Originally posted by: Special K
After posting I thought about it some more and came up with another realization - not every successful invention is necessarily a technical or engineering achievement, even if the products themselves require an engineer to design.
Note: my CAPS are not for yelling they are for emphasis (and bad habit of mine!), its more of a shortcut then typing the bold code.. heh.
Remember that the engineers real goal is making tools that do not frustrate someone trying to solve their own problems... the goals are to make things that:
1) Are widely usable as possible and performs functions that are indispensable (to the said person), from a 5 year old child to a 70 year old grandfather (or mother)
2) That he'd want to use the tool and be able to get as much indispensable functionality out of it if he was NOT an engineer. (i.e. not "dumbed down", to think, how do I make these complex functions accessible to a person who NEEDS to use my creation for its function, but does not have complex educational background or did not design it?)
3) Make complex breakthroughs, but make it so that ANYONE can use your complex breakthrough,
you engineer Translation vectors, you basically do a
combinatorial search to see if you can translate some of the core functions and make them usable and understandable to the "common man". You want a wide market because... No money = No resources to keep the invention feedback process going (circuitous loop).
4) Remember
the axis of translation vector is probably the
most important inventive aspect of
any invention. The interface is critical. Just look at windows and linux. When computers moved from memorizing command line functions to the Graphics user interface with the mouse, the response (and financial rewards) were enormous. All because someone invented a simple pointing device, and said "hey why can't we just have a little hand that can grab 2D objects on a piece of paper and move them around, why can't we havea "virtual paper" interface?
Early computers were hard to use even for computer scientists, and what did they do? They saw a need for creating an interface (Machine TO human translation bidirectional vector).
This is the KEY thing in my mind that all engineers should aspire to, sure make complex breakthroughs, but also make breakthroughs in the most important aspect: th
e human interfaces.
Look at
how bad Personal computing design is right now. When I build a computer from scratch and have to hook up tiny wires to little nodes on the board, there should just be one damn standard or very easy converters when standards change. I have so many frustrations about how bad computer case design is and where the locations of things are placed. I am a tinkerer by heart, and even I can see all the "cost cutting" (read: frustrating cost cutting versus sound design choices). They may save a company a few bucks, but at the cost of good-easy-to-put-together designs.
Just look at the PCI-E graphics tabs on motherboards, the guys who designed those tabs should be flogged. Sure "most" computer users will not be switching video cards in and out of their system, but there are many millions of tinkerers in the world, who break those little tabs very easily taking things in and out.
Next is the location and connection points of of the power, sound and reset switches, the interface for these hasn't changed in YEARS. ASUS after probably 15 years of computer design added a little "extension bracket" with labels to make it slightly less frustrating (i.e. time consuming) to figure out which pins were power, sound, etc.
After 20 years, the most simplest and basic interface of a motherboard is in the engineering dark ages!
There is such a thing as having TOO MANY good inventions that all do the same thing or looking at it from a "cost only" perspective, versus sound design. There are probably 50 different types of hammers, wrenches, vice grips, pliers out there that all do similar things and some are more specialized (because the need was there too invent it).
The first example that came to mind was the George Foreman grill - what I have read on them indicates that they were a success from a business standpoint.
The problem engineers have is that they are divorced from peoples desires, people buy what they DESIRE, not the design fantasies of what gets an engineer excited. Engineers have to temper their dreams with the reality of creating a self-sustaining feedback loop. They can work on their dreams, it just may never be realized within their lifetime. Many great breakthroughs built upon "tiny" building blocks that others spent their entire life building because they saw the need, had the interest, or saw that it was important.
I guess I was initially skeptical because in my field, I find it unlikely that someone who is not very knowledgeable in the field is going to be capable of making any significant contribution to it.
The problem is in our society, school is designed to churn out followers, not thinkers and leaders, who are...
1) Self motivated and self actualized (directed)
2) Infinitely curious even if they "do not understand math" or whatever, they don't let anyone limit them (tell them they cant understand because they haven't gone through some academic obstacle course... lol) just because they don't understand something in the way other people do or do not understand something perfectly
You have to realize that even our math system is only ONE of many ways to "do" mathematics. I've been brewing ideas in my head of creating 3D geometric or 2D isometric mathematical notation because decimal numeric pictographic symbols we use such as 1-2-3-4-5 are descriptions of real world 3D things, but they are trapped by symbolic terrorists that are the mathematicians.
Our base 10 decimal notation is only one of many ways to represent numbers and calculations there are superior methods to do math that have not even yet been developed. I know because in school, I struggled with the symbolic manipulation of symbolic math concepts because I could not visualize them in 3D because of the way the information was presented, it took me years to figure that it wasn't me that was entirely wrong... I realized that I am a highly mathematical person, But my mind does calculus, and math for me in visual memory space only which I cannot translate to symbolic decimal notation. I express math in pictures, and geometry, not in symbols like "1, 2, 3, 4 ,5".
I "see" math and understand it from visual-conceptual angle, not symbolic decimal notation of the decimal numeral system.
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