Engineering for the real world

It's not often that the world really gets to me, but the world we live in, and the people that design our world are changing... and often it is not for the better. 

To engineer things is a natural human instinct. It is one of the many things that has allowed human culture and society to evolve in the way it has. It is not a realm for the elite, but for everyone. Look at a child's fascination for Lego and building blocks. Building things is a natural instinct we all have, and engineering the things we build is part of that instinct. A building block tower is never built randomly, but blocks are chosen to create the biggest, the most attractive or simply the most interesting structure. All children, whether they know it or not, have a natural instinct and desire for engineering things. 

So what has this to do with the problems of the world? The engineer has always had the skills of a child; the ability to create, to study, to learn by experiment and to design a solution using their natural instincts. These skills we learn as children are probably the most important skills we have as engineers. I've lost track of the number of times that the numbers have said something should work but my instincts have said it wouldn't; and more often than not it was my instincts that were right and the numbers had that had the problem. 

But things are changing, the childlike skills are loosing their value and engineering is becoming all about the numbers. There must be many reasons why this is happening, it is so pervasive and yet damaging to the world that there must be a wide range of pressures that are causing the changes. 

I want this blog to be my fight back against the way that engineers are changing. Numeracy and the ability to enumerate problems are important skills for engineers, but the instinctive skills we learn from our childhood onwards are far more important. I want people who read this blog to be reminded of the skills they learnt as children and how important they are everyday in creating a better world. 

p.s. I choose the name of this blog from the book 'Design for the Real World' by Victor Papanek. In my opinion this should be required reading for all engineers.