Modern Problems
Published: 15/1
“I know engineers; they love to change things.” For the non-Trekkies out there, that line from the first Star Trek movie was uttered by a grumpy Dr. McCoy, who had just been transported aboard the re-fitted starship Enterprise (using a technology that he never much cared for either). Somehow, he adapted quickly and applied those presumably enhanced medical tools to treat ailing crew members through the rest of the film, and its five sequels.
In the 45 years since that movie was released, I’ve come to appreciate how prophetic Dr. McCoy’s observation was. When I saw it in college (in a theater with a lot of engineering students, I might add), we were still doing computer programs with punched cards, comparing the merits of our handheld “scientific” calculators, and feeling overjoyed when the barebones cable TV system pulled in that elusive third broadcast station from across the mountains.
Yet as all those engineers continue to make change upon change upon change, I’ve also found Dr. McCoy’s grumpiness was prescient as well. Who among us hasn’t gotten bogged down with automated “chats” designed to provide speedy answers to questions or problems, when speaking with a real human really would have been faster. My otherwise wonderful car’s build-in maintenance reminder now nags about things I already know are important. Sure, it may help some people, but I shouldn’t have to search YouTube for a way to make it stop.
Obviously, grousing about change does no good, for it will happen anyway. And admittedly, for the most part, it works out for the best. For example, my recent cataract surgeries took little more than 20 minutes each—I spent more time “going under” and “coming out” of sedation than with the surgeon. And who’d want to do without those other medical marvels that treat once-hopeless conditions, or infrastructure systems that deliver clean water to our homes and back to our waterways. Even ability to access cash from anywhere in the world via an ATM is pretty neat.
Don’t get me wrong; I like modern technology and all the conveniences and innovations usually taken for granted in our “have it your way” age (though the promised jet-packs are conspicuously absent). And maybe it’s just the lot of people of a “certain age” to complain. It just seems that change is best when the need for improvement is either obvious, or engineers make the effort to first ask users what they want and why, making them part of the iterative path to progress. And that’s typically what you see in the product announcements and reports we publish in PDa—manufacturers work with their customers to develop new and enhanced features that will make their work more productive, and help them tackle challenges such as compressed schedules and labor shortages.
If more engineers in more industries did things like that, yes the pace of change might well be slower. But at least we’d be in better moods.
Jim Parsons, Senior Editor