Ramblings re: Zongyi's first post

Speaking from the (hopefully somewhat unbiased) point of view of someone who is still a little stuck choosing between pure physics and engineering, I have to disagree. I don't think engineers are quite getting the credit they deserve.

For the most part, scientists tend to be put up on a pedestal and engineers relegated to the role of a glorified technician. Case in point: do you ever see scientists working under engineers? If I remember correctly, I was once told by an engineer teacher/friend of mine that there is a sort of unofficial hierarchy in academia roughly organized as follows: theoretical scientists -> experimental scientists -> engineers. (I think he also grouped M.D.s and/or M.D.-Ph.D.s with theoretical scientists, but I'm not sure. They were on the upper end of the spectrum though.) Why is it that the more practical and more tangible results obtained from science and technology - and might I add, the exact same science and technology as that found in more theoretical work - the less recognition one receives? Improving city infrastructure is more useful (not even arguably, I think it's pretty obvious) to the general population than determining whether special relativity holds up under the rules of quantum mechanics... which only apply at the atomic level.

I guess it's a consequence of the fact that higher-level, abstract thinking has long been sought after as an ability belonging to a select few - since, say, the Greek philosophers, and arguably still others before them. Still, this is merely a possible explanation to the phenomenon, not by any means a justification. Engineers, I think, are simply more practically-minded individuals - they're not fundamentally incapable of doing theoretical work. As EngScis, I think we know this better than most. (Multivariable calculus and quantum mech in the first two years of undergrad, hello?) I have the good fortune of being able to call more than a few extraordinary individuals as friends, and they certainly would not lose to any pure science major - I actually would place my bet on them (my friends) in grasping abstract math or physics concepts first.

(A tangent: I get the impression that Artsies are continually surprised that we can do so well in our humanities electives - a friend of mine told me that someone in his linguistics tutorial exclaimed at one point, "But you're an engineer!")

And who builds the apparatus necessary to conduct scientific experiments in the first place? Engineers. (And I relent, experimental scientists to some degree, but the actual design/manufacturing is done by engineers.) The fact is that theory and practicality are necessarily symbiotic. For instance, flip the situation around a bit: the brightest theoretical minds are often incapable of functioning on a practical, day-to-day level in society. It is said that Princeton University had to lay down arrows going to and from Einstein’s residence - incidentally, a distance of mere blocks from his office on campus - as he frequently got lost. It would not be a stretch to claim that if some engineers are indeed “incapable” of processing higher-end abstractions, then theoretical scientists on their part are perhaps incapable of translating their ideas into something tangible.

So, to finally come back to the question at hand: why must engineers stay in the background, and if no adequate reason exists, how do we rectify the situation? Frankly, I’m going to have to give that one a bit more thought. While the idea of sacrificing recognition and toiling for the good of our fellow man lends some stoicism and sense of honour to the field, it’s something shouldn’t be glossed over. There's something to be said for more awareness for a career field that is clearly crucial to the functioning and advancement of our world.

On the one hand though, I have noticed that there seems to be a sort of self-recruitment process - many of my friends and I had never really considered engineering until the last few months before applying for university. And the people who by chance end up in engineering tend to be, for the most part, well-suited to it and have many common interests and personality traits, as demonstrated by the cohesiveness of Skule™ and the engineering community worldwide.

Curiously, I have also noticed a bit of apathy with regards to politics and inducing administrative change - we’re much more likely to just go and fix whichever broken structure or object ourselves. There seems to be a sort of collective resignation regarding bureaucratic inefficacy, and so we don’t bother trying to fight what seems to be a futile battle. … And since this post is getting really long, more on that later.

Engineers and the Media

This is going to be my first blog post ever and I pretty much failed English class, so bear with me.

Now the other day in one of those tutorials, I had to opportunity to ask Jason Foster a question about our portfolios. In the conversation, he mentioned something about the lack of engineers in today’s media. What he said was true, I couldn’t think of a show with an engineer as a major character off the top of my head. Most of the important characters were more of a scientist then an engineer.

I have to admit, I never even wanted to be an engineer when I was small; I was leaning towards being a scientist after watching loads of Bill Nye the Science Guy or The Magic School Bus. I thought that I might just be the odd man out, but after doing a quick Workopolis search on what children aged 5-19 want to be when they grow up, the categories were along the lines of police officer/firefighter, athlete, doctor, teacher, or musician [1]. The word “engineer” never even came up. Why?

The question led me to think of one of the slides that were shown in a Praxis lecture about how engineers are portrayed as people in plaid shirts and glasses holding a clipboard in a car commercial. The problem here is obvious, engineers are not stylish. Sure, we have a hardhat, but so do construction workers. Scientists, doctors, firefighters, police officers, athletes; all of these professions have cool outfits from lab coats to uniforms. Any reasonable 10 year old would prefer to wear a lab coat holding vials of reactive chemicals instead of carrying a clipboard and doing math. Where do these stereotypes come from? The TV, of course.

A quick Google search on “engineer” and “scientist” shows the stereotype. Seriously, what job looks more hardcore here?

Now of course choosing a profession based on what they look like is quite shallow and stupid, but that is not what a producer of a movie/TV series would care about. How would a sci-fi show fit into the storyline a subplot about how much money the engineer saved in building that warp drive through some optimization technique among subplots of alien infestations? Clearly, the scientists analyzing the dead alien would get more screen time, they are just cooler.

So basically, if engineers want some time on the screen, they need to make whatever they do look cool. Even though I couldn’t come up with “cool” engineers off the top of my head, Google was able to give a few pointers:


The engineers working for Dell sure knows where it’s at. They take away the dirty, greasy, and loud environments that engineers are usually portrayed as working in.

Crazy engineer from the anime movie Steamboy that is comparable in coolness to that of a mad scientist.

So then Foster brought up an interesting point; do engineers want to be portrayed the way scientists are? Or should an engineer be someone who hides in the background and keeps civilized life possible while the general population go wondering about?

In my opinion, engineers are where they are supposed to be. The general population should have some knowledge about how things work, like how electricity flows through wires in a computer. However, engineers go deeper than that, to the point where we must not only understand the science, but be able to use it to build or rebuild things we take for granted. Engineers do not need to know the details of fashion design, or landscaping, or how to paint walls, so why should a fashion designer, landscaper, or painter know the intricacies of engineering?

Having science in the limelight instead of engineering allows for people to get a broad understanding of scientific concepts without having to wade through the details, which I think would make science be better accepted by society.

[1] http://www.workopolis.com/work.aspx?action=Transfer&View=Content/Common/AboutUs/NewsReleasesView&lang=EN&file=News20070828

Design Decisions (I) - Shogi vs Xiangqi vs Chess

Well I guess I might as well start things off then here and be the first post =P

Today I had the opportunity of having a friend on my floor teach me how to play Shogi (also known as Japanese Chess). I've played Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) with my grandfather before, and play Chess on a semi-regular basis, so I figured it wouldn't be that hard to pick up.

Despite having my ass handed to me for three games in a row, I noticed that I picked up how to move the pieces much faster than I did Xiangqi - most likely due to the way the pieces are designed.

Above: Xiangqi, Below: Shogi

In both games, the main way to differentiate between pieces is the character written on the piece. Although this makes pieces easier to produce in comparison to western chess, it can make the learning curve a little harder, especially if you're illiterate in Chinese like I am (although Shogi is a Japanese game, from what I've seen, pieces are usually written in Kanji, which is essentially traditional Chinese). Shogi however was a little easier to pick up as the pieces are also differnt sizes - the king is the biggest piece, and the weakest, the soldiers, are the smallest (easier to tell in the enlarged image) - if you couldn't remember what the charter was, the size of the piece could help out in telling you whether or not it was worthwhile to try to save it or not.

So it appears that the design of the pieces influence not only the price of manufacturing the game (disks vs. plastic molds) but also how easy it is to learn the game - coming from a chess background it took me a bit longer to be able to figure out what was going on as all the pieces looked the same. Not only that, but portability/storage is also affected, as the game with the simpler pieces were easier to pack up (I have never seen a western chess game fit inside the same size box as Xiangqi, let alone Shogi).

All in all, all three games were easy enough to learn - now if only strategy was that easy to come up with.

Hello world!

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