The New Shamans?
By: Nicholas Hill
Chief Executive Officer
27th September 2017
We can view the engineer today as someone who has special powers to control or influence the spirits of technology. A guardian of the magic of electronics and software; someone who can be looked to for a vision of what can be achieved if the spirits are willing, and someone in whom we trust that the spirits will be successfully harnessed and the vision delivered (on time and to budget).
I started driving at 17 in an old Mini that was built in 1964, and, as such, was fairly basic in engineering terms. To give a flavour of how basic it was, the windscreen wipers did not self-park (they stopped dead the moment the switch was turned off). There was also no starter solenoid, so you activated the starter motor by pressing a heavy duty push switch mounted next to the handbrake.
Being both an aspiring engineer and a rally competitor, I was soon pulling the car apart to make performance improvements, in the process finding out how all the mechanical and electrical parts and systems operated. The simple engineering was a blessing at that point as it was fairly self-evident how most things worked once you had them stripped down to the core components, whether it was the engine, suspension, brakes or electrics.
Over the years since I started driving, the change in technology has been astonishing. The change seems more remarkable now, looking back over a few decades than it did as I experienced it evolving. Layers upon layers of complexity have been added to everyday objects from the motor car to the telephone: first in electronics, then in software, and most recently in artificial intelligence.
There was a period of time when using the new technology was just too unfriendly for many people – remember all the complaints about not being able to program a video recorder? I think we reached a tipping point where user interface design had moved on far enough to make devices intuitive to use, and since then the general public can’t get enough of what technology can deliver. The trajectory now for the public at large seems to be an ever growing hunger for the benefits of new technology, in tandem with an ever-diminishing idea, or concept of, how any of the technology works.
Going back to the starter motor on my Mini, you could quite quickly become confident of explaining its operation without any difficulty to a layperson without any specialist engineering knowledge. A fat wire connected the battery to the electric starter motor via the big switch that I referred to. That was it. There were only really four concepts to grasp – the electrochemistry in the battery, electrical conductors and switches, and enough electromagnetics to explain how a motor produced torque. Indeed, you could make a small scale demonstrator using a torch battery and a small motor and then pull them apart to aid explanation.
This got me wondering about how I would go about explaining to a similar person how my present car gets started. At the highest level, it is easy enough: when I press the button on the dashboard, the car checks that the appropriate key fob is actually somewhere in the vehicle and then tells the engine to start; the starter motor runs for as long as it takes to get the engine going and then turns off. It soon gets harder as you get into describing a collection of sensors, radio links, processing units, communications buses, and power electronics and so on. If you want to get beyond mystery black boxes it gets much harder still.
To tackle just one element, say the wireless key fob, in any depth, would require an explanation of its physical radio link to the vehicle, the communications protocol, and the authentication methods. Dealing with any of these elements is going to require a discussion of great breadth and depth. And then, of course, there’s the issue of how all the electronic components involved actually work. I concluded that it was probably beyond me, technology had just moved on too far.
Artificial intelligence is only going to make comprehension harder, as behaviour becomes less deterministic. Until recently, a device manufacturer could describe to a user exactly how a device will behave in a given set of circumstances, albeit the explanation might be complicated. Going forward, you might find that your next generation robotic vacuum cleaner has behaviour that is unique to you because the environment in which it self-learned its behaviour is unique to you. The manufacturer you now are calling for an explanation may never have seen the behaviour you describe, but the device may actually be behaving perfectly ‘normally’.
What does this mean for the engineer whose job it is to provide the technology under the hood to companies who wish to bring new and evolving products to market? Where the end user knows (and perhaps cares) less and less about how it all works. This puts the engineer in a position of considerable power and influence and needs to use that power both wisely and ethically.
I will be exploring this topic in Part 2 of this blog.
We can view the engineer today as someone who has special powers to control or influence the spirits of technology. A guardian of the magic of electronics and software; someone who can be looked to for a vision of what can be achieved if the spirits are willing, and someone in whom we trust that the spirits will be successfully harnessed and the vision delivered (on time and to budget).
I started driving at 17 in an old Mini that was built in 1964, and, as such, was fairly basic in engineering terms. To give a flavour of how basic it was, the windscreen wipers did not self-park (they stopped dead the moment the switch was turned off). There was also no starter solenoid, so you activated the starter motor by pressing a heavy duty push switch mounted next to the handbrake.
Being both an aspiring engineer and a rally competitor, I was soon pulling the car apart to make performance improvements, in the process finding out how all the mechanical and electrical parts and systems operated. The simple engineering was a blessing at that point as it was fairly self-evident how most things worked once you had them stripped down to the core components, whether it was the engine, suspension, brakes or electrics.
Over the years since I started driving, the change in technology has been astonishing. The change seems more remarkable now, looking back over a few decades than it did as I experienced it evolving. Layers upon layers of complexity have been added to everyday objects from the motor car to the telephone: first in electronics, then in software, and most recently in artificial intelligence.
There was a period of time when using the new technology was just too unfriendly for many people – remember all the complaints about not being able to program a video recorder? I think we reached a tipping point where user interface design had moved on far enough to make devices intuitive to use, and since then the general public can’t get enough of what technology can deliver. The trajectory now for the public at large seems to be an ever growing hunger for the benefits of new technology, in tandem with an ever-diminishing idea, or concept of, how any of the technology works.
Going back to the starter motor on my Mini, you could quite quickly become confident of explaining its operation without any difficulty to a layperson without any specialist engineering knowledge. A fat wire connected the battery to the electric starter motor via the big switch that I referred to. That was it. There were only really four concepts to grasp – the electrochemistry in the battery, electrical conductors and switches, and enough electromagnetics to explain how a motor produced torque. Indeed, you could make a small scale demonstrator using a torch battery and a small motor and then pull them apart to aid explanation.
This got me wondering about how I would go about explaining to a similar person how my present car gets started. At the highest level, it is easy enough: when I press the button on the dashboard, the car checks that the appropriate key fob is actually somewhere in the vehicle and then tells the engine to start; the starter motor runs for as long as it takes to get the engine going and then turns off. It soon gets harder as you get into describing a collection of sensors, radio links, processing units, communications buses, and power electronics and so on. If you want to get beyond mystery black boxes it gets much harder still.
To tackle just one element, say the wireless key fob, in any depth, would require an explanation of its physical radio link to the vehicle, the communications protocol, and the authentication methods. Dealing with any of these elements is going to require a discussion of great breadth and depth. And then, of course, there’s the issue of how all the electronic components involved actually work. I concluded that it was probably beyond me, technology had just moved on too far.
Artificial intelligence is only going to make comprehension harder, as behaviour becomes less deterministic. Until recently, a device manufacturer could describe to a user exactly how a device will behave in a given set of circumstances, albeit the explanation might be complicated. Going forward, you might find that your next generation robotic vacuum cleaner has behaviour that is unique to you because the environment in which it self-learned its behaviour is unique to you. The manufacturer you now are calling for an explanation may never have seen the behaviour you describe, but the device may actually be behaving perfectly ‘normally’.
What does this mean for the engineer whose job it is to provide the technology under the hood to companies who wish to bring new and evolving products to market? Where the end user knows (and perhaps cares) less and less about how it all works. This puts the engineer in a position of considerable power and influence and needs to use that power both wisely and ethically.
I will be exploring this topic in Part 2 of this blog.
Further Reading
