In case you didn’t catch it, I was on 938Live Passion People. It was crazy cool talking about UCreateChange, innovation and engineering, as well as whether locals are creative (they are, you just don’t know it yet).
It’s a great first step at dispelling old-fashioned notions about engineering (and engineering folk).
And that’s what the Creators of Tomorrow are here -- to let people know that it’s a lot more fun, exciting and creative then the usual engineering myths. For this blog post, I’d like to expand on five engineering characteristics that I’ve mentioned in the interview* and give examples on what’s cool about them.
* FYI, my interview with 938Live is posted at the bottom. :)
Engineering is about…
#1: …Making things
Most engineers are tinkers in their own right. Something about making things with our own hands appeal to us. It could be a eco-friendly invention (bamboo bicycle) or something fun (iPhone app controls robots) or something mind-blowingly global (IBM’s Computing Grid). Whatever it is, engineers make things.
#2: …Solving problems
Engineering and technology can solve problems in a very concrete way. Now that the global food shortage is back, we’ve created crops that need less care, and made inedible plants edible, like cotton seeds! And the recent energy shortage has gotten the world’s engineers on figuring out the ways to find efficient, affordable and non-polluting sources and applications of energy (Philips' Evo Solar Lighting solution or Ecodrain).
#3: …Thinking out of the box
This often bandied buzzword is a cliché but necessary. Solutions are found everywhere and they aren’t remarkably expensive. Just ask Tony Quan. He’s a paralysed graffiti writer who can now communicate via The Eyewriter which tracks his eye movements and turns them into words. All the inventers needed were sunglasses, infra-red LEDS, laptop, USB sticks and customised software. The components were bought on the cheap, but the end product’s value to Tony is priceless.
#4: …Doing what’s interesting to you
At Google we have “20% time” where all of our engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on a project that they’re passionate about. It could anything that’s cool to the engineer such as image recognition, translation, whatever they like. It’s hard to put a value on it, but we found that some of our most useful applications (Gmail and Google News) came out of this.
#5: …Having fun!
Sometimes you just need to let your hair down and imagination loose. In fact, some of the craziest and fun things were built by engineers. Leaf blower hovercraft, anyone?
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