20 Jun
2004
20 Jun
'04
9:57 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount...
; -))
The difference between an educated guess and a pull it out of your ass guess
is the background in the subject a person has. People laugh at the guy
saying its the current thats important not the voltage of a power supply.
The difference between him and most of you is that he didn't have the
education in the subject matter at hand, but learned enough to get by in his
real world dealings. Learning how to think is extremely important, but so is
having the education to know fire is caused by a chemical reaction and not a
gift from the fire GOD. You can be a very inteligent person but still be
very ignorant about specific subjects.
The world is in a mess because of pure greed not because people can't think.
They just think only of themselves.
--
I think the question boils down: Are we losing any knowledge as each
generation passes?
My instinct would say "no", since the world is still working. People
still understand electronics, mechanics, physics, etc. People are still
being taught the fundamentals. One learns more in classrooms today than
they did 100 years ago. Much of the subject matter has changed, but the
basics remain the same.
For example, we no longer learn how tubes/valves work, because we don't
design with them anymore. However, the functional basics are the same as
with transistors. We don't learn in detail how tubes or transistors work
because we aren't going to be designing and building new ones. Now we
learn how FPGAs and the like work because that's what we design with. In
100 years, FPGAs will be quaint, just like vacuum tubes are today. But as
long as the basics are still being taught, the world will keep working.
I think being able to do math with pencil and paper is a basic skill, today
using a calculater is a basic skill (doing it by hand is a lost art). As
long as there are no "middle ages" caused by war, disease, or other major
catastrophy the world will keep going. The further ahead in the tech curve
you are in the faster you can hit rock bottom again. Vietnam survived a
major bombing campaign without problems, the US would have fallen back to
the stone age under the same type of attack.
At one company I worked for I got tired of uneducated sales people asking me
the same simple questions all the time so I wrote a program where they
entered tank dimensions, liquid level, pick a chemical solution from a drop
down menu, entered the desired temperature, and picked a heat/cooling source
(steam, electricity, etc) and it told them after many calculations
(including heat loss to surroundings, etc) what size equipment to sell and
what material to use (chemical compatibility). People loved the tool, and
productivity soared (plus I got to do other important things with less
interuptions). Still the second I am not around and some idiot deletes the
program from the server their world will come crashing down. I wonder how
many industries are close to crashing if some particular system or knowledge
base kicks the bucket.
Don't forget that there is more then one generation at work in an industry
at one time. Lots of people on this email list probably work with younger
techs who don't know half of what they do. Once the senior people retire (or
get fired because they cost too much on a spreadsheet) its up to the younger
ones to pull the slack (if they were smart enough to hire any before the old
ones got the boot), and quite a few are not up to the task. It takes time to
notice your workforce is deficient, and by then its too late to do anything
about it.
> The most important things I learned in college is how to deal with
people
> you might not like but have to work with, the
basics of the field I was
in
Exactly. But you don't need to go to school to learn this. A job as a
waiter in a restaurant will teach these skills quite nicely.
I find its better to learn how to deal with people BEFORE you end up losing
a job because your people skills were never tested and refined. If I don't
like a waiter I can ask for another one, if I don't like the EE down the
hall from me I am stuck dealing with him until one of us doesnt work there
anymore. Without good team interaction projects today will not get done. I
have seen first hand how a project can slow down and die because people in
the group do not want to work together for personal reasons. The end result
is somebody will get fired and their carear is in jeaperdy because they will
not get a good recomendation from the people they worked with.
> (that you DO use believe it or not for the rest of your life), and how
to
solve problems
you never seen before in a logical way.
That's what most people don't realize school is all about. It's not about
learning a subject matter, it's learning how to THINK properly (a skill
many people lack today, partially as evidenced by the mess the world is
currently in).
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
Festival