Common Sense 101 - Engineering - December 16, 2012 Edition

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Common Sense 101: Engineering whose concept of it—called Xanadu—is far, far ahead of todays’ Internet; and K. Eric Drexler, who thought up what’s arguably the absolute ultimate in engineering, namely Nanotechnology (ultimate, because after it comes into existence, technology itself may well become obsolete). None of their ideas has yet been put into practice (with the exception, of course, of Imhotep’s and Michelangelo’s) … but that’s the fault of society, not of these bright people. Leonardo da Vinci was also in the first rank of engineers: he came up with ideas for stuff that couldn’t be implemented for centuries after his time. Such are the people Jobs was referring to in his speech at Stanford, saying “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.” What you want to do is aim high; and if you aim so high that you haven’t a hope in hell of accomplishing it in your lifetime, all the better! And don’t worry about how you will make a living. There are plenty of other ways to earn money. Crunch the numbers: if you make a product in one single day—however simple that product may be—for a measly dollar, and sell it the next day for just $1.01, and reinvest the money you make that way again and again, producing and selling more and more such products at that same slim rate of profit day after day, a compound interest calculator will reveal that you’ll become a millionaire in less than four years, and (drum roll, please!) a billionaire in less than six! IOW, aim for (a) low, low, l oooooowwwww per-item profit margins, so as to help you stay real competitive, coupled with—and this is the important point— (b) extremely quick turnover, measured in days if not even hours (preferably, in fact, in mere minutes!), plus (c) reinvest every penny you make … and you’ll have the market cornered in almost no time flat. Come to think of it, you don’t even have to actually make the products: you can just buy them and resell them! How else do you think Walmart got so big so soon? So really, don’t worry your head too much about where your next meal is going to come from. (That said, however, how much you make by way of earthly wealth is probably dependent on your karma anyway, so take what I’m saying above with a pinch of salt—unless of course you don’t believe in karma, in which case it won’t make much difference to you what I say about it.) Whatever you do, though, don’t waste your time: not only because your life is short, but because you don’t have much time left to invent anything. In a couple of hundred years or thereabouts humanity will most probably have reached what sci-fi writers call “singularity”, and as a result become extinct. It might even happen in your own lifetime, if you work at it. So you really need to get a move on. Of course it could be rather risky for you to take Jobs’s advice—or mine. You might actually go hungry. I know I did, on occasion. Or you may have to beg, borrow or steal—which I didn’t, except on occasion for a bit of begging. (Maybe I shouldn’t be advising people to actually steal … although it’s debatable whether stealing from the rich to give to the poor—in this case, “the poor” would of course be yourself—is a genuine ethical no-no, especially when you are also benefitting others: consider the TV show Leverage.) But in any case, what do you want to be saying when you reach a ripe old age and are talking to your grandkids around the fireplace? Do you want to say “I spent a whole lifetime building crap, and ended up middle-class”, or do you want to say “I invented faster-than-light travel”? Do you not want to hear your grandkids reply: “Way to go, grandma”? Page 104
Write or draw something. Be an artist, be a creator! Page 105
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Common Sense 101: Engineering Laser
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Common Sense 101: Engineering by La
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T Dedication his book is dedicated
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T The No-Small-Print Warranty he pr
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I Introduction am not an engineer.
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25. Everything should be easy to ge
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E 1. Good Intentions verything shou
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Good Intentions The boom problem co
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T 2. Oh, the Humanity! here’s a d
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M 3. Come Together, Right Now ost t
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A 4. Do it Yourself nd when I say
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T 5. Get Lost here’s also another
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T 6. I Like to Move it, Move it ake
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O 7. You C A N Take it With You f c
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T 8. Cleanliness is Next to Godline
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T 9. The Pyramids here’s an Arabi
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I 10. Heirlooms n the old days, peo
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11. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth
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I 12. Maintenance t’s simply not
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T 13. Coolth he word “warmth” i
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D 14. Quark o you remember Quark? I
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A 15. What’s in a Name? ctually,
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I 16. Something Old, Something New
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I 17. The Eliminator kea has a phil
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A 18. The Sum of its Parts pparentl
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I 19. Don’t be Shy t’s no use h
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B 20. K.I.S.S. y K.I.S.S. I mean—
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I 21. Deliver Us t bears repeating,
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I 22. Easy, Pal! t all started in t
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A 23. Play it Again, Sam few years
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O 24. Upgradability ne problem Stra
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W 25. The Numbers Game hen you firs
Page 67 and 68: M 26. Recycling aybe some day whate
Page 69 and 70: E 27. Cool it, Man! verything shoul
Page 71 and 72: O 28. The Dark Side ne of the worst
Page 73 and 74: W 29. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepe
Page 75 and 76: J 30. It’s a Steal ust about ever
Page 77 and 78: O 31. Check this out! nce upon a ti
Page 79 and 80: Y 32. Autopilot ou know that airlin
Page 81 and 82: W 33. It’s Standard hen you go to
Page 83 and 84: W 34. Waterproof hat could be so ha
Page 85 and 86: W 35. The Rotary Club e often derid
Page 87 and 88: C 36. Friction ontrary to what most
Page 89 and 90: O 37. Wireless f course we all get
Page 91 and 92: O 38. Swiss Army Knife nce upon a t
Page 93 and 94: W 39. Ouch! hat’s up with manufac
Page 95 and 96: T 40. Square Peg in Round Hole here
Page 97 and 98: D 41. Paint Job id you know that a
Page 99 and 100: W 42. Break Down hy do so many thin
Page 101 and 102: O 43. Deterioration ne of the worst
Page 103 and 104: T 44. Corrosion here are corrosive
Page 105 and 106: O 45. Rock and Roll ne of the worst
Page 107 and 108: T 46. R.T.F.M. hat stands, as you s
Page 109 and 110: W 47. Pinch Me hen I was a very you
Page 111 and 112: I 48. Shocking am a fairly good han
Page 113 and 114: R 49. Leaks emember the Exxon Valde
Page 115 and 116: B 50. The Future is Where You’ll
Page 117: The Future is Where You’ll be Spe
Page 121: T About the Author he author is a n
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Common Sense 101 - Engineering - December 16, 2012 Edition

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