digital steel

Not everybody will understand me. It’s the new age.

Humanity has changed in that almost everyone, unconsciously, outsources what was done internally during the past era. Until perhaps 60 years ago a steelwork foreman had in his head what they have in computers now as shown in the video.

One can literally observe the action of putting most everything enjoyable out of oneself, out into some means, into some duplicate of ourselves every day. Well, at least, I think I do. Taxi cab drivers used to have the town inside, they knew every street by heart. Today people walk (!) around with an electronic aid in their hands, seemingly completely uncapable of orientating themselves alone with a paper map that costs $4.

There’s nothing we can do about it. Professions, also mine, that are based on thinking, deliberating a little now and then (hahaha), combining mentally what paper decorated wizards knock out some expensive software, are out. I’m out of business because people feel I am one of the old time rock‛n’rollers and I can’t seem to pull out of myself what I once had to learn alone at school. Sometimes I have the impression I am a genius among Dummköpfen because I know a phone number by heart.

I understand completely; my wife and I are the only people among the crowd exiting the movie theater who are not running blindly into doors (and each other) because they are texting. How can that represent progress? On the other hand I am reluctantly coming around to the view that the satellite navigation in my car is better than a paper map. The last time we were driving in a city it circumvented a couple of traffic backups because it was tied into a real-time data network. And after decades of use, I am so hoplessly dependent on calculators that I would no longer trust my own simple arithmetic. One may ask, what if we were without electicity and didn't have a slide rule? Well, in that case I doubt I'd need to run any engineering calcs, I'd be hunting and gathering and sweating like everybody else. Likewise, designing parts onscreen where you can instantly summon up and hugely enlarge a sectional view is just not worth doing with a pencil, even though I used to do it and still remember how.

When I consider how much more of my life remains available to me through the aid of timesaving devices, I am better able to tolerate progress...

Mechanola said:

Not everybody will understand me. It’s the new age.

Humanity has changed in that almost everyone, unconsciously, outsources what was done internally during the past era. Until perhaps 60 years ago a steelwork foreman had in his head what they have in computers now as shown in the video.

One can literally observe the action of putting most everything enjoyable out of oneself, out into some means, into some duplicate of ourselves every day. Well, at least, I think I do. Taxi cab drivers used to have the town inside, they knew every street by heart. Today people walk (!) around with an electronic aid in their hands, seemingly completely uncapable of orientating themselves alone with a paper map that costs $4.

There’s nothing we can do about it. Professions, also mine, that are based on thinking, deliberating a little now and then (hahaha), combining mentally what paper decorated wizards knock out some expensive software, are out. I’m out of business because people feel I am one of the old time rock‛n’rollers and I can’t seem to pull out of myself what I once had to learn alone at school. Sometimes I have the impression I am a genius among Dummköpfen because I know a phone number by heart.

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I'd like to copy and paste your post and send it to, oh, about a million young people.

Certainly an advantage to have traffic alerts and so, nothing against such practical applications.

My point is that we’ve lost the genius with engineering. Le génie. Ingenuity. Architects think they can play around with buildings, they design Legoland, but not one of them knows how pyramids of solid stones were made, the most amazing being those in the Americas from basalt. That rock is even tougher than granite.

The German Wikipedia says the ancient Egyptians probably used copper tools and that they hardened them. What a complete punk! How shall one harden copper! Not even bronze would help anything. Plus metals were much too precious to be used up on stone.

Has humanity no common sense at all? I’ll have to try to correct that but as some might know Wikipedia is a disinformation instrument for certain people. The bloody Egyptian pyramids apparently must be kings tombs and initiation rites places and nothing else. Attempts at adding the possibility of the Cheops pyramid being a technical edifice are knocked out. The Cheops pyramid may well be 11,000 years old, much older than some people with Wikipedia like to hear.

An engineer cleverly uses materials. I think that is the very problem we have, that blabla is valued more than practice. Theorists believe they know better than practitioners. They don’t know a thing and my country is full of them. End of frustration rant

I dont see what this vid has to do with "those damn kids texting".

Steel mills, and primary manufacturing in general, has always been quick to adopt technology advances.
Otherwise we still would be puddling wrought iron.

Nucor built its first minimills in the USA in the mid 60s.
Direct reduction steelmills have been in commercial operation worldwide since the early 70s.

Motion Guru, who posts here, has helped build modern factories with over 100 axis of motion CNC systems.

This is what modern factories have to be, to compete globally.

As I have mentioned many times, in the late 40's, my dad worked summers in steel mills in Gary Indiana, and the USS mill there had 40,000 employees.
Today, they make more steel every month with perhaps 4000 employees- all due to exactly the type of modern CNC and computerized logistics shown in this video.

Its nothing new, nothing evil, and not the fault of lazy young people.

My point is that we’ve lost the genius with engineering

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Huh?

I can buy a car that will avoid rear-end collisions BY ITSELF!

I have a phone, that is hooked to the internet thru a majik sky system thingy.

My TV can be hooked to cable WITHOUT A CABLE.

I think engineering is awesome, and I love it. I can't wait to see what's next.

Self driving cars, Electronic devices in my eyeglasses, stuff delivered to my house by robots........the ideas are endless.

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden