He is a wonderful musician, and has the kind of hands one can develop by constant practice over many years (he is 70).  Since I have not kept up my piano chops, I was amazed at his manual dexterity, and could not help but wonder what would have happened had I had better teaching and kept at it.

 Today I was leafing through one of my favorite books, The Hand, by Frank R. Wilson,(see recommended book list), a neurologist and long time medical director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.  It is a well documented book full of thought provoking information and data about the human hand.  But as a life-long specialist in hands, Wilson does not simply mention that we are lucky to have opposable thumbs.  He goes into  detail about the evolution of the thumb, the arm, the shoulder, and the brain as a unit and a very important one.  As he points out, the opposable thumbs are only one part of the system, and would not be that significant if it were not for the grasping, positioning, and subtle feelings and motions we are able to do.  And he dwells on the sophistication and complexity of the hand (the thumb alone is controlled by 9 muscles entering from the forearm and the rest of the hand) and we seem to control it in its many tasks without even thinking about it.  Spend a bit of time watching yours and other people’s hands (and arms), and you should be impressed.  In one of the chapters in Wilson’s book, he compares the tasks the professional piano player’s hand must do with those of a professional rock climber.  Diversity of function indeed.

 I worry that use of the hand and related parts of the body is losing its centrality in the lives of many people.  Wilson makes the point that the brain and the hand developed together—a duo.   It seems to me that many people who seem to be neglecting one of the duo and making their living with their minds, are perhaps losing something by not building the manual skills that would bring them pride and pleasure.   I also worry  that hands are being neglected in education.  I started out in life by growing up on a farm and being taught a large number of manual skills, planning to be either a carpenter or a tool and die maker until I decided to become an engineer (I still worked in shops in the summer while in college). 

 Hopefully I don’t have to argue that hands-on experience in the basic processes necessary to design and build products gives one a better base to judge what is possible, what is not possible, what is good, and what is bad.  Painting custom antique and custom cars by hand gives one  valuable insights to programming a robot to do so, and working on the factory floor equips one to better supervise others that are doing so.  When I graduated from college, I was offered a job at Warner Swasey, then the premier machine-tool builder in the U .S.  I was quite flattered, because they had never offered a job to a Caltech graduate, and the fact that I had graduated #1 in engineering was not the reason.  They wanted me because I had worked summers in a shop.  And even then, I would have begun my career with two more  years working in their shop.  They wanted to make the best machines they could, and were not interested in engineers that had not served their time as machinists.  The U. S. is not doing such things as much any more, and perhaps as a result, the quality of our products has slipped relative to countries who offer more hands-on experience to their new employees.  In many (most?) cases. beginning at the bottom of an organizational chart results in unique proficiency at the top.  Why people working with their hands are often at the bottom of an organizational chart (except for the fortunate few like surgeons and piano players) is a topic for another post.    

 I have spent many hours in my life doing such things as restoring old machines, maintaining cars and houses,  and making and fixing electro mechanical devices and other things.  I think that without this experience, I would be much less competent at either engineering or teaching.  In fact, I have long had the pleasure of being involved in a growing activity at Stanford called the Product Realization Laboratory, led by Professor David Beach, in which students  design, develop, and manufacture products.  I am happy to say that now people are catching onto the value of such a program.  Once engineering schools gave their students hands-on problems.  Then they went through a long period of becoming increasingly theoretical.  Now hands-on work is coming back.  Good for individuals and for the economy—and for product quality.

 

 

 

Thomas Piketty and Economics

 I am in Hawaii to help a friend with a plumbing project.  As usual, when I faced a flight longer than an hour or two, I decided to take a book I wanted to read.  Since I heard so much about it, I chose Thomas Piketty’s book Capital In The Twenty-First Century.  I found it to be a great read.  It is a serious and long book, so I certainly did not finish it on the flight over.  But I became so hooked on it, that I continued to read it rather than help my friend with his plumbing.  But now both are done, and I will explain why I became so interested in it.

 First of all, Piketty is one of those wonders — an academic who can write very readable prose that includes a large amount of data, theory, and information without using jargon and analytical tools specific to his/her discipline.  This is particularly a failing among many academic economists, who seem to want to turn a topic that contains human behavior and emotion into an exact science.  Fortunately this dream is breaking down, and Piketty seems to me to have an excellent grasp of both the theories and human behavior.  In fact he makes the point that economics is a social science, not a physical one, and therefore must account for our foibles.

 The book is amazingly well timed, since it focuses upon the aggregation of capital over time and the resulting inequality.  It is based on a large amount of data on many nations spread over a large span of time.  His charts often begin with the year 1700 and go into the future (based on projections of population growth, and other pertinent trends taken from other fields).  He shows that over long time periods, capital growth tends to be larger than growth in population and wages.  Also that this capital tends to become focused among fewer and people (top 1% owning  over 30% in U.S. at present) until we reach the point that awareness and disapproval result  He does not waste time portraying the difficulties with this situation, but his data and comments do highlight the revolutionary behavior that has occurred when this inequality became too high (French revolution,  rise of communism/socialism, political break-up of wealth, etc.).

 To me, the book also shows the short-term mentality of we Homo Sapiens.  The amount of capital in the world was rising sharply until World War I.  This war followed by the great depression, followed by World War II, dramatically reduced the world’s wealth, and in particular the peaks in Capital.  The period between World War II and the present has been one of re-growth, and is resulting in peaks of capital again.  Piketty says this is normal economic behavior until interrupted.  But he points out that we became used to the unusual growth in wages and productivity in the latter half of the twentieth century, and count on ever increasing rapid growth in wages and opportunity.  Perhaps that may be the case for a while in countries playing “catch-up” (China, India, African countries), but maybe not everywhere. As a good economist, he does point out the necessity of growth.  But as a non-economist and a resident of the San Francisco  peninsula, I have always thought counting on eternal high growth is a bit risky.  Strange things happen as one approaches infinity.

 The comments about the Piketty book in and out of the media are interesting.  He is a young and attractive guy (French, yet), and was featured recently in the Sunday New York Times on the front page of the Style section—perhaps a first for academic economists.   And of course the reactions to his book tend to be biased by  people’s beliefs.  I have always thought that when problems become difficult, people retreat to faith and defend their faith viciously.  Economics is a good example.  In the U.S. it is much more comfortable to believe in capitalism, even though history suggests that pure capitalism does not take care of everyone. But many in the U.S. seem to be becoming less enchanted with it.  Piketty seems to be neither economically far left nor far right.  As he points out in the book, he is young enough to have missed the extreme feelings of the 1950’s and 60’s.   He is therefore getting quite a bit of attack from protectors ofpure capitalism such as Forbes magazine. To his credit, he takes some good swings back, in particular at their handing of individual wealth.  He is probably being attacked from the left as well, although apparently his book is being taken as the textbook for the Occupy Wallstreet crowd. 

 I found the book incredibly thought provoking (perhaps because of my ignorance of economics), even though I did have to occasionally look back in order to try to keep all of the material in my head.  I think it deserves the wide-spread reading and discussion it is apparently receiving.  More details in the recommended reading list at the left.

 

Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, Stocks, and Technology

  I am a fan of Michael Lewis books.  They are fun to read, filled with heroes and villains, and even better give insights into what is to me an exotic and foreign land — that of Wall Street and high (matter of perspective) finance.  I have just finished his latest book, Flash Boys (information in recommended reading column on the left of the blog).  As you can see from the internet, it is already highly controversial, but also presently number one on the New York Times non-fiction best sellers list.

  Michael is a very bright and likable person, who has a knack for causing people to tell him things they probably shouldn’t, which is of course a valuable attribute in the vocation he has chosen.  I met him years ago when his wife, Tabitha Soren, came to Stanford as a holder of a  Knight Journalism Fellowship, awarded to outstanding professional journalists.  He was interested in doing a piece on Silicon Valley venture capitalists, we talked a bit, and he asked me to introduce him to some.  Easily done, with the result that an excellent article appeared, describing the Silicon Valley venture capital industry very well, but also outing a bit of dirty linen that several members of the VC community did not want to become public.  I liked the article, but a couple of the people I told him to look up didn’t return my phone calls for a while.

 One thing that impresses me is that he has an incredible knack to convey the nature of the seemingly strange (to me) behavior of people investing large amounts of money in hopes of making huge profits.  Among other things, Flash Boys is about the impact that computers have had and are having on the stock market.  In brief, computers now handle large movements of money rather than people, and the speed at which they can make decisions and the speed at which buy/sell messages move has become a critical factor in trading, resulting in great emphasis on such things as the length of fiber cables and the speed of digital components. Large buys and sells affect the value of stocks.  When stock transactions were completed in seconds, traders were able to follow them.  But now first milliseconds and then microseconds are important for a number of reasons.  As an example, Computers are fast enough to sense a buy or sale well before it is complete, and use this knowledge to profit by such things as transactions through other exchanges.  The age of high frequency trading was  the result of this.

 Flash Boys is an excellent story about the effects of technology on a traditional business and the interaction between computer specialists and traditional traders and managers.  Books like this open my eyes a lot, because my attitude toward money was probably formed by growing up in a small town after the depression.  I tend to relax into thinking that it represents something fixed.  I certainly do not consider myself an investor, but Michael Lewis books do make me think about the trustworthiness of the money on which I depend on as a retired person.  High frequency trading does not affect my meager stock transactions, but it affects the economy, and the economy affects me.

 I recommend the book for a number of reasons, not the least being that it will give you another look at the influence of technology when it strikes a traditional business.  And if you are not on Wall Street working in finance, it will give you some things to think and worry about.

 

Time Knowledge, and Airplanes

In my recent South America travels, I had a good opportunity to read as well as sleep (both benefits of air travel).  I particularly liked a book entitled Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff  (Penguin, N,Y., 2014)—obviously a friendly take-off of Alvin Toffler’s 1970’s book Future Shock. 

 When I joined the Stanford Faculty in the 1960’s, there was much attention being paid to personal growth, alternate states of consciousness, eastern religions. and living in the “now” in the U.S.  The country is at this point more sophisticated in such things, but according to Rushkoff, may be living too much in the “now”, or at least in the present.  His book examines the interaction between time, information, and life.  I found it most readable, very interesting, and worthy of inclusion in the excellent books now coming out on the brain, information overload, and human problem solving. More information is contained in the “recommended books” column on the left of this bog.

 In his introduction, Ruchkoff points out that perhaps we are now living more in the “now”, but that we are not necessarily more aware of what is going on around us.  To quote him, “we tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored.  Our ability to create a plan—much less follow through on it— is undermined by our need to be able to improvise our way through any number of external impacts that stand to derail us at any moment”.  

 Rushkoff is a major user of the internet, as well as a critic of the role it can take in both helping and distracting us.  The book is full of examples and a large amount of insight into problems we face in handling information that is designed to seem both powerful and instantly digestible.  I was taken by one analogy he makes between small bits of information traveling rapidly through time (Twitter?), which he refers to as streams, and information pools more stationary in time (books, Wikipedia?) which he refers to as ponds.  He validly makes the point that streams are shallow and fast moving and fun to play in, but perhaps do not always lead to valid conclusions (can you really tell what people want in the future by sampling what they have just bought?). Ponds, on the other hand, feature depth, complexity, and information more meaningful over time, but require time and effort to fish.  To confuse matters, some internet formats, such as e-mail messages, can have characteristics of both streams and ponds, as can books, depending on whether you glance at the summary and scan them, or actually read them.

 Rushkoff’s book is well worth reading, and should make you think more deeply about how you are dealing with the overwhelming amount of information available to you, not only through the internet, but due to improved communication in general, as well as increased travel and globalism. 

 Are you not reading books any more because you can get the information you need in more “efficient” ways?  You may be fooling yourself (or others may be fooling you).  Maybe you should spend less time playing in streams and more fishing in ponds.   

 

Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course, ME314, 2014

Winter quarter is almost done, but it does not seem like winter here in California, because the sun continues to shine, and the farmers (including my older son) continue to become depressed.  Perhaps it will never rain again and we will return to desert, where we began before building our immense snow-dependent water system.

 The course good Products Bad Products is also almost done.  The Course outline for this year is here.  But since I discussed the course in previous posts, I won’t go into detail again. If you go to the Categories section on the left of the blog below the Recommended books section, and click on "ME 314 Stanford course 2013, you will get some of it. But the web-site for the students “choose a good product and a bad one” assignments is no longer accessible from outside Stanford. Ashish Goel, who was one of the highly competent Teaching Assistants last year, and was in charge of all things having to do with the internet, was kind enough to put it back on an publicly accessible web site.  The URL is here. If you would like to look at some of the student choices and short discussions, open the URL and have a good time.  If you click on the title of the entries, photographs will appear as well as the complete short description by the student choosing the the products as an example of good or bad.                                      

 The course ends with amazingly well designed media-rich presentations of good products and bad ones based on each of the chapter areas of my books. Stanford students are good at media, and Dave Beach pushes it in the course, as you can see from the outline.

I wrote the book because the issue of product quality is extremely complex, subject to personal tastes and judgements, and in general difficult to define in a sound byte.  But by spending effort judging products and arguing about them, it is possible to become much more sophisticated when dealing with the topic. Try it.

 

The Quality of Work, Computers, and the Mystery of Employment

For some time now, we have been hearing about unemployment, outsourcing, computer-based automation, and such things.  I recently read a book entitled The Second Machine Age, — Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.  The Authors are Erik Brynjolfsson, the director of the MIT Center for Computer Business, and Andrew McAfee, a research scientist at the Center. It is listed in the recommended books list on the left.  They also were the coauthors of Race Against the Machine.  Both books have gained considerable notice.

 It is packed with interesting information, but I also found it interesting because it contained several different messages.  The first part of the book consisted of raves for the amazing accomplishments of digitization, and all of the things that computers can now do that only humans used to be able to do.  It admits there will be problems as computers become more and more powerful, but miracles will be accomplished and individuals have no choice in going along with this.  The authors also deny becoming technological determinists (if we can think it up, it will happen). But for a while I thought “oh no, not another born again computer book”.

 But societies have choices—there are such things as, regulations, labor movements, legal challenges, revolutions etc., and they are beginning to happen over issues such as privacy and the quality of life—or in other countries censoring the internet. And we hear of autonomous automobiles, but much attention to the  possibility of autonomous trucks and we would hear from the teamsters union again.

Happily, in the second portion of the book, the authors bring up the downsides of digitization, and one of course, is the effect on work (labor and jobs).  And I think we have only seen the tip of this iceberg.

 Most people in business and economics focus upon jobs as a way to move money around, and believe that as computers take over more and more jobs, others will appear.  But will they?  An article entitled “Closing the Gap”, in the Feb 15-21, 2014 issue of The Economist, suggests that the present decrease of unemployment may be due to the fact that the U.S. labor force is permanently stunted by people leaving it for reasons ranging from early retirement to giving up on finding jobs.  I think there is another reason to worry, and that is the quality of jobs.  People who have worked in a highly skilled job they love, are hardly satisfied with any old job.  I have a highly educated friend who is a farmer.  He requires being out of doors and hates computers—period.  He would be a pretty  unhappy tax accountant (a job, incidentally, which computers are taking over).

 Brynjolfsson and McAfee obviously like to think about difficult problems, read scholarly articles, follow the news in the media, and write books.  I do too, but I too am an academic. I don’t think we are typical. I clearly remember being in high school and none of my friends liked to do such things.  Many of my present smart but non-academic friends do much of such things..  Can it be possible that most people are in that category? Do people like a bit of manual labor to use the hands and muscles that have so carefully evolved over time in some context other than a health club?  I grew up on a farm.  The work was hard and the sun was hot, but at the end of the day one could collapse and see what had been accomplished, My father was smart, found farming highly satisfying, and would not have liked an inside job without heavy lifting.  In fact he once wrote me a letter, and it was the only example of his handwriting I ever saw—and he wrote beautifully.  Later I worked in a large machine shop, and it was more fun than farming, and to me even more satisfying.  The people were bright, amusing, and took rightful pride in what they were accomplishing. They were highly skilled, and not only could they see progress during the day, but the output was not something just anyone could do. And they could compete to see who did better work.

 I also worked on a work-over rig in an oil field for a spell.  The crew was high in spirits (emotional and after work alcoholic), full of jokes and pranks, once again skilled (mistakes could kill people), and at the end of the day could see what they had accomplished.  Even farming gave one pride and a sense of contributing when a bit more mechanized, and like farming, oil field work was outside—an important element to a lot of people.  I don’t know to what extent computers are now ”helping” the crews, but it’s coming.  And it is interesting to consider a classic roughneck working in an office, especially wearing a suit.

 Later still, when I worked at GM and JPL, I also worked closely with even more highly skilled shop people, because I was designing prototypes which needed custom parts made extremely precisely often from exotic materials.  I was by then an engineer, but when agonizing over a difficult problem I would sometimes wish I still worked in the shop, because the feedback was faster and the people seemed happier, healthier, and more entertaining. 

 Such jobs have been disappearing in the U.S..  As an example, computer aided design and manufacturing, coupled with very precise machining centers, do not require high salaries and do a totally predictable job. Do you suppose that people who liked doing that kind of work by hand would be fulfilled sitting and watching a number of such machines doing the work while they were being paid very low wages to be bored?

 So it isn’t just the number of jobs.  It is the fit of the job to the person and the sense of contribution and accomplishment that accompanies it.  One problem is that despite the efforts of many people, males are still with an inheritance of competing, showing off, and talking trash (as are women, but they play different games).  Watching a computer, or even running one, doesn’t do it for many.  I had a lovely phone conversation yesterday with a woman who works for A.T.&T.  My land line phone was doing things that weren’t covered in the web site, so I called the number with my cell, and after waiting several minutes while the phone told me the call would be recorded for quality purposes (do you suppose anyone ever listens to the recordings?), that they were receiving an unexpected number of calls, and that I shouldn’t hang up because they valued my calls, all the time playing me crummy music, an actual nice person came on the line, and solved my problem.  After I told her how wonderful she was compared to a web page, we had a long conversation on A.T.&T’s dime and I forgave them.  Had it not been for the human contact, I would have put another notch on my frustration with the company.  The power of real humans! 

 I’ll bet the elders who told you where to find things at Walmart would like their jobs back, and I wish they could get them, but I am afraid we are in a system too much captivated by cutting expenses and increasing profit.  But the backlash will come. I think I’ll go join a union.  And quit buying things over the internet.  And plant some corn in my back yard.

 But maybe nobody knows what’s going on with employment.  In the February 16, 2004 New York Times there is an article by Fred Andrews entitled “The Case for Swapping Roles with China”.  Steven Roach hass just written a book entitled Unbalanced— The Codependency of America and China. I haven’t read it, but he apparently claims both of us are getting in economic trouble, and the only solution is for us to swap roles.  We should go from consuming to producing, and China should do the opposite.  Maybe I can get a job in a shop, while people in China all go to work buying and selling things over the internet and speculating on investments.

 

Engineering, Math, Science, and Education

When I attended Caltech in the 1950’s, I worked summers at a large job shop in Riverside, California named Hunter Engineering.  It was started by a man named Joe Hunter and did everything from  machining custom parts, to welding, to manufacturing large lots of  components, to designing and building complete custom machines.  It had a small engineering staff, consisting of very talented people who had typically worked  in the shop and did not have engineering degrees from four  year colleges.  The first summer I worked in the shop, and then since I was going to college and studying engineering, I was moved  to the engineering function and earned my keep sitting at a drafting board and designing  various things. It was great fun.

 In  the 1930’s the company had developed a process of continuously painting material, and during the years I worked there, the company designed and built a continuous casting machine, rolling line and  heat treatment furnace, to go with the continuous painting process so that the stock began as aluminum ingots and ended as rolls of completed blind material.  The company had joined Douglas Engineering in the 1940’s and eventually became Hunter Douglas and is now among other things the largest producer of venetian blinds in the world, employing some 17,000 people.  When I worked there, it probably employed about 200. More details are here.

 I had a  problem, however, correlating the work I did at Hunter with the courses I was taking at Caltech.  By then Caltech was renowned for the scientific and mathematical research its faculty performed, and my courses were heavily slanted in that direction.  But the engineers at Hunter seemed to rely on rudimentary calculations, handbooks, finding information and methods of solving problems when they needed, and their experience. At Caltech we were not supposed to even read handbooks, but I found mine (bought for my summer work) valuable as a quick insight into what we were learning in detail.  Needless to say I kept them well hidden.

 Since those years, “leading—meaning ranked toward the top in polls” engineering schools seem to have leaned even more toward research, Ph.D. production, and visibility obtained through publication and awards (the Nobel prize is a good thing to have).  This year, the very popular Product Design program at Stanford, which trades some science and math for more project-oriented courses, is trying to hire a tenure line professor or two.  It seems to have accepted that the applicants should have Ph.D. degrees and are active in scholarly research.  In my career with Shell Oil, the U.S. Air Force, General Motors, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and teaching and consulting at Stanford, the best working project engineers and designers usually did not have Ph.D. degrees and definitely did not do academic research.  In fact they in general did not even read refereed scholarly journals.  I tried to  hide my Ph.D. degree at J.P.L. so that I could be involved in designing and building space craft rather than being a specialist, and the technology we used was not cutting edge—the game with robotic planetary-and-beyond spacecraft is reliability and long lifetime.  That is usually obtained through experience, seeking simplicity, and lots of testing.

 But science and mathematics have great appeal to the media.  When I worked at J.P.L., the media never tired of talking about the brilliant young scientists who  built these marvels.  They were not built by scientists, but rather by engineers, who tended to come from schools like Iowa State and others who were less festooned with Nobel prize winners and National Merit Scholars than Caltech.  In fact when I was there, although Caltech manages J.P.L., there were relatively few Caltech graduates working there.  And mathematics and science fit well into the intellectual life of universities and attract money.

 I am presently on the advisory committee of a project called Engineering 2030 Chile— an attempt to upgrade Chilean engineering schools through a competition that will shower funding on the winning schools.  The large universities will probably propose producing more Ph.D. students and hiring more internationally renowned scholars.  Is that what Chile needs?  They would like to diversify their industrial base  and have recently completed a very successful program named Start Up Chile to build a network of entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs in high technology need to be bright and well educated in the basic concepts of science and mathematics.  But they also need to be driven and able to deal with money and understand such things as marketing,  Ph.D’s ?  It seems that Chile would benefit from more bright, motivated, creative, and up-to-date engineers in many fields, even if they are not top level mathematicians and scientists. 

 Science and mathematics are essential tools for engineers, and their basic nature and principles must be understood.  But top mathematicians and scientists generally have specialist roles in industry, if they are there at all,  rather than being involved in the non-rigorous and often pragmatic work involved in large projects.

 I once became so annoyed by the tendency of humans to lump everyone using equations and scientific knowledge together that I wrote a whole book trying to explain what engineering is.  The title is Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings (Harvard Press).  It is listed in the recommended book list on the left side of this blog.  As I said in the introduction, If you disagree with my views, please write a better one.  A bit more clarity is needed on what engineers are and what they do.

 

Stanford Good Products Bad Product Course, ME314, 2014

Sorry to be a day late on this post, but the winter quarter begins today at Stanford, and with it the winter course "Good Products Bad Products" which uses my book of the same title (pictured in the banner of this blog, published by McGraw Hill). I was hoping to send you some specific information on the course, but the first meeting is tomorrow, so of course the material is not ready todoy.  If you look in the category list (left side of this blog under recommended books) and click on "ME314 Stanford Course 2013"  You will find some posts I wrote during the quarter last year that give you some details on the course (begin at the bottom).  This year's course will be similar, but speakers and assignments will change—and, of course, the students.

I began this course many years ago to fill a void that I believed existed in  engineering and business education and practise.  During the priod 1970 to 1990 there was a great amount of attention paid to what was then called manufacturing quality.  This was due to products and industries of previously dominant countries being overtaken by those of a few countries who were focussing on doing things better  (Japan for instance) in areas such as reliability, quality of fits and finishes, general approach to manufacturing and management of same, and  cleverness at such things as minimizing rejects and inventory control.The resulting reaction resulted in improvements in everythinig from quality of the products to corporate profit.

The topics considered were measurable and progress could be directly charted and rewarded.  But there are many aspects of product quality that are not measurable, and very important in the overall quality of the product.  The course and my book focus on these.

When I became an Emeritus Professor (retired), the course was taken over by Professor David Beach, the developer and director of the Product Realization Laboratory, an extremely successful program in the engineering school that focuses on integrated design and manufacturing.  The course continues to improve.  I wrote the book a couple of years ago to provide a text, and David has redesigned the course to include more outside speakers, a greater emphasis  emphasis on the quality of student presentations, and more pertinent assignments.  I will include the course outline and more details in my next  post, but as a measure of the course quality and reputation, over 200 students wanted into the course, which unfortunately is limited by room size, the ability to get to know the students individually, and promoting  meaningful presentations and discussions, to 60 students. In addition some 30 people who are working on graduate degrees, but also working in industry, take the course by means of the internet (it is an internet course, but definitely not a MOOC course).

If you have been reading my posts,  you know that I care deeply about these issues, and I will continue to write about them and report on them in the context of the course as we go through the quarter. I am presently searching for people who have similar concerns about the overall product quality of industrially produced products.   If you are one, contact me at [email protected]  If you know other people who are, tell them about this blog and give them the message to contact me.

Higher product quality wins for everyone, and no matter how high the quality of a product, it could be even higher if we paid more attention to it, especially certain aspects of quality that are difficult to quantify . 

 

 

Two Views of the Internet

 As I told you in my post of November 3^rd, I was planning to order a number of the books reviewed that day in the New York Times that were concerned with the internet.  I have been reading through them, and the first two (listed under recommended books) held remarkably different views.  The first, Smarter Than You Think, was by Clive Thompson, a writer who has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Wired, Fast Company, and Mother Jones.  He is a proponent of the internet, and I share many of his views.  As I have said before, I consider the internet a work in progress, with already great value, but great potential to improve —for instance in quality control (bad words for many internet folk) and increasingly smart, and perhaps specialized search engines. In particular, social networking, I believe, is in its infancy and it is difficult to guess what directions it will ultimately take.  I worry most about the effect of continually monetizing the internet.  I can’t help but think of the direction television, in particularly network television, has taken in order to squeeze more money from advertising.

 The New York Times Review of Thompson’s book is here, and portrays it well.   It is an honest report on the web and its potential starting with its service as improved memory for the individual, and ending with its function in connecting society.  It was easy to read and left me feeling good about the internet and the future. 

 The second book, Entitled Status Update – Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age, is by Alice Marwick, who after a research job at Microsoft, joined Fordham University as an assistant professor in communication and media studies.  The book reflects her experience working in and her research on the San Francisco computer scene during the post-bubble times of Web 2.0.  I loved the book for many reasons, even though as the review (here) said, she definitely verges into social-science-speak from time to time.  But as a professor, I have learned to enjoy academic dialects.  In particular the author loves to use the term neoliberal to describe the young entrepreneurs in her book, which she describes as “persons having a philosophy advocating deregulated free-market economic policies as a means to freedom and prosperity”.  I won’t quibble, except many of the people she interviewed seemed totally self-centered, which I didn’t think liberals were supposed to be.  And neo-cons believe in the free market. But not as much, I guess, in free expression, and more in spending time and effort converting others to their beliefs.

 I loved the book because I am a technical person living in Silicon Valley, working in a University whose new buildings seem to be named for entrepreneurs who have made a pile of money (Hewlett, Packard, Gates, Allen, Yang, etc.} and are filled with eager potential entrepreneurs.  I have a 50 yard line seat to watch the unfolding of the digital world.  Also because I have long been fascinated by social movements in San Francisco that promise a new, revolutionary, and more enlightened life (beatnik, hippie, now this).  Even though they do not result in radical change in everyone’s life style, they provoke thought and action, and always result in beneficial changes in viewpoint.

 In my view,  many of the younger digital advocates described by Ms. Marwick are a bit too much in their pursuit of becoming a brand and changing the world, especially those who she calls micro-celebrities. But they will help move our increasingly huge population to better itself whether they succeed or not, and the more of that we have, the better.

  Finally I enjoyed Ms. Marwick’s heroic effort to separate her scholarship from her personal feelings.  To the extent she failed, the book became more fun to read. I think I will send her a fan e-mail.

 

The internet, Distraction, Addiction, and Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

 As I mentioned in a couple of my previous posts, there appears to be a tsunami of books critical of the internet under way.  I am setting about reading some of them, since being at Stanford and in Silicon Valley, I live among the priests and generally hear only praise for it and its potential.  To suggest that the internet is becoming less useful because of the overwhelming and often low quality if not useless) information it contains is somewhat like wandering through the Vatican wearing a sign proclaiming that there is no God.  But I am not an internet atheist.  In fact I use it a lot for reasons ranging from doing research for writing (even though everyone is aware that using URL’s as a source is rather ridiculous, because the content in them changes and they go away), through watching videos my friends tell me to watch on YouTube (and I do), to finding tomorrow’s weather prediction,   And oh yes, I have this blog , and am on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in, although I at this point I am not exactly sure why—so maybe I am an agnostic.  More about that in a later post.

  I recently finished The Distraction Addiction, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang.  More details can be found under recommended books at the left side of this blog.  The author is a scholar-writer-researcher-futurist, who as the title of the book indicates, is extremely interested in the importance of attention and the cost of distraction on getting things done and enjoying life.  He draws from sources ranging from cognitive psychology to Buddhism.  I very much enjoyed the breadth of the book, which can be inferred from the subtitle “Getting the Information You Need and Want Without  Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Losing your Soul”.

 The author has a good sense of humor and a good writing style, but this is not a comic book.  And it is far from an anti-internet rant. The author and his family are obviously eager and informed users, even bonding by playing computer games together after dinner.  But instead it is a book of reasons why it is necessary to consciously control ones attention and limit distraction in this day of ever increasing opportunities to escape into endless communication, videos, surfing, and other such activities.  The book is both fun to read and thought provoking.  It reminds us that there are tremendous resources and very bright people tempting us toward seemingly being busily, if not frantically,  involved with each other and the world, but maybe neither accomplishing as much as we might that will affect ourselves or others in the longer term, nor taking proper advantages of other ways to enjoy life   The author calls his approach contemplative computing.  He not only reminds us of the traps of existing with the internet, but suggests ways to better avoid them, including such things as digital sabbaticals and taking advantage of software such as Freedom,  He clearly feels that we should be more mindful of the mind, as do I.  The internet is a formidable attack on our very valuable, but already limited attention.

 

 

 

The Internet, Critical Books, and People

In my last post I mentioned that there is a noticeable increase in criticism of the Internet, and mentioned a few books as examples.  Today, to my amazement, the entire Book Review section of the November 3 New York Times was devoted to books about this topic, only one of which I have read —more to order.  You can see the reviews here, as well as a short article that is worth reading entitled “Is Tech Lit An Oxymoron?”. The books reviewed are not all negative about the Internet in general and social networking in particular, but there is a good bit of that.  This is not surprising, since many, if not most writers appreciate the book rather than the tweet and generally view the internet responsible for such things as the near disappearance of small book stores, the dire economic straits of traditional publishers, and the encouragement of brevity in writing at perhaps the cost in style, argument, and general story telling. 

 One of the books reviewed, by Alice Marwick, apparently singles out a marketing person named Gary Vaynerchuck for particular criticism.  Probably coincidentally, he is featured as the cover article entitled “Riding the Hashtag” in the business section of the same issue of the paper.  It is here.  He is apparently eagerly sought as an expert at Internet marketing and although he is clearly becoming famous and making money, his chosen work is about as far as how I want to spend my time as I can imagine.

 I have been using computers for a long time, beginning with using a large IBM mainframe to solve structural and thermal problems in aerospace in the 1950’s, although I must admit I was restricted to giving the problems to programmers, and certainly was not allowed to touch the machine.  And I am reasonably competent with contemporary hardware and soft ware .  But I retired from active duty on the Stanford faculty before smart phones and social networking became the rage.  I obviously have a cell phone, which seems to be a social requirement, but I still do not have a smart phone, because they seem to convert the owner into a constant sender and checker of e-mail and text messages, surfer of the internet, user of apps, etc.   I prefer to constrain such activities to a specific time each day, in order to not be interrupted doing other things that are very important to me. Unfortunately I am about to test my self discipline by getting a smart phone, in order to escape going mad using the brand new three-layer security system on Stanford’s network— a task which is simplified through use of a smart phone app.  But that is another story.

 As I also mentioned in my last post, two or three years ago I began social networking—this blog plus Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin— but have not gotten strongly involved because of a great deal of ambivalence on my part.  So far I have been more a watcher than a participant.  I have ”friended” some of my actual friends, am followed by people on Twitter, although I have not tried to attract followers, and I have some contacts and have joined some groups on LinkedIn.   I can see its benefits, but I neither comfortable with nor willing to spend the time trying to attract and communicate with a large following, and many people I would like to communicate with more are not actively involved in social networking.  In addition although I understand the importance of marketing in a capitalistic system, I think people who are constantly marketing themselves or their goods are a pain (I get enough of them on my phone and in print and TV ads) and they are plentiful in social networking.  Also, I gain a lot more from personal interaction with fewer people who are working on the same kind of problems I am interested in, than I do from a large crowd of people I have never met.  And since I feel guilty not spending more time with the friends I have, I am not looking for new ones.   I also prefer communication formats that allow more time than is popular with Internet communications.  On the positive side, I must admit I am fascinated by the affect of the Internet and social networking on people, and I can probably see it more clearly as a participant. Maybe I fall in with the book people.

 That is why I am glad to see a wider variety of thinking about social networking becoming available in the form of books and articles.  I need to decide whether to devote more time and energy to social networking or to quit.  It has its good side, and will improve, but I have other activities on my agenda.  And the type of deeply thought-out and hopefully substantiated opinions found in books helps me decide such things. As I read the books, I will post more details and my own reactions to them.

 

 

The Circle, the Internet, and People

 I have just finished a novel entitled The Circle, by Dave Eggers (see book list on leftt of page for more information).  I have been waiting for someone to write a book like this for some time. It is a sort of Brave New World/1984 that is based on digital technology.  The Circle is a mythical future company that is a combination of Google, Facebook, Apple, and such other companies.  It has bought the competition and is a near monopoly.  The troika that built it and control it consist of the idea person who was responsible for the advances in technology that made it possible, a person who believes fervently that the human race is best served by total transparency and interaction among all of its members, and finally a person who believes in large companies with large profits—all of them sure they are performing a great service for humanity.

 The story hinges around a young woman named Mae, who accomplishes her dream of being hired by The Circle.  She is a combination of naivete, talent, and ambition, and the book covers the changes in her life and values that result from the progress in the company in accomplishing its goals.  As the company grows, it  attracts more and more people into its beliefs and services, which include great break throughs in such things as miniature video cameras and data handling, with the result that personal privacy is drastically reduced, and  people spend the majority of their time  interacting and communicating over the radically improved equipment and network that is available. Finally, everyone has the ability to watch, listen to, and communicate with everyone else —pretty much total transparency and no privacy.  There are hold-outs, including Mae’s parents, her ex- boy friend, and finally, one of the three founders, but they will obviously not succeed in remaining free of this brave new world. I would have been with them.  I found the book chilling.

 When our children were young, people would talk about tree people and phone people.  When tree people had a problem, they would climb a tree and think about it.  When phone people had a problem they would proceed to call all of their friends and talk about it.  My wife and I and two of our sons were tree people, our daughter was a phone person, and as my wife would say, our other son would climb a tree with his phone.  Now we  have social networking people and non-social networking people. 

 Two or three years ago I began dabbling in social networking, partly because my publisher convinced me  that I had to or people would not know my Good Products, Bad Products book existed, and partly because social networking is somewhat a function of age, and since I have a relatively large amount of that, I wanted to make sure that my resistance was due to me, not my age.  I am now sure.  And I feel in good company.  A few  years ago Don Knuth, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford , and a person I like and respect told me that he was going to cease communicating on e-mail to make more time for thinking about important problems and create a bit more spare time in his life.  He is a hero in the field (He is the author of  “The Art of Computer Programming”, a classic set of monographs beginning in the 1960’s and still continuing, and a god in the area of fonts) and I would be surprised if he has taken up social networking.

 There is a discernible increase in criticism of the internet.  I mentioned the books of Evgeny Morosov in a previous post, and he recently wrote an article published in the October 28 edition of the New Yorker Magazine entitled Only Disconnect, with the subtitle Two Cheers for Boredom.  It is here.  In the article he decries the disappearance of free time to think and ponder important problems among internet addicts.  He mentions three books I have not read; The Present Shock—When Everything Happens Now, by Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist and consultant, The Distraction Addiction, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a futurist trained as a historian of science, and Ambient Commons—Attention in the Age of Embodied Information, by Malcolm McCullough, a professor of design and architecture at the University of Michigan.  I have ordered all three and will let you know what I think of them when I read them. Incidentally, Morosov also admits that he is now the  owner of a safe with a built in timer in which he can lock his smart phone and internet cable.  Such is the power of the habit.

 I am perhaps hypersensitive, watching Stanford students live a life of constant interruption and escape via their smart phones and the internet.  They think they are multi-tasking.  But I read the literature, and know that they are just kidding themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entrepreneurship—An Answer to Everything?

The media is feeding more and more on entrepreneurship, an activity of which we in the U.S. are proud, and to which we have been recently looking more and more in order to solve our economic /employment problems.

 The  Schumpeter article in the October 12-18 2013 issue of The Economist entitled Not Open for Business (it is here) speaks of widely known weaknesses in the U.S. (as seen by entrepreneurs) that slow us down: lack of adequately trained human capital; immigration laws that make it difficult or impossible for many people from other countries who have played a major role in entrepreneurship in the past to live here; government regulations and taxes; and difficulty of raising money, in light of the perceived increasingly risk-adverse nature of venture capitalists.  As the article points out, start-ups created only 2.7 million new jobs in the 2012 financial year, as opposed to 4.7 million in 1999.

 But an article in the October 14, 2013 New Yorker, entitled San Francisco Transforms the Country, Again (here), paints a different picture, and one to which I resonate because I work in the university.  The article speaks of younger people (20’s, 30’s) who are well on their way of building an entrepreneurial culture based on small amounts of funding (thousands or tens of thousands instead of millions) from sources varying from crowd sourcing, to friends who are doing small scale angel investing based on successes they have had, to enterprises such as Y Combinator (here). 

 But the entrepreneurs discussed in this article are looking for life-style and individual freedom, rather than building great companies or manufacturing outstanding products.  Nor are they thinking of fast growth and large profits. They are taking advantage of the low cost of developing software and the increasing business services available on the internet to help form and run a company and market a product. But how important of a product?  An example of a  particular person who is admired in the article for his rewarding life style is a member of Sidecar, a group who sell people rides around the city in their private cars.  He lives in Tiberon (north of San Francisco), and drives to Palo Alto, (south of San Francisco) each day to play golf.  As he passes through San Francisco he checks into Sidecar, picks up enough rides to pay for his trip and golf, and heads to the links.  The person who admired the golfer during the interviews envisions the future as “everybody is a private contractor, snatching jobs out of the ether, working for one another as they please”.  Entrepreneurial perhaps, but hardly creating large numbers of jobs and big profits.

 People in their 20’s and 30’s (and teens) seem to be considering entrepreneurship because it is in and cool these days.  But they do not have families or large expenses yet.  When questioned about this, the San Francisco young entrepreneurs either have not thought about such things, or reply that they guess that they will eventually work for a large established company such as Google if they need to.

 And although entrepreneurs do not think they will fail, the majority of them do.  The San Francisco group seems to be willing to support those that do from their community, but even those start-ups that succeed, grow rapidly, and produce larger profits do not always offer the founder a wonderful life.  A good read on that topic is entitled All's Fair in Love and Twitter in the New York Times Magazine of October 13, 2013, and is here.

 

 

Creativity, Space, and Neatness, Part 2 - The Open Office Fad—Enlightenment or Delusion?

Stanford University has fallen prey to the “open office” philosophy recently, with sometimes questionable results.  In many of the new buildings, including the one in which my office is located, professors are allowed separate offices.   That is reasonable, since part of professing requires thinking about difficult things and talking privately with students about not only academic, but personal matters.  Also, at least I work better in a space that seems my own.  As I mentioned in my last post, I need space and limited interruptions. 

 But non-professors do not get separate offices.  The two photos below show a portion of a long hall in the building.  On one side are the professor’s offices.  The first one shows a section of the long other side, which was initially not broken by a barrier.  The architect’s drawings showed this  side with tables which included electric outlets for computers and Ph.D. students sitting in the chairs facing the wall across from the professor supervising their work.  The architects perhaps did not realize that Ph.D. students need their own turf and quiet to do their work, that professors are seldom in their offices, and that sitting in rows facing the wall is associated with such things as military basic training and wearing dunce caps.

 

The second photo shows the end of this wall where one of our administrators has frantically attempted to get some quiet and privacy to do her work by erecting various temporary screens.

 The third photo was taken in a new building that functions as the headquarters of the Engineering School.  It also shows a workspace  for Ph.D. students.  This time they do not have to sit in rows facing the wall, but they have little room to store material, are on display behind glass to people passing down the hall, have limited space to lock up such things as computers and peripheral equipment,  and would have to be disciplined enough to do their difficult work in the midst of a large group of people.  But being bright (they are after all Ph.D. students), they solve these problems by doing their work in their dorm rooms or homes.

 The last of the photos is the domain of Tim Keely, a good friend of mine , who is an outstanding IT manager in the school.  As part of this he typically has a large amount of computer equipment on which he is working —but no office space, because he is not a professor.  He works crammed in a niche in the corner of the Ph.D. space, and worries about who  will steal what equipment.  But he at least has a niche.  Unfortunately, he is about to be moved into an “open office” with the other administrators in the department.  He is not happy. 

 I believe in cross disciplinary workand lots of interaction, but not at the expense of a closable space of one’s own in which to work and keep all of the material necessary to do that work.  Open space to meet is fine when it helps accomplish the goal, but not for all people and not for all of the time.  And woe be unto you, should you be good at computers and in an open office, since you will spend all of  your time with the line of your office partners at your desk seeking your help.

 Even though they are cheaper, and these days there is much attraction to the “interaction” component, the open-office fad will pass.  There is ever-increasing negative feelings about such space at Stanford and elsewhere.  There was an amusing tirade in the Jobs section of the September 20^th New York times written by Phyllis Korkky, entitled "Modern Offices, Chock-Full of Offenses".  It is here.  It draws from personal opinion, and also Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, who has written a book with her son that apparently contains observations bemoaning the loss of traditional offices— “Walls and doors can no longer protect workers from unwanted visits, along with various odors, shouts, coughs, sneezes, popping of gum, belching and spitting” (Stanford people, of course, do not belch and spit — but I admit I do pay a lot of unasked for visits to people).  As another quote, “Forget all this business about making everybody love everybody else, It is taking up time that could be spent getting work done, and it’s a drain on people’s finances and personal lives”.

 Happily over time all of this carefully architected glass, steel. And concrete space at Stanford will be humanized by its occupants, despite the efforts of the building managers and  walls that resist hanging up exciting, entertaining, and even useful material.   

 

Insights into the Middle East, and Changes in the Technology of War

Once again, due to attention being paid to Syria, the Middle East is  all over the U.S. media and should be in everyone’s mind.  A valuable perspective is in a very well researched and book by Scott Anderson, entitled Lawrence In Arabia: War Deceit, Imperial Volley and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Doubleday, New York, 2013—more details by clicking the icon at the right).

 The book covers World War I in the middle east, with a focus on four characters:  William Yale, raised as an aristocrat, an employee of Standard Oil Company, and the only American field intelligence office in the Middle east during World War, who was to strongly influence American opinion about the Middle East after the war, Aaron Aaronsohn, a Jewish scientist who was a fervent champion for creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine and established a spy-ring in Turkey to help fulfill his goal, Curt Prufer, a German scholar who sought to foment an Islamic Jihad against the western colonial powers, and of course T.E. Lawrence, who, although a loyal British subject, acted to help the Arabs remain independent of the colonial powers, believing that such an outcome would be preferable both to the area and to Britain. 

 Lawrence became famous by “going native” and leading successful guerrilla forays which accomplished things that the British army, weighed down by tradition and lack of knowledge of the area and its people, could not.  Interestingly enough, he was a fan of  “The Art of War”, by Sun Tsu.  The  photo at the left, taken from his Wikipedia page shows him in his British army garb.  The second shows him in his preferred fighting configuration. 

 As the book beautifully argues, the results of the Paris Peace Conference, — major control by the British and French in the area, decreased power for the Arabs, encouragement for Jewish  immigration into Palestine with no agreement about what that might mean, were the precursors of present problems.  As the author states in the epilogue to the book “Certainly blame for all this (the unrest in the Mid East) doesn’t rest solely with the terrible decisions that were made at the end of World War I, but it was then that one particularly toxic seed was planted.  Ever since, Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialization, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms. This culture of opposition has been manipulated—indeed feverishly nurtured— by generations of Arab dictators intent on channeling their people’s anger away from their own misrule in favor of the external threat, whether it is “the great Satan”, or the “illegitimate Zionist entity” or Western music playing on the streets.”

 Read the book.  It will help you understand where we are.

 But I also found the book interesting because it portrays the differences and similarities of politics and war in the almost 100 year period since World War I.  In a sense international politics have not changed a great deal, despite the existence of the United Nations, increased globalization, and improved communication. It is still about perceived power and pecking order, although nations seem to be becoming a bit more thoughtful before they move from arguing to fighting.

 But we are slowly learning that our beloved “Western” theories of war no longer seem to work very well.  We in the U.S. should have learned that in our own Civil War, fought with large numbers of equally armed people confronting each other at close range.  But we didn’t, with the result that over 600,000 of our own people died.   World War I is now famous for its slaughter in the trenches and a settlement that undoubtedly played a role in causing World  War II. We certainly should  have learned it during the 20^th century.  Estimates are that 160 million people were killed in war during that period.  And what was accomplished? 

 The U.S. has been involved in several wars (police actions) since World War II, and as time goes on has learned to place less and less faith on fixed battles. The present fascination with “smart” weapons, drones, and cyber- war seems  to show an aversion to wholesale killing of non-combatants and armies of millions fighting battles of attrition.   Or maybe it just shows our love affair with technology.

 But unless strong institutions develop that are respected by all countries (international laws that are agreed upon and enforced) wars /police actions will continue. And our history in establishing such institutions has not been too impressive.  So what form will these wars/police actions take?  There are many opinions, but I am not sure anyone knows.  The “rules” for what we call traditional warfare are well known.  We are now in new territory.  Keep your eye on the U.S. response to Syria’s use of poison gas.  It may be a portent of the future.

Internet Quality and Socialbots

I have been posting on Mondays and Thursdays for a while, but I am going to go to one post per week on Mondays.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  First of all, I want to better focus my time on a couple of books I have underway.  The  books have to do with creativity and innovation when very large numbers of people are involved (governments, religions, nations, etc) and the advantages of working with the hands.  Secondly, I need to spend some time thinking about how I can best take advantage of the internet.  In order to do this, I need to learn more about the internet and the directions it is taking.

 Networking is obviously a work in progress, and faces continual problems. I am a user, but not aware enough of the pitfalls involved.  For instance I did not know about socialbots and the increasing resources going into their development. An article in the  New York Times of August 11, 2013, entitled "I Flirt and Tweet.  Follow Me at #Socialbot" by Ian Urbina is here, if you haven’t seen it.  It describes the increasing sophistication and use of software robots to communicate with people on social networking sites for various reasons, varying from marketing through politics to attempts to annoy them or push various causes.  The article claims that more than half of Web traffic is from non-humans.  But messages composed by non-humans are increasing in the social networking area.  Some researchers are estimating that only 35% of the followers of the average Twitter user are real people, and estimate that within two years, 10% of  all social networking traffic will be by bots masquerading as real people.

 Apparently many of these bots have been provided with real social networking accounts and the article contains entertaining and worrisome examples of their power.  One quotes  Christian Rudder, manager and cofounder of OkCupid, a dating site.  Apparently at one point, his group bought and redesigned a smaller dating site.  The result was a sizeable drop of non-human participants, but also a 15% drop in real human users,  because the robot participants provided a major amount of flirtatiousness and romance.  The article mentions that his programmers are trying to design bots which will flirt with socialbots joining his site and lure them away to another location.  

 And I need to think harder about who I really want to communicate with.

 But I will continue to babble on Mondays.

 

An example of progress in product quality

A few years ago I bought the remote battery operated irrigation timer shown in the first photo. The control screen was visible through the plastic shield for a few months, but then the shield clouded over and it became necessary to remove it to change the control settings.  It worked well, but as can be seen from the second photo below (minus the shield), the numbers were miniscule and usually difficult to see because of faucet location, and in order to set it, it was necessary to go through the modes shown in the even smaller text at the top of the screen and press the necessary buttons.  This was not straight forward unless one had the small manual at hand, and not only does one lose manuals and not want to spend the time to try to find them on the internet, but really, a single-channel irrigation timer should not require a manual.

 The other day I bought another one made by the same manufacturer (Orbit) and found an amazing improvement, as can be seen in the third photo.  All of a sudden the settings are visible to the normal human, and the functions are obvious, as are the settings.  I am presently reading a book entitled Trillions; thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology, by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus, respectively  professor of Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, former head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, and president and CEO of MAYA Design, a consulting firm specializing in digital networks and communication. They believe that we are in an early phase of digital communication and heading in the wrong direction—one that will drown us in complexity.  Among other strong feelings is that computers and associated networks must speak our language—we have already gone too far in accommodating to them.

 The timer in the third photo speaks our language.  That in the first does not.  Good for Orbit. 

 I will talk a bit about design of the cyber world in future posts.  I will begin by talking a bit about the Trillions book.  I tend to resonate with its arguments, having been influenced by people who have also influenced the authors (Henry Dreyfuss, an early mentor).  In the last few weeks I have gone through the usual projector and sound system problems in various new and technically sophisticated buildings on campus, spent a ridiculous amount of time integrating a new blu-ray player into my excellent (but pre-hdmi) home system, unjamming my fairly new printer, attempting to re-do my unworkable user name and password collection, and trying to figure out how to live with the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of the knowledge on the internet. I have a life to live and I don’t need this kind of stuff.  It’s time for the digital world to get over itself and start growing up.

Product Quality, Invention, and China

We seem to be fascinated with China, these days. But conversations about such things as outsourcing, competition, and such often seem to assume that China has historically been backward nation until it began copying and cheaply producing parts and products ten or twenty years ago.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

 A well written book that might clear up the picture is The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester (Harper Collins, 2008).  More information is available by clicking the book icon on the right.  It is the story of an extraordinary British scientist named  Joseph Needham, who fell in love with China and spent his life living in it, studying it, and interacting with people ranging from peasant to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. 

 He arrived in China during World War II and decided to study the scientific and industrial history of China.  The result was a 24 volume work entitled Science and Civilization in China.  I have not read it, nor probably will you, but it is considered one of the great works of literature.  The Man Who Loved China book gives a good flavor of it, and establishes that before the European Renaissance, the Chinese did the majority of inventing in the world.  In the sixteenth century, scientific advances moved to the West, and Chinese creativity and commerce seemed to fade away.  No one seems to agree on the cause for this long quiescent period in science and technology, but clearly it has returned with a bang.

 In the index to Winchester’s book is a list of Chinese Inventions and Discoveries and dates that Needham found them first mentioned in old documents.  Some 250 are mentioned and not only cover an incredible range, but are astonishing for their age. You probably know about gunpowder ((9^th century A.D., and printing (wood block 7^th century AD, bronze type 1400 AD).  But  ball bearings in the 2^nd century B.C.? Seismograph in AD132? Stirrup in 300 AD?  Axial rudder 1^st century AD?

 And I can remember being solemnly told that U.S. engineering students were superior to Chinese engineering students, because the Chinese have never been as creative.  Isn’t self delusion wonderful?

 I think you will find Winchester’s book a wonderful read, not only for insight into Chinese history, but because he is a terrific writer and story teller.    

Fighting, Primitive War, and Weapons

People (especially men) fight physically for many reasons – different beliefs, status,  basic needs, entertainment, historical disagreements, and so on.  As long as technology is minimal, the damage to the species seems to be tolerable.  In fact, anthropologists have long studied what is often called primitive war, and have even outlined some advantages.

 Primitive war still occurs in isolated tribes, such as the Marings of Papua New Guinea.  Maring wars occur every ten or twelve years (the time it takes pigs to mature and fatten  for sacrifices and feasts) and involve hundreds of people equipped with simple bows and arrows, spears, and clubs.  The intent is to re-establish power and influence and re-allocate resources, women, and sometimes land.  Killing people is not a goal, and in fact, apparently the weapons are less lethal than those used to hunt animals for food, and the wars are often interrupted to work on gardens, or simply rest.  If someone is killed, the war may be halted, and the warriors seldom end up in hand- to -hand fighting. 

 Many primitive wars were more lethal, such as those involving the Maoris and the Aztecs, but were also limited as the Maoris developed fortifications that would withstand attack, and the Aztecs fought to capture people to be sacrificed to their gods, rather than for  spoils.  Such wars did not imperil the existence of  the people fighting them— no weapons of mass destruction.

 But even though our wars are now “modern” and involve nations, many more people, and tremendously sophisticated and destructive weapons that can be used over huge distances, we still fight in more primitive ways. If you are interested in more about this type of fighting, or the history of war in general, read “A History of Warfare”, by John Keegan, a terrific writer and senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, described in recommended readings at the right. For more on the Marings, click here.

 A good example of primitive fighting with few weapons and no major casualties were the predictable large inter school fights after football games in my high school, which became so wide spread that my friends started a so-called car club to proclaim our toughness (complete with jackets proclaiming ourselves Sultans of Berdoo) as a defensive mechanism to escape them.  In fact American football might be considered a ceremonial type of warfare.  The photo at the left shows a modern gladiator (www.reddit.com).  Sports often have many elements of ceremonial warfare, and even though they may be highly regulated, the fans are not always so. The photo at the right is a shot of the start of a riot at a Birmingham United soccer match. For more on this topic see Football Hooliganism here.

But in the third millennium B.C.E., “modern” war began with the coming of states such as Egypt and Sumer and took the direction of acquiring, land, wealth, and power.  The same weapons were used as in primitive war (bows and arrows, spears, clubs, axes, knives, swords) but the materials and designs continued to improve.  More people were involved and wars ranged more widely.  About 2340 B.C.E., Sargon become ruler of Mesopotania, and with an army of over 5000 and bronze weapons, conquered an empire roughly the size of present day Iraq. Modern war had arrived , and increasingly sophisticated technology was  to cause casualties to mount.

Quiet (by Susan Cain), Problem Solving, and Product Quality

  Everyone should read this book, but especially those working in companies developing products. Click on recommended books to the right for more information on the book.  It goes into Introversion and Extroversion in fascinating detail. And it is a terrific read (it has been on best seller lists for a while).

 I was using the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) in the 1970’s in classes on problem-solving and design and in my consulting for a number of reasons, and I sure could have used this book.  If you are not familiar with the MBTI, it is based on the theories of Carl Jung, and separates those who take it along four axes, one of these Introversion/Extraversion (an alternate spelling) .  More details  on the MBTI here if you want them.

 I quit using the MBTI because it was becoming so popular that people were using it for purposes for which it was never intended, but I have been interested in cognitive styles ever since, and Quiet is a fascinating summary of what introversion and extroversion are, and of the strengths of those solidly in each camp (introverts in thinking and sensitivity, and extroverts in getting things to happen.) The author of Quiet feels that if we do not value both of them, we all lose but especially if we undervalue the quiet introvert. 

 Cain begins the book by discussing the high value that is placed on extroversion in the U.S., particularly in business and education, and why.  She then discusses the nature and role of introversion and extroversion and the benefits of each.  When I was using the MBTI, psychological theory believed heavily in nurture, rather than nature—we were born blank and programmed through our experience.  Due to much research and focus on DNA, the theory has swung to believing that both are important, and in fact you often hear people talk of half-and-half. Cain is up on her theory and hypothesizes that as far as introversion and extroversion are concerned, most of us are naturally dominant in one, but able to do the other.

 One viewpoint I found particularly interesting is based on experiments she describes showing that the dominance is probably built into our limbic system (the portion of the brain particularly responsible for emotions), but offset by the cerebrum (the “thinking part”).  For instance, She feels that people who are naturally introverted learn to offset this because of educational, public, and professional values and pressure to the point that we may lose some of their valuable ability to think and to interact with other people—or at times lead extroverts when problems are particularly complicated and issues are subtle.

 Part three of her book has to do with introversion and extroversion in different cultures, and the final part focuses on how one should balance introversion and extroversion, how members of the opposite type should communicate, and the raising of “Quiet” kids.

 All and all a wonderful and timely book. 

 

 

 

 

MANIAC and the History of Computers

I just finished reading Turing’s Cathedral, by George Dyson (Random House, 2012, New York, N.Y.) and found it fascinating.  The history of the digital computer as a practical machine is both recent and explosive, and this extremely well written and researched book, although it traces the early general history of computers, focuses on a machine developed at the Institute of Advanced studies (the MANIAC)—an early stored program and powerful computer used at Los Alamos to do the massive calculations involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb.  The project began in 1945 and the lead players were John Von Neumann and Julian Bigelow, a lesser-known person who was the engineer that in many people’s mind “made it happen”.

 One of the reasons I liked the book is that for many years I used a book entitled The Starship and the Canoe, written by Kenneth Brower, in classes I taught.  The book is a double biography of George Dyson and his father Freeman Dyson, a famous physicist, and is a short and entertaining read.  At the time the book was written (1983), Freeman was involved with Project Orion, a proposed giant spacecraft to be propelled by the explosions of atomic bombs, and George was living in a tree in Canada studying and building Umiaks (native canoes) from modern materials.  The two were a fascinating study, because there were similarities in their thinking and passion, but George was clearly on a much different path socially.  This book by George shows amazing convergence.  George grew up on the grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where his father was a faculty member, and is now an historian of technology, and is at home with advanced scientific and technological material.  Since his sister, Esther, is famous as first a pundit and now an investor in the computer world, the Dysons are clearly an outstanding family.

 This background gave George Dyson great insight into the Institute for Advanced Study, and an unusual opportunity to access people and archives.  The book contains a large cast of fascinating characters and portrays them much more intimately than is usually the case when scientists, mathematicians, and engineers are tossed into a book about a major breakthrough.  The result is an enjoyable read.  It is also a terrific insight into the interaction between mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, the nature of ambitious technical projects, and the role that government, and in particular the military, plays in technical developments that later play a major role in civilian life.  The implication in the book is that the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the related need for massive calculations, played a major role in the influence that computers now have in our lives, for better or worse.

 And in fact, he ends with some worries – one being whether we will continually assign thinking to computers until we reach the point where machines think, but humans no longer do.  More details on the book can be found by clicking on the Amazon icon to the right.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger

I have just finished an very enjoyable and useful book entitled Contagious: “Why Things Catch On”, by Jonah Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  Further details on the book are at the right of the page under recommended reading.  I don’t usually write about marketing, partly because there are so many good books and papers on marketing, and I am not a marketing expert, although there was a time I talked about creativity in marketing executive programs and am constantly running up against marketing in my low-pressure crusade for improved product quality.  Design, manufacturing, and marketing are hopefully tightly integrated when products are involved, so I follow what is going on.

 Marketing in business schools has changed greatly since I joined the Stanford Engineering school faculty, and in universities continues to differentiate itself from sales.  This is less true outside of schools, and in fact looking at the dictionary  in the Dashboard on my Apple (clearly a business) computer I see that it is defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products and services, including market research and advertising”.  Not much differentiation there.  The marketing professors I know and have worked with have been wonderful people, but the continuum above continues to contain people who still use classic tricks to sell people low quality products they don’t need.

 Certainly marketing continues to become more sophisticated and now embraces quantitative methods as well as the best that psychology has to offer.  I am all for it when it matches people with products that fill their needs and help their growth.  I am less for it when it causes stores I enter to push opportunities to join their club so I can acquire points toward certificates that qualify me for discounts on things I don’t want, when people place ads on my computer screen that become increasingly difficult to make go away, or when they place large signs beside the road in beautiful scenery.

 But this book is about spreading the word on almost anything—a vital and increasingly difficult task, as more information seems to clog up communication channels.  The author feels that the most efficient way to get people’s attention about a product or service (and I think almost anything else) is through word of mouth, since a certainly credibility is attached, as opposed to communication from the producer, who obviously is going to say the product is wonderful.  In addition he quotes impressive numbers to show that we rely heavily on word of mouth in our decisions.  I must admit I also like the book because he points out that studies have shown that only 7% of communications on such things as products and services come from the internet—no born- again internet hawk here. Word of mouth is clearly a powerful marketing force, as it comes from people one has some reason to trust who are simply commenting on their own experience.  But how to get this powerful word of mouth to happen?

 The book discusses six factors which Berger claims causes it to spread rapidly and consistently over time.  These are social currency (is it “in?), triggers (are you reminded of it over time?) emotion (does it arouse you?), public (are you aware of it?) practicality (is it useful?) and finally stories (can it be put in various contexts that are memorable?}  He has great arguments and stories about each.  And they are in general consistent with product quality, although in keeping with the present interest in illogical actions, he also treats common trickery that works, like special offers with time limits, and meaningless “normal” prices. 

 One of my all-time favorite books is “influence”, by Robert Cialdini (Harper Business, 2008), which discusses a number of common methods of influencing people, even so far as getting them to do things they might not think they want to.  It is fun to read, because one realizes that one is often a victim of such methods.  Berger’s book is similar, but in a very positive way, in that it lists effective and believable approaches that obviously work to spread the word on good things. 

 

 

Evgeny Morozov "To Save Everything Click Here" book

I mentioned this book in a post a bit ago, and announced that I had ordered it and would report on it.  The book was  deeper and more thought provoking than I expected, so I have just finished it.  I thoroughly agree with the first comment on the back, by Bruce Sterling, which reads “For the brilliant dissident Evgeny Morozov, computers are like broken beach-toys on the dark, historic tides of power  politics.  His new book should be bound in sandpaper and used to abrade the works of other Internet pundits”. Clicking on the appropriate image in the recommended readings to the right will give more information on the book.

 But the book is far from a rant.  Morozov has an interesting viewpoint, since he grew up in Belarus as the Soviet Union was unraveling, and has gone from a born-again believer in the power of the Internet to being a critic.  His understanding of the internet is obvious, as are his hopes that it will better aid the cause of liberal democracy.

 The book is beautifully written and argued, and in my mind overdue. His last book, entitled “The Net Delusion”, concerned the use of the Internet initially as a tool to overthrow dictators and support democracy, but later as a tool by these various dictators to strengthen their grip by such things as enhancing their propaganda ability and identifying and destroying opposition.  This, of course, was an unwelcome message to those who believe that the internet will cause all seven billion of us to understand each other, agree on important issues, and, to borrow a word that is losing its very meaning because of the Internet, be friends.

 In this new book, he first of all takes a swing at what he calls Solutionism — the belief that everything can (and should) be made “better” (often defined by the solutionist).  He singles out engineers as being staunch believers in this, and being one, I think we are guilty.  He does an excellent job of demonstrating that some things. such as politics, have been criticized for as long as recorded history, but they don’t seem to have been replaced by any of the  communication “miracles” or other technological “breakthroughs” of the past.  In fact, he argues in favor of the very human and messy character of much large-scale human interaction, and although he believes that the Internet is an important tool in aiding these interactions, he obviously does not believe in its ability to replace such things.   

 His next argument is against changing our societies to match the present structure and goals of the Internet .  It is, after all, a work in progress, and our activities should not be structured and simplified to fit its present abilities. I very much resonate to his argument.  At one point in my Stanford career I became chair of the then struggling program in Science, Technology, and Society.  I learned, to my surprise and pleasure, that even though I had practiced and taught engineering for 30 years, I knew very little about the history and character of technology, or about the unsuccessful history of movements often described as technocracy.

 One rule of thumb often used by historians of technology is that it takes at least 50 years for a new technology to mature.  I am a believer.  My first brush with computers was about 50 years ago, and it consisted of giving structures problems to a programmer who in turn would feed my problems to a large mainframe, which resulted in an answer after several days.  Look at where we are now.  But yet we are just scratching the surface of how to use them in a way that is more consistent with society. The internet has been under construction for over 50 years, but the World Wide Web, which made the Internet accessible to most of us, dates from 1989. That was only 25 years ago.  Such things as social networking and attempting to combine unbiased information with marketing are in their infancy.  The internet will continue to develop, and must do so in a direction that better serves humans, or it will become a more complex version of network TV. 

 The majority of the book is full of cases, stories, and predictions of problems that have and will result from too much belief in what Morozov calls cyber-utopianism.  I am going to talk more about this book and the internet in my next post, but anyone making use of the Internet, and especially people designing and manufacturing the software and hardware involved in it, should read the book, not rely on me to interpret it.  I found it a very impressive work, whether one agrees with the author or not (many in Silicon Valley will not), and am jealous that I cannot write books like it. 

 

 

 

 

Problem solving, the internet, and Evgeny Morozov

This post is a bit late because I lost my wallet for the first time in my life this weekend, and have been spending my time ever since communicating with banks, AAA, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and various other agencies which I need to cancel things and send me new ones.  DO NOT EVER LOSE  YOUR WALLET.  In fact, take it out now and remove everything that you don’t regularly use and that you would have to replace if you lost the damn thing—especially if you would have to deal with the DMV.   It turns out that lots of people have lost theirs or had it stolen at some time or another—they just don’t admit it until you let them know you are a member of the club.

 In my next post I will bring you up on the final student presentations in the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course.  The first four were very good indeed.  But in this post I would like to say a few words about an article in the March 3 New York Times that I found both provocative, and enjoyable.  The title of the article was “The Perils of Perfection”, by Evgeny Morozov, and it is here.

 I enjoyed it because living in the midst of the Stanford /Silicon Valley success story, I am surrounded by people and companies extremely enthusiastic and optimistic about the long-term wonderful effects upon humankind of computers and internet and their ability to handle important and difficult social problems. This article is drawn on a book entitled “To Save Everything, Click Here:  The Folly of Technological Solutionism”. (Morozov also wrote “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of the Internet”.)  I find his critical attitude toward the wonders of the internet to be a wonderful counterpoint to the general values of my environment.

 I like the description of engineers as “solutionists”.   It is to some extent true.  I have a good  friend who is an eminent historian (Pulitzer Prize, etc.).  He refers to engineers as “meddlers” rather than “solutionists”.  He and his fellow historians feel that they are trying to understand societies, and engineers are knowingly or unknowingly trying to change them. I am an engineer and have worked all of my professional life finding solutions to problems. To  the extent that I have succeeded I have been a meddler.  But these problems have been relatively straight-forward, and solutions could be found that pleased most people involved.  I do not believe that all problems have solutions of this sort, and certainly not solutions that please everyone {the "perfect" solution}.  Congress is finding that out with regard to problems having to do with medical care, employment, balancing the budget, etc.etc.etc.  What improves the situation for some, makes it worse for others.  Complicated situations involving manyp eople can be improved, but perfect “right” answers are unlikely.

 There is much hope among some of the digerati that ever increasing communication (social networking) and new software allowing the formation of independent political groups and poll-taking (Morozov mentions a software program named Seesaw) will allow answers to be found that will result in solutions to such complicated and critical problems that will please all. I don’t, because different human values and interests are involved and if some people are pleased, others won’t be. Taxes are a good example.

 Morozov goes further and quotes from an essay named “In Praise of Inconsistency” written by the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski,  The  author of this feels that disagreement among  people as to the proper course to take is “the only hope for the human race”.  I won’t go further.  Read and think about Morizov’s essay in the  link above.  I have ordered the book.  I will use it to pick on students and my friends who have been born again by the internet.

New Year's Resolution for People Making Industrial Products

I resolve to do what I can to improve the product I am working on —in fact to strive to help it become the best of its kind in the world—or if I think it is already is the best of its kind in the world, to work on improving it anyway, because someone is close behind.

 In doing so, I resolve to consider not only the more easily measurable aspects of quality discussed by David Garvin in his now classic November 1987 HBR article (performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability) but also the more qualitative aspects covered in the Adams Good Products Bad Products book (perceived performance, performance/cost ratio, craftsmanship, consistency with human users and cultural values, aesthetic issues,  sensitivity to finite resources and the environment, and finally emotional appeal. (Garvin did mention aesthetics and perceived quality in his article, which was entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, but brushed over them as being functions of individual judgment—Adams says hooray for individual judgment).

 Finally I resolve to remain aware of the two cultures (the scientific and humanistic) mentioned in the Adams People and Products post of  Nov 1, 2012, and to the extent that I have a bias, for instance, toward quantitative reasoning and logic (which are good)  and away from aesthetics and feelings (which are not only good but powerfully affect people’s judgment of quality), or vice versa,  I will do my best to get over it.

Makers, book by Chris Anderson, and Manufacturing

Chris Anderson is the Editor in Chief of Wired magazine, and founder and chairman of 3D robotics, a company  that manufactures autopilots for remote control of amateur unmanned aerial vehicles.  He has a solid background as an editor (Nature, Science, The Economist), and is the author of several books and a technological visionary.  His latest book, Makers, (Crown Business Books, Random House, 2012) subtitled The New Industrial Revolution (sound familiar?), like the Peter Marsh book I wrote about in my posts of October 1 and 4 (title The New Industrial Revolution), speaks of the changes that things digital will cause in the world of manufacturing. It was fun reading the two back to back, because although both authors predict great changes, Marsh comes across as British thoughtful, while Anderson comes across as-----the Editor in Chief of Wired magazine. He is clearly a good writer, and very  knowledgeable of the digital world, but although the book  is a fun read, and thought provoking, I found it to be a bit over the top, both in his sense of timing for the changes he predicts, and their extent.

 Computers and associated equipment have made great inroads in everything from the gathering of marketing information for the design of products, through the design and manufacturing processes, to marketing and sales.  But the first computer I came in contact with was in the early 1960’s, when I at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,  It was a large IBM mainframe that helped us with structural analysis and other such tasks. That was 50 years ago.  So such developments as Computer Aided Design, Computer Controlled Machining centers, and Big Data did not happen instantly.

 Among those who study the history of technology, it is often said that new technologies require 50 years to develop into something approaching their final stage.  I think that is an understatement in the case of digital electronics, and that present developments, although heady indeed, are far from the final answer.  The proliferation of companies, web information, and various levels of fun and games on the internet will settle down, and the quality will increase.  Many internet activities, both software and related hardware, are still catering to early adopters.  I am relatively new to social networking, but of the people I am linked to, only a few are very active, admittedly some hyper.  And in my opinion, the internet is definitely accumulating junk, perhaps exponentially, which is inevitable as long as it costs nothing to put information on it, and there is neither an incentive to delete anything, nor people responsible for doing so.

 In particular, while reading his book, I wondered about the enthusiasm that people like Anderson have for the democratization of design, in which each of us, equipped with our powerful low-cost 3d printers and easy-to-use CAD system, are going to design and make our own products, backed by crowd sourcing, which will then allow us to launch brilliantly successful businesses.  Certainly so-called additive manufacture will play an increasing role in the manufacture of  prototypes,  parts best made by the process, and small runs of parts.  But simply being able to shape our own  parts on a computer and manufacture them, does not make us good designers.  Such things as emotional response to products, human and cultural fit, taste, and good judgment about such things as serviceability and lifetime are important.  Both intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge are needed, and one gains them through time and experience.  And perhaps there is a bit of talent involved.

 Nor is handling any sort of funding or successfully starting a business as straight forward as many would like.  There is an unfortunate tendency for people who have been successful in such things to sound the “jump in, the water’s fine” call, and not talk about the sharks.

I have probably always been what Anderson defines as a maker, although I lean toward hardware (see photo of my wife's new ant).  I have quite a bit of experience with design and manufacturing in both industry and academia and consider myself a good designer of things with which I have had experience. But I have also put in many hours working with cars, and when it comes time for a family car, I would rather a large company with an outstanding track record produce it for me. And if purchasing a chair for my living room, I would rather choose among products designed by people with a lot of practice at making comfortable ones (not me), and unusual visual sensitivity. Also, individuals cannot produce things such as airplanes, highways, oil tankers, or high speed trains.  Perhaps not even high quality smart phones or wrist watches.  Or for that matter, athletic shoes or socks. I believe the common saying that design is a team sport, and outstanding teams usually have outstanding players.

 And I don’t think mass production is going to go away.  It will be increasingly automated (unless unions return) and  it will include more flexibility, but as Anderson admits, there is great benefit to the costs that can be achieved by investing in tooling which will be used to produce a large number of identical copies, and quality can be obtained through large numbers.  And there is my favorite justification —the convenience of using products by people other than the designer.

 

A Good Read - The New Industrial Revolution, by Peter Marsh

Peter Marsh is a journalist who writes about manufacturing-related industries for the Financial Times.  This new book is well worth reading, whether you are directly involved in manufacturing or not.  It has a good bit of history, an explanation of what is happening in the world now, and Marsh’s predictions about the future.  Although I was familiar with quite a bit of the history he covered, I very much enjoyed the book, partly because Marsh definitely knows his stuff, and partly because his British viewpoint makes him a bit more credible than the present voices in the U.S. bemoaning China and outsourcing. 

 Over the years, different countries have led the world in manufacturing. Interestingly enough, China was the leader in global manufacturing in the early 19^th century, producing about a third of the world’s output.  India was second with a quarter, and Russia a distant third with 5 percent. Britain’s share was under 2 percent.

 Since then, China dropped sharply to only about 5% of the total and Britain became the leader in the late part of the 19^th century with 20% of the total.  Then in the early 20^th century, Britain’s share dropped and the U.S. took over the lead, which by 1950 had climbed to over 40%. Now, China is back, having a slight lead over the U.S. at about 20%, and many other countries, such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil are playing a major role. He mentions that in 2010, 41% of the world’s production took place outside of the conventionally defined “developed” nations.

 Historically, China went through a long slump in manufacturing, and is now rapidly increasing its global role.  The U.S., for a number of reasons, is going in the opposite direction.  But overall manufacturing in the world is increasing, so the overall share a country may have does not tell the whole story.  Even though manufacturing levels are now down due to the economy, in general manufacturing in the U.S. has continued to increase, even though it has a lower share than in the past and is changing its nature (more automation and global involvement).   Marsh feels that in the long run, manufacturing output is somewhat related to population, and that China, India, and other developing countries will continue to increase their global position, although less rapidly than in the past few years. But he feels  there will be plenty of room for manufacturing in the presently “rich” countries.

 Marsh sees major changes in the processes of manufacturing and the nature of products in the future.  He sees not only mass customization, but more individualization of products, more mechanization of production, and new types of hybrid businesses and closer relations between companies in “rich” countries, and companies in “poor” ones, since each have unique strengths and goals. He sees a continued increase in globalization, and increasing specialization between companies that do mainly research and design and those that focus on production.  He points to companies such as Apple and Cisco, that contract out their production, except for prototypes for use in design and testing, and companies such as Foxconn, that specialize in production.  But he acknowledges that all companies will seek to add more value by moving toward product ownership through owning intellectual property and hiring increasingly sophisticated people.

 Although, like many, Marsh is excited about flexible manufacturing and customization of products, I was  happy to see that he admits that this is not the answer for all products.  In the 1940’s and 50’s, much effort was put into the standardization of products.  This was not only to take advantage of mass production, but also to make products easier for people to use.  We seem to be losing sight of this with our present products and our emphasis on innovation.

 Products are to serve us, not challenge us.  One of my favorite radio stations in our area just changed frequencies.  I am not enjoying changing the presets (buttons) in the receivers I own, because each requires a different ritual. I am not impressed by the designers who undoubtedly thought they had a cleverer way to do so.  One of my friends recently mistakenly turned off the sound on his cell phone, and could not figure out how to turn it back on.  Although it was a strange phone, I volunteered to help him.  This took much longer than it should have, since his phone has a very different menu layout than mine.  As a consumer, my life would be easier if, displays and maintenance and operating procedures were standardized as much as possible, even though the producers might have to give up a bit of their individuality. But I look forward to more customization of “off-the-shelf” bicycles.

 I will talk a bit more about  Marsh’s projections for the future of manufacturing in my next post, but again, I think his book is a good general read for anyone.  It is published by Yale University Press.

 

Management Fads and Product Quality

Looking through some of my “old books”, I found the one in the photograph, which was a summary of what was going in the area of quality in the world, collected by Business Week magazine, and later published as a book by the Professional Books Division of  McGraw hill in 1994.  It was a huge success at the time, and contained material not only on manufacturing quality, which was a major issue, but also issues of quality in government, services, and research and development.  Leafing through it reminded me of the importance of quality in the press, media, business, and in general at that time. As near as I can tell, the book is now out of print.

How important is quality to us these days?  Certainly attention to it has almost disappeared in the press and media.  How about business?  Some of the approaches of the 1980’s and 90’s have become ingrained, but it doesnt seem like the #1 issue, at least in the U.S.

We seem to have moved toward other topics.   This movement is not unusual, because people in business and industry seem to like to pursue the “next big thing” and what are sometimes referred to as management fads.

The figure below, taken by a book entitled managing on the edge, by Richard Pascale, published by Simon and Schuster in 1991 (also I believe out of print), is an indication of such fads up until 1990.  This type of behavior is still going on, but I include this particular graph, because it shows the sharp peak of management approaches having to do with product quality (mainly manufacturing quality) in the late 1980’s and the 1990’s . 

 

I imagine if the graph were extended up to the present, fads would still come and go, but those having to do with quality would be surmounted by emphasis on such things as innovation, entrepreneurship, globalizations, marketing, uses of the internet and Big Info, and lip service to such enlightened topics as social entrepreneurship and the environment.

I am feeling sorry for my Good Products Bad Products book, which is about overall product quality, because it must be feeling somewhat lonely. To give it company, I am continually collecting examples of companies making unusual efforts to produce products that are the best of their kind in the world.  If you know of any, please comment on them and include your e-mail address, so I can get back to you and perhaps find out a bit more about them.

Capitalism and its Limits

I recently read two books that that are getting a good bit of attention and although perhaps only indirectly having to do with product quality, are most thought-provoking and very well written.  If you are a fervent believer in capitalism and the market as being the ultimate mechanisms for fairness, both will annoy you—all the better to read them.  Click on them in the recommended books list for more details.

 The first is What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Michael Sandell, a professor of government at Harvard.  In it he discusses and questions the proper role of the market in a democratic society and questions how we can prevent everything from being for sale, including those things that perhaps money should not be able to buy.

In the book, Sandel goes through a very large number of examples where money plays a questionable role, ranging from companies such as Linestanders.com, which charge for a “queuing service” that furnishes proxies to wait in line for access to functions including Supreme Court cases and Congress hearings, through paying kids to get good grades, to betting on the death of others (a controversial practice called spin-life) and the explosion of naming rights.

The other book, entitled How Much is Enough—Money and the Good Life, is by Robert and Edward Skidelsky, one a political economist and the other a philosopher,  This one is pointed toward “rich” countries and combines historical and contemporary material that indicate that we are failing to reach a higher quality of life and discusses why that might be.  They feel that capitalism is a powerful mechanism for the creation of wealth, but not especially for its distribution. They question our unquestioning acceptance of measures such as GDP and growth at all levels.  And they feel that we have an unfortunate amount of greed and acquisitiveness, which leads to unstable differences between the rich and the poor and keeps many of us spending a regrettable amount of time acquiring money and goods to the detriment of other perhaps more meaningful things we could be doing.

They approach the problem by defining what the “good life” might consist of, and remind us that the purpose of money is to acquire goods and services, not merely to acquire because it is money.  The book  has a nice mixture of fact, history,  and speculation.

The  present World’s economic problems seems to be resulting in overdue thinking about just what the World’s economy is.  Much of this, including these two books, focuses on the quality of life.  Industrially produced products are clearly part of this.

Science, Engineering, and Products

As I said in my tweet of  yesterday, engineers and technicians designed and built the Mars Science Laboratory (which includes the Curiosity rover), not scientists.  Under technician, I include those who do the hands-on work of fabricating, assembling, and testing , but I did not have room in my 140 characters to list all of the categories, nor will I here.

Is this an important distinction?  As an engineer and educator, I think so.  When I worked on the first planetary spacecraft at J.P.L. almost 50 years ago, I remember the media constantly talking about the brilliant young scientists that made these miraculous machines.  There were instruments on the spacecraft that would produce data of interest to scientists, but the people who made the spacecraft were neither scientists, nor always that young.  This bit of misunderstanding also brings us the term “rocket scientist”. Wehner Von Braun and associates were definitely engineers. Scientists search for understanding.  Engineers work to produce specific tangible products, usually according to a schedule and budget.  And in the case of products such as spacecraft, they tend to stay away from the “cutting edge” of technology in deference to such things as demonstrated reliability.  There were early integrated circuits available when I worked at JPL, but we used discrete electrical components because of lack of long-term data on the  more sophisticated devices. 

There was a pretty good book written on the difference between science and engineering, and in particular the nature of engineering, some 20 years ago (1993).  I am biased toward it, because I wrote it.  The title is Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings, and it is published by Harvard Press. Click the book button on the right to find out more about it.  I wrote it, because I was so frustrated by the unwillingness of people to discriminate between science and engineering. The book has not done much toward solving the problem. That is understandable.  It is easier not to discriminate.  Science and Engineering do overlap, and both are important to us and to each other.  Particle physicists need big machines, and designers of integrated circuits need to  understand tunneling, and soon quantum theory.  Both scientists and engineers use jargon, acronyms, and equations. Engineers apply the knowledge of science and doing so give it economic validity.  But in general the above generalization holds.  And life designing and building spacecraft is much different than working with string theory or DNA.

Engineers and technicians tend to work on projects in groups, sometimes very large ones.  If you saw the people hugging and high-fiving each other after the success of the Curiosity landing, you were looking at part of an outstanding team of engineers and technicians —so good that they don’t need workshops on team building.  The life is one of working for a shared goal as well as individual accomplishment.  Historians may give credit for a complex accomplishment to an  individual engineer, but that is more to simplify history, than reflect actuality.  And as technology becomes more complex, there is even less of that happening.  Who was responsible for the internet, the Boeing 777, and the Tesla car?  You may get the name of the an inventor, a founder, a funder, a president of the company, or even a chief engineer, but not of the engineers and technicians who were responsible for bringing them forth.

Of course science has similarities.  You never hear of the people who do not make extraordinary discoveries, nor the people who staff the labs. But in my opinion, engineers and technicians are less motivated by individual glory than scientists, and that is good, because people motivated by individual glory are not the best of team members. Engineers and technicians definitely like to be admired, respected, given raises, promoted, noticed in their discipline and complimented on their work by their peers and managers. But success of a project carries a reward in itself, especially if it is a long and difficult one  When I saw the people jumping up and down with joy and tears when the Curiosity landing was successful, I became nostalgic for the time when I was doing that. There isn’t much of that among university faculty members.