As an undergraduate college student I can only recall one conversation with a professor that discussed the duality of computer science as art and science. The dialogue during college is so skewed toward the science that the design and art of it aren’t adequately conveyed to students.  No one during my entire college experience asked the question: What is beautiful software?  Surely, the goal is to achieve balance with art and science. However, doing this is not an easy task.  Gardening takes a green thumb.  People have an eye for fashion.  Does anyone in software have an equivalent sense of what works?

The September Issue does an admirable job showing the army of creative and talented professionals that make Vogue possible.  It’s mostly their doing but Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, who projects an aristocratic aura of superiority, has directed this effort to Vogue’s advantage.  Her image as fashion soothsayer has crystallized in America and Europe.  Is the fashion she promotes the best or ultimate aspiration of all clothing consumers?  No.  She has an eye for fashion and, like it or not, indirectly controls the clothing that will appear in department store clothing racks.  Vogue sells an image and if enough people integrate that image into their lifestyle, fashion designers adapt. This brings me to Steve Jobs and Apple.

Vogue’s main product is an image.  It holds a lens to fashion, focuses it, and projects it onto the pages of a magazine.  Steve Jobs’s team at Apple has managed to do the same for smart phones and MP3 players. My pre-September Issue idea of fashion was that designers and magazine editors would manipulate hapless followers to buy the newest, or coolest, or most cutting edge in order to look good.  That’s until I realized almost every software company has relied upon the same strategy.

When technology becomes an accessory, it becomes less a tool of productivity, and more an expression of vanity.  Fashion knows this.  Look no further than blue jeans: what was practical clothing for a yeoman is now more about style and less about how well the rivets hold together.  When Vogue presents body covering on sexy models in an exotic location, clothing becomes fashion and life becomes art.  A good designer keeps this transition in mind.

I’ve discussed software and technology in very broad terms but the object which makes these concepts real is the Apple iPhone.  No other recent innovation in consumer technology has influenced so many people to drop $70+ per month to maintain an image of newness.  Phones are now an expression of vanity.  Yes, they offer many practical uses but there’s a broad array of phones.  Feature-wise they are converging.  However, the image is what persists. Apple, as a company, projects an image like Vogue.  They are purveyors of product as art. It’s a phone, yet people feel empowered.  It’s clothing, yet people feel trendy.

When I started to write about this comparison of industry figureheads I was reminded of the book by Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t.  The refined points of the book drill down to what makes a company go from mediocre to outstanding.  A common attribute of these outstanding companies is their ability to lead with steady management – no rock stars or egocentrics.  The egocentric leader who builds an empire will not see in others what he sees in himself, therefore, success of the company is usually limited to his tenure.  Although Wintour and Jobs each have an eye for what works, has either searched for this ability among colleagues?  Who’s the next generation leader that will drive consumption?  From the shareholder’s point of view, loyalty is about profit.

Consumption externally and efficiency internally is what makes a company profitable.  The more stuff sold, the better for revenue, and hopefully profit. This seems to fly in the face of my own motivation, which is to make something that lasts.  I want my software to hold value, not diminish quickly into obsolescence.  I’m frequently reminded of my dad’s 40 year old Rockwell jigsaw. It’s a metallic beast that still works as good or better than new saws. The electrical cord hasn’t disintegrated and it shows no signs of slowing down.  Durability is always in style as it concerns tools vis-à-vis the entire flimflam industry of scratch guards, do-dad protectors, and other junk accessories that aim to protect your haute couture phone.

The fashion and modern PC/tech industries have not survived on notions of adequacy and complacence. They thrive on obsolescence. Advertising is supposed to make you feel inadequate. The competition will leave you behind if you don’t upgrade from software revision 2.0 to 3.0.  That scarf you’re wearing? That’s last year’s trend and no one’s going to wear it.  If you don’t upgrade, or dump the scarf, you’ll be isolated and left behind.  These industries prey on our innate desire to achieve a higher status in society.

Accordingly to Wintour, “Fashion isn’t about looking back. It’s always about looking forward.” That’s probably how most software firms operate.  There’s an eye to the past, but the movement is most assuredly forward.  That’s the direction we’re taught is best.  Improve, innovate, advance the state of the art.  I couldn’t agree more.  Then the little voice inside my head that tells me that making a durable, robust product can bring the owner years of satisfaction.  Perhaps that’s the balance.  Clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent may have said the notion best: “Fashions fade, style is eternal.”  I’ll keep that in mind when I get ready in the morning.

History is repeating itself and history, in this case, is less than ten years ago. There seemed no apparent battle between MP3 formats and CDs. The mind share of CDs was so high that few people considered MP3 a valid competitor. There were few legal sites that provided high quality recordings and most people didn’t feel compelled (or understood how) to convert their CD collection into this new format. Several factors speeded the shift (past tense).

Memory dropped in price. Almost all portable music players are now exclusively based upon solid state, non-volatile memory chips. Ten years ago the best players could only hold two or three CDs worth of music. MP3 players also offered models that utilized laptop hard drives. This boosted capacity and, very quickly, people realized partial (or entire) collections of CDs could be stored at a reasonable quality.

Availability became widespread. The iPod cannot go without mention but the crucial component of the iPod became the iTunes Store. It opened up a market of digital music. By including plenty of locks against piracy, called digital restriction/rights management (DRM), record labels felt safer when distributing new and existing music titles. The masses arrived with cash in hand, ready to download.

Listeners accepted lower quality audio. The convenience of obtaining digital music and not carrying a stack of CDs seemed to outweigh any marginal benefit of sound quality. A generation raised on FM radio realized that having the music on hand was most important. Another benefit offered by MP3 players was displaying tagged information on artist, album, and song. Consumers liked knowing the information available on the CD covers they could no longer hold.

The previous three factors are not the exclusive reason for the downfall of CDs but certainly hastened it. Cost, which is always influential in decision making, was omitted. Why buy a CD full of music you might like when you can spend $1 and get a single track you know you’ll enjoy? There are analogous situations that will undermine the development and spread of Bluray. Indeed, the mere distribution of more Bluray players could be speeding its demise. More will be discussed on that later. Now, the previous three issues need substantiation in terms of Bluray (future tense).

Viewers will accept lower quality video. If Neflix’s quality is any indication, then streaming video is off to a great start. Compression algorithms, which squeeze bits into an internet-friendly size, are getting better. HD-like video is now possible. It doesn’t match Bluray but it comes close. Separate information for subtitles and alternate audio tracks are still a problem for streaming sources. The benefit, clearly, is getting the movie you want, when you want it. There’s no waiting except an initial period of buffering so the video doesn’t stutter when played. My prediction is that streaming services will offer tiered pricing for the quality level you prefer.

Availability will become widespread. The limitation now is the pipe for streaming video. Not everyone will have a fast enough web connection (initially), thus, the tiered pricing. The hardware for playing these videos is also a limitation but, as mentioned earlier, Bluray may be killing itself. Each Bluray player runs a very small computer, which decodes the various features of the format. Also critical is the network port built-in to support the BD 2.0 or BD Live features. Currently, BD Live is not used for streaming, just retrieving movie extras from the web. Finally, most Bluray players have the ability to update their internal software via the network port. Essentially, this means is that each Bluray player has everything necessary to make streaming movies its primary feature: software, the ability to update that software, and networking. Video streaming features are being added to the Playstation 3, Wii, and the X-Box 360, well after they were manufactured and delivered.

Memory will drop in price. Because Bluray players have very little need for internal memory (data is stored on a disc or streamed on-demand), the primary consumer of memory will be the distributors of the streaming video. To offer tiered video quality, it will mean multiple copies of the same movie are stored on a server somewhere. That data quickly adds up when you consider storing thousands of feature films. When a cost analysis says that storing that video and delivering over the web is more effective than disc delivery, Bluray’s end will approach even faster.

The latter part of this essay is, of course, speculation. When momentum keeps an industry moving in the same direction (think CD to DVD to Bluray) such a change is not like flipping a switch. Yet we’ve seen this very switch happen with CDs and MP3s in less than a decade. When choosing between buying a Bluray and renting a streamed movie, consumers will weigh the benefits, evaluate which one is cheaper and easier, and go with it. Technology be damned.

Convenience is knowing that your credit card will be accepted in most locations you buy products or services. The entire marketing campaign of Visa is “It’s everywhere you want to be.” They say nothing about interest rates, late fees, or any of the factors which drive their revenue. As discussed in this NY Times article, the fees associated with swiping your card can add up very quickly for businesses that offer the convenience. From both a consumer and business perspective it’s very alluring but cracks are beginning to widen. Is cash really that inconvenient? Cash is everywhere, too, but with no fees attached or interest to consumers.

Credit card companies have had an interesting year due to U.S. government regulations and more changes are coming in 2010. In general, these changes have been pro-consumer but will likely cause the credit companies to shift sources of revenue. A business established to make a profit finds the path of least resistance. The passing of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 brought the most sweeping changes to the industry. The majority of the CARD Act dictates how fees can be changed, collected, and disclosed. The question is whether the credit companies will reduce consumer rewards or increase vendor fees. Either situation looks bad for credit usage but consumers have had a superior alternative to credit for a few years now: paying for gas with cash instead of credit.

Many gas stations are offering different credit and cash pricing. Accepting credit seems like a given assumption but while vacationing in North Carolina, I found many mom-and-pop gas stations didn’t accept credit. The bigger franchise stations are catching on and now offer implicit rewards for using cash. The price for paying with cash is often 4-5 cents cheaper than paying with credit. Here’s an example that assumes I use my Bank of America rewards card to pay for gas or, alternatively, I use cash. It’s clear that each credit card reward “point” is almost worthless – it’s less than one cent. The economic benefits of using cash in this instance are double that of using credit. That’s a market-changing influence.

These implicit rewards are an interesting phenomenon. Cash is now holding the position that credit cards held about 15 years ago. I don’t believe this advantage will last long. Transferring money on the internet requires a flexible and fast payment system, which cash is not. Technology in smart phones will be used for more transactions in the coming decade. Factors we can’t even predict will be game changers.

We’re witnessing an overt protest to the high credit transaction fees placed on vendors. So, until the market corrects itself, we should enjoy the benefits of cash. It’s possible the next system to replace credit cards will be even more convenient and less costly – just remember to keep a little cash on hand.

Around the time I was ready to buy an HDTV is when I also chose to buy an HD-DVD. The price, about $230, was reasonable and it came with five free movies worth about $100. The player could up-convert my existing DVDs in addition to playing the newer format. It was enough to convince me that the benefits exceeded the risks. I fell into two traps: Toshiba promoted a killer deal and promised a safety net: “Hey, we’re backwards compatible!” For Sony’s Bluray the promotion was the PlayStation 3, an overpriced game console that also happened to be a Bluray player.

Inherent with any new technology is a period of unknown reliability. I believe this single attribute, even more than cost, will drive down early adoption if not addressed. As electronic devices become increasingly dependent upon the software that runs them, manufacturers have pushed products out the door even when that software is incomplete. As the ability to distribute software has improved, product managers have rationalized that early shipment is preferable to a more complete product. Scenarios like the following are becoming too common:

Manager: We’re getting close to our ship date. What’s the status?
Engineer: There are over 60 issues still open. Plus, we just found a few new ones.
Manager: Any hardware issues?
Engineer: We’ve noticed occasional reboots; it’s probably firmware.
Manager: Great. We’ll update over-the-wire. Mmmkay, thanks.

Some managers have a low standard for the shipment readiness of a product; others demand the best. I’ve drafted a sort of “early adopter’s manifesto” to address this reality:

• Spend no more than you’re willing to lose while gambling in Vegas for one night. If you’re willing to throw the dice on new technology then also be ready to lose.
• Keep nothing past the warranty if you suspect reliability issues. Disregard what the manufacturer claims about updates or incremental improvements via firmware. This only empowers the next generation of product managers to pull the same shenanigans.
• Do not invest heavily in media. Consider if your purchases would further lock you into one format, whether it’s DRM-laden music, a new optical disc format, or an electronic book. I’m looking at you, Kindle.
• Consider a six-month cooling off period. You don’t want to discover the battery explodes after charging for six hours. Major hardware issues are going to surface within a few months. Let someone else find them first.

Post-shipment product completion is common. We update Microsoft Windows with security patches but what’s a reasonable expectation for new products? What some people consider the risks of early adoption—reliability, obsolescence, incompatibilities—now seem common to most products that lean heavily on software. Just about any cell phone, MP3 player, HDTV, or gaming console requires firmware updates. Shifting expectations also have an impact on warranties. My Samsung Bluray (BD-P2550), which I purchased in January, 2009 is a case study in expectations.

I was a voluntary beta tester for HD-DVD so why risk the same on Bluray? My experience with the Toshiba HD-A2 player was a good one. It only had occasional video playback issues and was reliable. It was excellent in all areas, including technology; the format lost because movie studios failed to support it. Once again, the allure of newness and features was too great. Samsung included built-in support for Netflix. It was enough to convince me to buy. Unfortunately, Samsung’s managers felt compelled to ship too early.

The problem with warranties is they expire. It’s the same with Samsung. The Netflix streaming was smooth, Bluray movies looked crisp, but some movies had issues. “No matter”, I thought. I expected some initial problems but nothing a firmware update wouldn’t address. However, the rate of testing different Bluray titles from Netflix averaged to less than one movie per week. The anomalies, after two firmware updates, and four months of renting Bluray movies did not go away. The disc-read failures were above 50%, movies with HD audio had issues, and after hours of experimentation with cabling and settings I discovered the video output was even less reliable in 1080p mode. “Enough”, I thought. It was time to get it serviced. One call to support and I was told the labor was out of warranty coverage. I was burned by a losing format and now, as an early adopter, I was burned by a warranty.

I’m still waiting for my Bluray player to be returned. When it’s returned I’ll update this entry. In the meantime I’m going to enjoy some HD-DVD movies.

Update 1: I received my Bluray player back from Samsung on August 18 and because I don’t own any titles I had to wait until Netflix delivered one.

I first received Sharkwater and was pleased to see it worked. However, on closer inspection the time elapsed wasn’t incrementing. Another Bluray title later and I confirmed movies seemed to play but special features, from disc to disc, seem to bring out bugs in the format itself. When I received Watchmen I was unable to watch the director’s special commentary feature. This all begs the question: Why would I ever buy a movie if certain features of the disc are inaccessible?

What was broken with my player? The packing slip indicated the optical drive was replaced and the firmware was updated. Indeed, the player isn’t fixed, there are just fewer bugs.

Update 2:  Skipping and freezing continue.  However, one tweet to @samsungservice resulted in a UPS shipping label.  That was totally unexpected and I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s October 26 and the tedium is quickly approaching the one-year mark.

Update 3:  I received the same player back from Samsung in early November.  I thought it would work this time but I was proved wrong.  I think my letter to Consumerist says it all best. I opened another service request with Samsung around early December.  When I returned from vacation, I sent the player back.  The good news:  Samsung finally sent me a new Bluray player in early January. The even better news: it’s an upgraded player, the BDP-3600.  In addition to having more features and faster start-up time, this one actually works.

When I moved into my first home in 2005 I only judged it by a few things:  its price, its location, and its community.  America is somewhat unique with its concept of homeowner associations, commonly called HOAs.  When I explained the concept to my wife, who is from Belgium, she didn’t understand why it was necessary.  It seemed to her like an unnecessary cost.   HOAs can charge dues which can range from affordable to appalling.  My neighborhood dues for 2009 are currently $207 paid annually, which is exceptionally low for anywhere in the state of Florida.  While living here and working with the community as a HOA board member, I could see things from a new perspective.  Just knowing the number of homes in my community formed the first point.

Let’s briefly explore what defines a community.  What are the boundaries?  Boundaries can be economic, geographic, political, or a number of other possibilities.  Associations are usually formed by home builders who purchased land in large plots and then divided it into smaller plots for homes.  These homes are usually surrounded by  individual fences and/or a wall is built at the perimeter of the community, thus forming the geographic bounds.  The legal bounds are unclear to the passerby so visual cues provide the first impression.  My community has 144 single-family homes.  That by itself is no revelation but it has a new context when considering Dunbar’s number. Research by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that people form social circles which typically reach a maximum, stable limit of 148 people.  That’s the cognitive limit whereby a person can recall all the interpersonal politics.  That was the second point and I made the connection.

Perhaps my community was built with this in mind or perhaps it was constrained by geographic limits.  There’s a body of water to the east, a school to the north, and two roads bounding the other directions.  Maybe taxation or zoning restrictions dictated the limits.  The reasons are moot.  The number of homes is conveniently close to the Dunbar number.  However, the developers did not plan for 144 islands within the community.

While serving as a board member for my HOA I observed a striking lack of community solidarity.  The HOA collects dues to maintain one community but residents mostly act as islands unto themselves.  One criminal incident raised concern for the community’s safety.  Calls were made to form a community watch, whereby residents would patrol and report crime to “block captains” and so on.  It would all be coordinated with the local sheriff’s office.  The board raised funding to begin the watch, while a call was made to gather volunteers.  No one showed.

Another theory was cited in The Economist’s article which referred to a social “core”.  This group of individuals socializes the most among each other.  If the homeowner’s association (a not-for-profit business entity) can be considered a person, then its core group consists of the board of directors, and everyone else could fall within the Dunbar number.  Not a single person interacts with all others in my community; the one exception is the HOA.  Some board members who served for the HOA still live here and I asked them how community interaction has changed.  Surprisingly little has changed.  Board members from five and even 10 years ago reported problems with community cohesion.  They also observed that the core of support for the HOA usually revolves around three to five motivated people.  These anthropological theories hold up surprisingly well even when the organism is not a single person but a homeowner association created to manage 144 homes.

Let me briefly go back to the island metaphor.  The long term lack of cohesion seems to imply that a homeowner’s organization creates only an ad-hoc community whereby individual homes are grouped and assessed dues, but which lacks the bonds that might be stronger in self-forming communities.  Indeed, the only way to transcend such a heterogeneous group is to create an artificial construct: the HOA.

The HOA concept seems dated and its slow death inevitable.  Society is not organized around the community as it was in the previous millennium, when nomadic tribes wandered together.  People are much more independent, mobile, and free to settle into a home of their choice.  Like a collection of Facebook friends, my HOA keeps 144 in its circle, and those 144 people are not obliged to know or even care about each other.  They might even be neighbors.

His observations define the disadvantages but none offer a higher understanding of elitism. We’re told the faux diversity of elite schools, the pursuit of grades over wisdom, the exclusivity, the labored meritocracy, inexorably leads to one outcome: more alumni. It’s not clear how a Romantic intellectual would be employed in the 21st century and that’s also precisely the point. Were Romantics not elitist as we define the word today? If an elite education makes William Deresiewicz who he is, then why do others excel while he has fallen to the “Ivy retardation”? Can this “retardation” spread or is it inherited?

His essay isn’t specifically about elitism. Instead he discusses the downfall of identity, both personal and social, in an institution designed to foster ideas and, ironically, an enlightened sense of identity. If elitism is bad then you can’t remove it until it’s understood. Let’s try to understand.

Elitism, as I define the word, is an amalgamation of glamour, wealth, exclusivity, power, and pedigree. These concepts form a wireframe but it’s neither education nor an epistemic desire to learn. Therefore, without the core of higher education, elitism is simply an empty wrapper—branding, marketing, or a way to sell an object—but not the object itself. Elitism and education are conflated but the so-called disadvantages are attributed unfairly to the combination. If worldly and informed students graduate without elitist qualities or the “retardation”, then they have extracted something of great value without being burdened by the disadvantages which I believe do not exist.

Students know that by admission, graduation, and association, the benefits of an elite education usually result in lucrative jobs. I attended public grade schools, high school, and then graduated from a public university. The concept of elite and public coinciding is a contradiction. Some political offices hold an elite status but generally the commons is not a site of glamour, exclusivity, wealth, power, or pedigree.

Calling an institution or person elitist is to suggest some form of entitlement. Entitlement is commonly associated with birthright, inheritance, or social status. Perhaps society is reluctant to admit it or accept it, but I believe the underlying cause of elitism is genetic. Mr. Deresiewicz makes conclusions based upon environmental factors but completely overlooks heritability. Genetics cannot explain all the variables in my theory on elitism (exclusivity, for example) but DNA can influence many of the personality traits which develop those variables. Help us identify these elitist characteristics, Mr. Deresiewicz, instead of slogging forward with one lamentation after another.

I attended graduate school with a small group of 30 students. This was the first fulltime MBA program for my university. Students were selected based upon their performance in undergraduate school and their academic diversity. You can already see how the admitted students think they’re “special” and, perhaps, entitled to more. I was the only engineer while most others had business degrees. It also turns out 30 was sufficient for something else: a microcosm of elite education.

During the last semester our appointed finance professor was a studying PhD student. Grading was easy but his title and qualifications angered the class. A mini-protest began which led to a petition to replace him. Everyone thought the MBA class deserved better. Maybe so, but I disagreed with the means to accomplish this and refused to sign (I was the only one). The drama was compounded by our legal professor, a woman well versed in tort law and who was eager to remind everyone that she has a carry permit. The idea of a petition seemed juvenile and few civil debates were held over the issue. This drama played out until his replacement arrived. The following events, unlike any other in my college experience, exposed elitist tendencies in quick order.

When the new finance professor was revealed the former business undergrads let out a collective groan. He fought grade inflation, was tough, thorough, and fair. Elitist kryptonite apparently comes from India. Each pop quiz was met with bitching; test results, if not an A, were met with protests. Such behavior is the mark of elitists and individuals who feel above the need to learn. Soon their discontent was directed to the MBA program itself. Certainly it wasn’t the students who were mistaken, it was the system. I can therefore conclude that elitism is not unique to haughty institutions with rich alumni. So it was in your school, Mr. Deresiewicz, and so it was in mine.

Elitism is not monopolized by upper crust society. I’ve seen elitist attitudes in public universities and their aftereffects in the private sector. The most intolerable belief is that the system is flawed, not the individual. Indeed, systems can and do fail. No system is perfect. Yet, when faced with an obstacle or failure an elitist will not look in the mirror. The reason or excuse is most assuredly external. Some institutions focus these behaviors and amplify their effects. In elite colleges the potential for groupthink seems likely, therefore, blame is not sought among peers. When forces outside the walled garden are such easy targets, why bother? Indeed, just sign a petition.

Maybe the larger question is: Should elitism be stopped? Is there any proof its existence is harming society? Perhaps elitism is a Western phenomenon that’s become more apparent as our overall wealth has increased. Capitalism is still a relatively new concept and our perception of elitism is evolving with it. There’s been a dot-com bubble and a housing bubble. An elitism bubble wouldn’t surprise me. It’s also possible we’re debating a non-issue. I’ve observed elitist traits within academia and without, from rich people and poor people, and fail to see the end of it. Unfortunately, people are notoriously bad at predicting bubbles.

Thank you for writing to voice your concerns. That you replied to the “New Board” posting makes it evident that we, the five volunteer Board members and property manager are failing in some ways. I would estimate the five volunteers, Bill, Andrea, Roger, Gerald, and me, have given in excess of 120 hours of their time back to the community at no charge and the year is not over. The majority of us also work in excess of 40 hours per week at our normal, full-time jobs. We try to lead by example and save the community money, which brings me to your first point.

“Don’t even think about raising the dues this year”
Wildewood just received notice that our landscape maintenance costs would be increasing by 2.5% effective immediately. I expect many of our costs to increase as a result of the economy. Our Covenants stipulate that we can raise dues by no more than 5% per annum over the previous year. We’ll have to raise dues without question, if simply to maintain our level of maintenance and keep pace with monetary inflation. If you find a similar HOA in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater area, with the same number of homes, for such a low price (currently less than $200 a year), please let us know. I’m told our community is an exceptional case.

“It seems the board now is in the mood to be NICE…POLITICALLY CORRECT”
I agree that we are in the mood to be nice. Is the only alternative being cruel and politically incorrect, ruling this small community like a fiefdom? Wildewood isn’t a homeowner association you hear about on the news – fining for small brown patches on lawns, an extra satellite dish, or other petty reasons. It’s my belief (to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson) that the HOA that governs least, governs best. The lawyers who drafted our original documents seemed to agree. The documents do not stipulate how we can enforce covenant issues. This issue can be lumped into one about “pigpen” homes you mentioned. Members of the Board do not enjoy this sight any more than you. Other, more ruthless, legally-entitled HOAs are setup to explicitly empower their association to levy fees, or take other action against these issues. Ours was established without such empowerments. You suggest “[the Association] lawyer sends them a letter with the intent to foreclose” yet you do not want our dues raised. These are simply incompatible actions. It also exposes our Association to costly legal retaliation.

“…now we have homes that are again having unregistered vehicles…”
Please report these to Hillsborough County Code Enforcement. It’s free, anonymous, online, and it works. We even provide a link on our website (right side, towards the bottom). Help us be the eyes and ears of the community. Members of the Board do this independently and encourage residents to do the same.

“I will start a petition drive to kill this association…”
Why? Your frustration is apparent but this is counter productive. Without an Association, who would pay for the repair of vandalized walls? Who would maintain a lighted entrance or promote a website to enable a better connected neighborhood?

Mr. X, I spent almost one hour of my time considering this letter and what it means for Wildewood. In short, it means someone cares. And yet, seven months into a new Board of Directors, what has been accomplished? I consider the gains amazing (lots of paint, sod, new plants) and a sign of future improvements to come. I’ll be staying an hour late at work today or tomorrow to compensate. Change takes time and free labor is hard to find.

Sincerely,

Matthew Crumley
Wildewood President, 2008

The sigh of resignation is deafening in Samuel Florman’s article “Facing Facts about the Engineering Profession”. He says, “engineers will not play a significant role as legislators…and perhaps that is all for the best.” It’s clear throughout the piece that Mr. Florman had aspirations for his colleagues, but they disappointed him. Unfortunately, like a typical engineer, he is content to point out flaws in the design, but not extroverted enough to push hard for change. When I went to the 2006 I/ITSEC conference and asked the Congressional Modeling and Simulation Caucus what they could do to promote civic responsibility in engineering, I got hems and haws in response. The caucus is mostly composed of lawyers (54%). Where are the engineers? I got a few handshakes after the meeting and thought about our situation. Politics isn’t going to change, so engineers will have to evolve. We need to broaden our education: more courses in ethics, history, and debate are absolutely necessary. It’s the only way to defy our stereotype, get engineers elected, and bring intellectual diversity into politics.

Mr. Florman has years of experience in his profession but his hopes gave way to a die hard stereotype of engineers. I hope I can change, personally or nationally, the typical view of engineers he accepts with such reluctance.

Networking is the concept of sharing resources and services. A resource could be physical hardware or data, and a service could be an e-mail system. In other words, resources are things and services do things. The individual systems which are networked must be connected through a pathway (called the transmission medium) that is used to transmit the resource or service between the computers. All systems on the pathway must follow a set of common communication rules for data to arrive at its intended destination and for the sending and receiving systems to understand each other. The rules governing computer communication are called protocols.

Having a transmission pathway does not always guarantee communication. When two entities communicate they do not merely exchange information, rather, they must understand the information they receive from each other. The goal of computer networking, therefore, is not simply to exchange data but to understand and use data received from other entities on the network. Because computers can be used in different ways and can be located at different distances from each other, enabling computers to communicate often can be a daunting task that draws on a wide variety of technologies.

The two main reasons for using computer networks are to provide services and to reduce equipment costs. Networks enable computers to share their resources by offering services to other computers and users. Specific reasons for networking PCs include sharing files, printers and other devices, enabling centralized administration and security of the resources within the system, and supporting network applications such as e-mail and database services. Database servers are the most common type of application servers. Because database services enable applications to be designed in separate client and server components, such applications frequently are called client/server databases.

With a client/server database, the client and server applications are designed to take advantage of the specialized capabilities of client and database systems. The client application manages data input from the user, generation of screen displays, some of the reporting, and data retrieval requests sent to the database server. The database server manages the database files; adds, deletes, and modifies records in the database; queries the database and generates the results required by the client; and transmits results back to the client. The database server can service requests for multiple clients at the same time.

Database services relieve clients of most of the responsibilities for managing data. A modern database server is a sophisticated combination of software that can provide database security, optimize the performance of database operations, determine optimum locations for storing data without requiring clients to know where data is located, service large numbers of clients by reducing the amount of time any one client spends accessing the database, and distribute data across multiple database servers.

In the late 1990s the demand for database information shifted. Distributed databases became increasingly popular. Obtaining information from a proprietary source did not suffice. The demand for information came from a multitude of users using a myriad of networked PCs. The bottom line: all users want access to the data they want on every machine they use. Thus, the demand for database connectivity has also shifted.

1.1 SQL BASICS

Structured Query Language (SQL) is the standard language for accessing relational databases. SQL is not a typical programming language. It is used to define and manipulate data. The current ISO operating standard is SQL92¹. Unfortunately, SQL is not yet as standard as one would like. One area of difficulty is that data types used by different Data Base Management Systems (DBMSs) sometimes vary and the variations can be significant. As more and more developers use SQL, extensions of grammar make it difficult when working with more than one database. Many times a database may conform to the standard but may not implement all the capabilities that it defines.

Execution of an SQL statement manipulates the data in the tables. The most commonly used SQL statements are CREATE TABLE, INSERT INTO, SELECT FROM, UPDATE and DELETE FROM. A relational database is made up of tables. To create a table, the command is CREATE TABLE; it is followed by the table name then the columns. Each field is defined by a data type and a length. The INSERT INTO command inserts columns into the table; this command is followed by the table name then parenthesis to enclose the columns that will be inserted. The actual values for the columns are inserted using the VALUES command. The SELECT FROM command specifies where to retrieve the data, which data to retrieve and how to see the data displayed; it also allows for narrowing the search using the WHERE and AND commands. The UPDATE command, as its name suggests, allows the table to be updated. The SET and WHERE commands allow the update of a specific column entry. The DELETE FROM command is used to delete a row in the table; it is also used with the WHERE command.

Another area of difficulty with SQL conformance is that most DBMSs use a standard form of SQL for basic functionality; however, they do not conform to the more recently defined standard SQL syntax or semantics for more advanced functionality. For example, not all databases support stored procedures or outer joins, and those that do support it are not always consistent with each other. Also, support for SQL3 features and data types varies greatly. It is hoped the portion of SQL that is truly standard will expand to include increased functionality.

2.0 PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

Since a great deal of industry applications are database-oriented and many are Web-enabled, there needed to be an API compatible across many platforms and machines. The common need for data access was pushing the industry away from vendors with proprietary systems.

Microsoft created the Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC) standard for connecting to databases and—like many database-tool vendors—it uses SQL for accessing relational database systems. However, users demanding data were left with multiple databases and multiple means of accessing them via DBMSs.

What was needed was a way for users to communicate with a variety of different data sources. Based on Java’s acceptance (in business and academia) and its “write once, run anywhere” concept, Java was a natural means for database connectivity development. Thus, Java Data Base Connectivity (JDBC) was born.

JDBC was conceived in September 1995, proposed in January 1996, announced in March 1996, and finalized in May 1996. Sun Microsystems and industry leaders (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Symantec, and Intersolv) had emerged with an answer to user’s database connectivity demands.

JDBC is very similar to Microsoft’s ODBC. They can both interface with SQL but the question lingers: why and how should JDBC be implemented as an SQL interface when a solution already exists?

3.0 DESIGN SOLUTION

Prior to the development of the JDBC API, Microsoft’s ODBC API was the most widely used programming interface for accessing relational databases, as it offers the ability to connect to almost all databases on almost all platforms. With the help of the JDBC-ODBC Bridge, it is possible to use ODBC from Java. JDBC API builds on ODBC rather than starting from scratch. Programmers familiar with ODBC find it very easy to learn. The major difference is that JDBC API builds on and reinforces the style and virtues of Java, and it goes beyond just sending SQL statements to a relational DBMS. When ODBC is used, the ODBC driver manager and drivers must be manually installed on every client machine. When the JDBC driver is written completely in Java, however, JDBC code is automatically installable, portable, and secure on all Java platforms from network computers to mainframes².

3.1 JDBC API

The JDBC API is used to invoke SQL commands directly. It works very well in this capacity and is easier to use than other database connectivity APIs, but it was also designed to be a base for alternate interfaces and tools. It tries to use a more understandable or more convenient API that is translated behind the scenes into the JDBC API. So, it builds upon previous database connectivity and provides its own unique solution.

The JDBC package provides a simple solution: use Java to connect, query, and update a database using SQL. This is a relatively straightforward solution to database connectivity, but has many different implementations. Programs using the JDBC API communicate via a JDBC driver manager which uses a currently installed driver. The major classes and interfaces that the JDBC API provides are defined in Table 1¹.

3.1.1 DriverManager

The DriverManager class implements the Driver interface. It is the class that manages the JDBC drivers. It is also responsible for the connection to the database that is accessed through the drivers. To specify a particular driver, you use the system property “jdbc.drivers”, the DriverManager will load the driver specified. You may set the property of the “jdbc.drivers” through the setProperty() method in the System class or in the Properties class The driver may also be loaded explicitly by using the forName() method in Class class. When the driver class is loaded, it automatically calls the DriverManager class method. The DriverManager class has methods for creating a connection to a JDBC driver. The objects are implement using Connection by using getConnection() method. The forName() method is called in the beginning of main() enabling it to throw an exception if the driver is not loaded for some reason. These classes and interfaces for the JDBC libraries are defined and imported from the java.sql package. Listed below are some examples of how these are used¹.

// Sets the driver
System.setProperty ("jdbc.drivers", "sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");

// Loads the ODBC driver
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.Driver");

// Connection made using a URL string to specify the database location
Connect databaseConnection = DriverManager.getConnection(source);

// Connection to a database and sends the username and password
databaseConnection = DriverManager.getConnection(sourceURL, username, password);

3.1.2 Statement Objects

Statement objects are of the class that implements the Statement interface. The Statements objects are created by using createStatement() method of a valid Connection object. To execute an SQL query, use the executeQuery()method. The contents of the query are passed as a string argument for the method. The Statement object also allows for batching queries, which may be executed at a later time. For batching, the methods are executeBatch() and clearBatch().

3.1.3 ResultsSet Objects

ResultsSet are of the class that implements the ResultSet interface. It returns the results of a table of the executed SQL query and contains a cursor. The cursor allows the manipulation of any row in the set. The cursor initially is pointing to a position that precedes the first row in the table. The cursor can be moved to the next position by using the next() method. The method will return a true if there is a next row. The methods first() and last() will position the cursor to the first or last row when called. In addition, the methods beforeFirst() and afterLast() move the cursor position the row before the first or after the last row. The previous() method moves the cursor to the previous row to where the cursor is currently positioned. As with the next() method, previous() will also return true if there is a previous row and false if there are not any additional rows. To verify whether the cursor is positioned at the beginning or end of the table, call the isLast() or isFirst() methods. To see the results for all rows, a while loop is used as seen in the example below.

while(resultset.next())
{
  //your code for processing the rows
}

ResultSet has predefined methods for retrieving information about columns in the query table. These methods are listed in Table 2¹.

The JDBC API provides a ReultSetMetaData object that lets you peek into the data behind the ResultSet object. A few of the methods for the ResultSetMetaData are listed in Table 3¹.

3.2 JDBC ARCHITECTURE

There are two JDBC architectures used to talk with the database. The first uses the JDBC driver to communicate directly with the database. The second uses a “bridge” to communicate with an ODBC driver³. The bridge structure was created to take advantage of the large number of ODBC-enabled data foundations. When using a bridge, there are more operations necessary to use a JDBC driver, opposed to the former architecture.

The two architectures have pros and cons. Solutions using JDBC have varying tiers of integration with ODBC and SQL. One area of difficulty is that data types used by different DBMSs sometimes vary, and the variations can be significant. JDBC deals with this by defining a set of generic SQL type identifiers in the class java.sql.Types. It’s worthy to note that the JDBC API can be used in both applets and stand-alone applications. This opens the door for many different implementations, as stated earlier. There are more than 20 commercially available JDBC implementations for users to choose from⁴. However, the selected implementation should be determined by the application’s requirements.

To encompass all these implementations, it is easier to segment them based upon two-tier and three-tier models. These two models can then be used to implement four different technical approaches—also, by no coincidence, four different types of drivers.

The two-tier model emerged with the coming of server technology. The database developer could create a front-end application that opened data through a connection to the back-end server. In this model the Java applet (or application) can talk directly to the database. The JDBC driver manager can open the database via a JDBC driver and then use the connection to make calls to queries and fetch results directly with the JDBC driver. The three-tier model is similar with one exception: there’s middleware.

The middleware is the actual service, which sends SQL statements to the database. The database returns with data to the “middle tier” and then on to the user. The client talks to the intermediate server that provides an abstract layer from the RDBMS. The models are sound and have been implemented in four different driver types to connect with individual databases. Those drivers come in four varieties. Types 1 and 2 are intended for programmers writing applications, while Types 3 and 4 are typically used by vendors of middleware or databases.

3.2.1 Type I Driver: JDBC-ODBC Bridge

Its main purpose is to take advantage of the myriads of ODBC-enabled data sources widely used by developers to connect to databases in a non-Java environment. This is a good approach for learning JDBC. Also, it may be useful for companies that already have ODBC drivers installed on each client machine—typically the case for Windows-based machines running productivity applications. Finally, it may be the only way to gain access to some low-end desktop databases. The solution allows access to databases from multiple vendors. The stipulations are that the appropriate ODBC driver is chosen and that native code is preinstalled on any client that directly uses the bridge to implement the API calls (see Figure 1). The later is a major hindrance when considering clientprogram development. Some of the disadvantages to using this type include: this type is not for large-scale applications; performance suffers because there is some overhead associated with the translation work to go from JDBC to ODBC; it doesn’t support all the features of Java; the user is limited by the functionality of the underlying ODBC driver. The solution would be better implemented if pre-installing is eliminated. The next driver type attempts a similar implementation but has similar caveats.

3.2.2 Type II Driver: The native-API, partly Java Driver

This is also two-tier, in that the JDBC driver requires a vendor-supplied library to translate JDBC functions into the DBMS’s query language⁴. These drivers, much like the JDBC/ODBC bridge, require preinstalled software installed on the client’s computer. This type converts the calls that a developer writes to the JDBC application programming interface into calls that connect to the client machine’s application programming interface for a specific database, such as IBM, Informix, Oracle or Sybase. The performance is better than that of Type 1, in part due to eliminating the extra ODBC translation layer (see Figure 1). The fundamentals are very similar to the previous driver. The Type 2 driver contains compiled code that is optimized for the back-end database server’s operating system⁶. Disadvantages associated with this Type include: the user needs to make sure the JDBC driver of the database vendor is loaded onto each client machine; it must have compiled code for every operating system that the application will run on; the best use is for controlled environments, such as an intranet. The multi-tier (or three-tier) model presented next adds another layer to the database connectivity structure but comes closer to JDBC’s main goal of access anywhere, anytime, data.

3.2.3 Type III Driver: The network-protocol, all-Java driver

This pure Java driver for database middleware provides connectivity to many different databases. The driver translates JDBC calls into a database-independent network protocol, and is then translated to database-specific API calls by a middle-tier (middleware) server. The term middleware is acceptable because the middle-tier server can be a Type 1 or Type 2 driver⁴. The middleware can also be a native component or written in Java. The structure is three-tier because there is the JDBC client driver, middleware, and the database being accessed (see Figure 2). Type 3 provides better performance than Types 1 and 2. It can be used when a company has multiple databases and wants to use a single JDBC driver to connect to all of them. As it is server-based there is no need for JDBC driver code on the client machine. For performance reasons, the back-end server component is optimized for the operating system that the database is running on. This type incorporates security, firewalls, and proxies—issues very important to a multi-user (highly scalable) environment.

Insofar as configuration, the Type 3 driver has more server-side than client-side issues related to setup. The server must be configured for the database(s) being accessed—involving ports, environment variables and database-specific issues. The middleware could also be proprietary. All these issues point to the final driver type, which attempts to make connectivity seamless to the client. This Type needs some database-specific code on the middleware server. If the middleware must run on different platforms, a Type 4 driver might be more effective.

3.2.4 Type IV Driver: Native-protocol, all-Java Driver

This Type takes JDBC calls and converts them into packets that are sent over the network in the proprietary format used by the specific database. It allows a direct call from the client machine to the database. The driver can be written completely in Java (see Figure 2). This Type also provides better performance than Types 1 and 2, and there is no need to install special software on the client or server; it can be downloaded dynamically. This solution is accomplished without an ODBC or native API. These drivers are only available through the DBMS vendors because a high degree of protocol-specific knowledge is required to code the driver. The Java applets with JDBC driver can be downloaded to a browser without any client software installation⁷.

Using JDBC has become simpler for companies that opt to use an application server, which is software that sits between the client and the database server accepting and directing the data requests. Application servers have JDBC support built into them, reducing the amount of code the programmer needs to write.

Chad Ruff, president of Sage Software Inc. in Atlanta, who has been writing Java applications for three years said, “I can’t even imagine how much more productive I am with an application server rather than JDBC—maybe in the range of 400%.”

Daryl Plummer, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group Inc. predicts that by the end of 2001, when using an application server will be the dominant means of building new applications, “people will become much less concerned about JDBC drivers because they’ll have picked the application server because of its support for a certain database.”

JDBC can be helpful in at least the following three common business scenarios, according to Sun product manager Milena Volkova⁵.

• When there’s a need to disseminate information internally in a large company where departments have standardized on different platforms.
• If a corporation has undergone a merger and finds itself with different operating systems and databases.
• For e-commerce applications that run over the Internet, where the company has no control over the software its customers use. The customers only need the appropriate Java technology, which can be downloaded on the fly to their computers.

Extending the solution domain of JDBC seems very straightforward according to Volkova’s scenarios. With two architecture models and four different driver types, the solutions available for connecting users to the data they want can be quite flexible. However, the reach of JDBC can better be shown through an example or case study.

4.0 EXAMPLE

An Oracle database was created called jdbcstudents. The database contains columns for first name, last name, email and grade. Three students were entered. A Java program was written to select the columns from the database jdbcstudents and display the results. The Java program uses the Type 2 driver, which has vendor specific class libraries. Although a database was created prior to the Java program, with some modifications to the code, the program is capable of creating a database directly.

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;

class jdbc
{
  public static void main( String args[]) throws SQLException
  {
    String databaseurl = "jdbc:oracle:" + "server.engr.ucf.edu";
    try{
      Class.forName ("oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver");
    }
    catch (ClassNotFoundException e)
    {
      System.out.println ("The driver could not be loaded");
      e.printStackTrace ();
    }
    Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(databaseurl , "user" ,"pass");
    System.out.println( "Attempting to connection to " + databaseurl);
    Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
    System.out.println( "The connection has been made.");
    System.out.println( "Accessing the jdbcstudents database:n");
    System.out.println( "Firstnamet" + "Lastnamet" + "Emailt" + "Graden");
    ResultSet rset = stmt.executeQuery( "select firstname,
      lastname,
      grade,
      email from jdbcstudents");
    while( rset.next() )
    {
      System.out.println( rset.getString("firstname")
        + rset.getString("lastname")
        + rset.getString("email")
        + rset.getString("grade"));
    }
    rset.close();
    stmt.close();
    conn.close();
  }
}

5.0 CONCLUSION

The novelty of JDBC leverages the pervasiveness of Java and its “write once, run anywhere” concept. However, JDBC is not the new paradigm of database connectivity nor is it a silver-bullet for giving users all the data they want, wherever they are located. The hardships in using JDBC are still apparent in the various driver types outlined: the burden is merely shifted from one side of the network to another. Some solutions require the user to install software, others do not.

A JDBC driver is a class that implements the JDBC Driver interface and understands how to convert program (and typically SQL) requests for a particular database. Clearly, the driver is what makes it all work. There are four different driver types, which are discussed in the design solution. The example application uses a Type 2 driver. Another driver type may make more sense for a particular project. Most database vendors now provide drivers to implement the JDBC API for their particular systems. These are generally provided free of charge.

The first job of the JDBC driver is to connect to the database, which means specific information must be passed to it. The basic information requirements are a Database URL (Universal Resource Locator), a user ID, and a password. Depending on the driver, there may be many other arguments, attributes, or properties available. The next job is to create a table. While the database contains tables, the tables are the actual components that contain data, in the form of rows and columns. The DDL CREATE TABLE statement accomplishes table creation. This statement has many options, some differing from vendor to vendor; the DBMS SQL reference will supply specifics.

Data can be entered and maintained using database-specific tools, or with SQL statements sent programmatically. We focused on using JDBC to send SQL statements to the database. After sending SQL commands to retrieve the data and using JDBC to get results into variables, program code works as with any other variables to display or manipulate that data.

Unsaturated fat is usually liquid at refrigerator temperatures. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat are two kinds of unsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fat is found in large amounts in foods from plants, including olive oil, peanut, avocado, and canola oil (from rapeseed). It is a slightly unsaturated fat. Polyunsaturated fat is highly unsaturated fat that is found in large amounts in foods from plants, including safflower, sunflower, corn, and soybean oil. Unsaturated fats are not thought to raise blood cholesterol and may actually lower levels.

You may be curious what differentiates this good type of fat (unsaturated) from the bad—it’s because of hydrogen. The bonds that hold together unsaturated fats have double bonds—chemical bonds that share electrons. Saturated fats have more hydrogen atoms and no double bonds. Unsaturated fats can be made more saturated by adding hydrogen atoms. This process is called hydrogenation. You may have seen the phrase “partially hydrogenated oils”. This is usually seen on butter and means that the company has taken an unsaturated fat and made it more like a saturated fat. This process hardens the fat. Recall that unsaturated fat is usually in liquid form.

Linoleic is an essential fatty acid and is needed for proper nerve function. It can be found at your grocery store in canola oil. Alpha-linoleic acid is also necessary; it’s a precursory substance that the body changes to another acid. It ultimately gets converted into a substance found in fish oils. So, the expression “eating fish makes you smarter” has some truth.

Polyunsaturated fats have the potential to generate free radicals, especially when exposed to heat or sunlight. For your future reference, keep vegetable oils stored out of direct sunlight. Mono-unsaturated olive oil is less likely to generate free radicals and is a better choice for salads. Peanut oil is also mono-unsaturated and will withstand much higher heat before breaking down, thus, it is a better choice for cooking.

For further details, I recommend these pages on Wikipedia about fatty acids:

• Stearic Acid – fully saturated
• Oleic Acid – monounsaturated
• Linoleic Acid – polyunsaturated

Many of us have watched an employee from the power company come to read our power meter. He is collecting information in the field and storing it in a portable device. The trend is similar in the consumer market where people demand information anytime and anywhere. The pervasiveness of portable digital assistants (PDAs) combined with their wireless abilities can open new possibilities for microcontroller applications.

An interface all but few PDAs have in common is an infrared port. This enables wireless, two-way communication with any other device using the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) standard. Combining a microcontroller using the IrDA interface and almost any PDA—which already has the interface built-in—can speed the process of data acquisition and even simplify it.

This paper will discuss and examine possible hardware and software issues specific to such a microcontroller/PDA (mC/PDA) interface. The most notable challenge said interface will create is cross-platform compatibility. Microcontrollers (mCs) use assembly language specific to their manufacturer and the family of mC. Further, there is no standard PDA operating system (OS), which could create additional compatibility issues. By establishing hardware and software objectives, a strong focus on this new arena of mC/PDA applications can succeed.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The serial computer interface (SCI) is a logical place to start examining the mC/PDA hardware interface. Starting here will establish a bit pattern for data transfer on, for example, the Motorola MC68HC11. For an external interface, the 68HC11 can support the RS-232 standard. Combined with a MAXIM MAX232, the voltage levels of the SCI signals can be augmented to the corresponding RS-232 signals.

The second logical step in hardware design is interfacing the microcontroller’s RS-232 port with an IrDA device. There are two options for accomplishing this level of integration and design resolution.

The retail version of an RS-232 to IrDA converter is available from Actisys, Inc. The Actisys IR2000L retails for approximately $175 USD. It has eight pins (IRTX, ITRX1, GND, Vcc, IRRX2, SEL1/ID1, SEL2/ID2, and ID3). This is a costly solution, but not prohibitive for smaller scale projects. The IR2000L accepts the standard serial port connectors and easily converts to and from the wireless IrDA standard.

The second option would be to create an IrDA device from the component level. The receiving components available for this are the IS1U60L or GP1U52X. Both of these are IR receivers but the transmission would require another chipset. To achieve a standard method of IrDA Tx/Rx necessitates further electrical design factors. This option has the advantage of cost. These are relatively inexpensive chips compared to the Actisys solution—a very important factor for large-scale production of an mC/PDA interface.

The hardware issues on the PDA side are moot. The IrDA Tx/Rx circuitry is already integrated into the PDA. Thus, half of the hardware design for this interface is complete. The greater issue at hand is the “code,” or communication standard these two devices should use to communicate bi-directionally. The 68HC11 is used as an example in this paper, but the ultimate goal is to create a standard state and/or process most microcontrollers could achieve to communicate with a PDA.

ANALYSIS

For an mC to perform operations (measurements, sensing, etc.) it must be autonomous until an IrDA signal is detected. This requires intuitive use of an interrupt. The PDA sends a “wake-up” signal to the mC, requesting communications. The 68HC11 has such a feature in the SCI receiver.

The wake-up feature would be one of several interrupts in a common code spoken by the PDA and mC. The other interrupts would be related to the TASK (see Figure 1) the mC is being used to execute. If the mC requires multiple interrupts (including the PDA), only one external interrupt is inadequate. In the 68HC11, the IRQ pin is available for an external interrupt. For any practical application, more than one interrupt would be useful. To remedy this, Abel Raymus, has recently published one possible solution in EDN magazine. He offers an inexpensive alternative to buying an mC that supports multiple external interrupts. The states of some interrupts are shown in Figure 1.

The state diagram is similar to that used by Mukaro and Carelse. For their Data Acquisition System the state is dictated by two major events: the RS-232 PC interface is connected and a data sensor is sending data to the microcontroller.

The mC/PDA design has a similar state, but the focus is on Tx/Rx between the microcontroller and PDA. This design assumes data will be sent from the mC to the PDA and instructions/data sent from the PDA to the mC. If instructions—in addition to data—can be sent to the mC, then TASK processes can have a much greater range of utility.

SIMULATION / PROGRAMMING

The standard used to ensure correct data transmission between the PDA and mC should be the same as Huang has outlined:

1. Data must be transferred character by character.
2. A character must consist of one start bit, seven or eight data bits, an optional parity bit, and one or two stop bits.
3. The start bit must be low.
4. The least significant bit must be transferred first, and the most significant bit must be transferred last.
5. The stop bit must be high.
6. A clock with frequency equal to sixteen times the data bit rate must be used to detect the arrival of the start bit and determine the value of each data bit.

These guidelines are intended to eliminate any ambiguity a programmer might encounter when deciding on a standard the PDA should use when transferring a bit stream. This also allows a receiver to synchronize a local clock to each new character.

A bit rate of 9600 baud should allow for ample bandwidth considering the limited storage space addressable by most mCs. For example, the 68HC11 is only expandable to 64 Kbytes. A complete transfer of memory would take very little time at 9600 baud. Even at a slower speed (by IrDA standards), an error correction scheme should be established—correcting for framing, receiver overrun, and parity errors.

Another example of serial-infrared conversion is provided by Wettroth. He notes that the 8051 microcontroller uses a UART that is not compatible with IrDA. Using a high quality IrDA module such as the HP- 1000 combined with the MAX3100 chip, driver code can be written to convert from RS-232 to IrDA and vice versa.

Indeed, if the mC/PDA design calls for instructions to be sent to the mC, then there must be some way of storing them. The EEPROM supports about 100,000 write-erase cycles for doing this. Assuming a program is uploaded to the EEPROM, the RxD and TxD pins must be tied together after reset—making the program run automatically.

The alternative to storing instructions is placing them into RAM. This is a volatile means of storing a program, and should only be done if a reliable, dependable power supply is available to the mC. After reset (in bootstrap mode only) the mC waits for data from the IrDA port. When the program is stored into RAM, the program begins execution. The instruction space is very limited by available RAM. The 68HC11 has 512 bytes of RAM. Other mCs will vary in storage space and the programmer should take this into consideration when coding assembly for the mC.

EXPECTED RESULTS

The final component of mC/PDA communication would be placed on the PDA itself. Once the protocol logistics have been establish, implementing them on the PDA would be the next logical step. There are several factors to consider when coding for a PDA.

The most distinctive feature separating various brands of PDA is the OS. The PDA OS should be selected based on the application best suited for it—not the opposite. The two most prominent OSes available today are Palm OS, by Palm Computing and Pocket PC, by Microsoft. The majority of PDA users have chosen the Palm OS based on simplicity. It is also fast and efficient. Pocket PC devices have a greater range of features and memory but this might be overkill for simple data collection or mC programming in the field. Most PDAs support IrDA speeds up to 115 kbaud, and have FLASH memory expandable to 128MB. This is ample transfer speed and storage space for an mC that can transfer at 9600 baud and store up to 64KB, as in the 68HC11.

FUTURE RESEARCH / APPLICATIONS

Additional research can be done to investigate the specifics of coding for each PDA OS. The viability of such an mC/PDA interface could be evaluated for a series of microcontrollers across manufacturers or isolating a specific family of microcontrollers within one manufacturer.

An mC/PDA interface doesn’t have to be restricted to corporate or private use. According to Walley and Amin, the future of automation in customer environments can offer an array of new applications for improved service. A customer could simply request information pertaining to a certain product or service and have that information downloaded to the PDA. The newest trend is in mobile commerce (m-commerce). Its objective is a wireless method for checkout and/or purchasing in retail stores. Rightly equipped, this is a very practical solution for automation and customer service.

CONCLUSION

The mC/PDA interface is a viable solution that can be applied to many applications. Considering the hardware and software available today, both platforms—Pocket PC and Palm OS—provide software development kits to program either OS. Off-the-shelf products such as the Actisys IR2000L can provide an immediate solution if hardware production time is the greatest factor to consider (and price is a lesser issue). On a larger scale of development, the individual IR components should be realized into a functioning circuit. Regardless of the IrDA implementation, the use of multiple interrupts is strongly recommended.

• This report shows the statistical findings of a linear regression on the most likely variables that affect the number of wins of an NFL team. The initial independent variables are: quarterback salary, average ticket price, rush yards per game, first downs per game, and a dummy variable for location. The pooled (panel) data has a sample of all 31 NFL teams over a three-year period, including 1999, 2000, and 2001. The dependent variable is number of wins.
• The initial model included financial measures such as average ticket price and average quarterback salaries. Statistically, economic factors seem to have little effect on the number of wins. In addition, the initial model proposed in this study did not factor in relevant offensive and defensive data, thus providing very poor regression results with an adjusted R-squared of 0.305.
• The final model dropped the insignificant financial measures and incorporated additional variables for defensive and offensive team statistics. The model has an adjusted R-squared of 0.798, meaning that the model explains roughly 80% of the variation in the data. This percentage is satisfactory because football is a game that needs to be played out on the field. No model can predict exactly how many games a team will win given a limited number of factors. The p-value for the F-statistic is 0.0000, which means that the overall model is significant. The final set of independent variables including first downs per game, quarterback rating, opposition points per game, interceptions per game, and rush yards per game have t-statistic p-values meeting the 10% level of significance. The final model explains the statistically significant variables that contribute to a team’s overall number of wins.

2.0 INTRODUCTION

In professional sports there is a mystique surrounding the variables that influence the performance of a winning team. Sports fans would like to reasonably ascertain (with some statistical backing) that their team is going to win. With so much available data, a solid model to predict the number of wins would be informative. The objective of this project is to answer, with reasonable statistical significance, what variables affect the number of games an NFL team will win in any given season.

3.0 DATA

The time period of data is for the NFL’s 1999 – 2001 football seasons. The sample data is not time-series but instead, the selected data is pooled data (or panel data). There are 93 observations that include 31 teams per year. Data for 2002 was not used because of a newly-added team and because the season is not yet complete. The dependent variable is the number of wins for an NFL football team. The initial independent variables for each NFL team are:

• quarterback salary
• average ticket price
• rush yards per game
• first downs per game
• north, south, and west (dummy variables for geographic location)

The main data sources for these variables are nflarchives.com, teammarketing.com, and usatoday.com. NFL Archives provides team-relevant statistics. USA Today provides the salaries for quarterbacks. Team Marketing is a research firm that evaluates the average ticket prices for all NFL stadiums. The location of the teams was determined by examining a map of the U.S. and separating teams into four (roughly) equal-sized areas. A map of the partitioned geographic areas is in Appendix H.

4.0 REGRESSION ESTIMATIONS

Our initial model was estimated using the least squares method of linear regression. The results for the initial and final models are shown in Table 1 and Table 2. There is one intermediate model. All data was generated with the statistical package, EViews 3.1 Student Version, unless stated otherwise. All regression models are located in Appendix A.

The first model generated has a very low adjusted R-squared value of 0.305. The F-statistic has a highly significant p-value-effectively zero. Each individual p-value for the t-statistic is far above the 10% level of significance, except for rush yards per game and first downs per game with 0.0011 and 0.0018, respectively. The estimated coefficients are all positive except for WEST, SALARYQB, and the constant term. The constant, which represents the base number of team wins, should not start with a negative number.

The final model has a much better adjusted R-squared value of 0.7986. The F-statistic has, again, a zero level of significance. Each individual p-value for the t-statistic has greatly improved. The estimated coefficients have logical signs. Naturally, the fewer opponents points per game, the higher number of wins for the dependent variable team. Thus, OPPPPG has a negative coefficient. The variable, interceptions per game, represents defensive turnovers created by interceptions. The intercept is positive and is a reasonable, minimum number of wins for an NFL team.

4.1 Refining the Model

4.1.1 Functional Form and Omitted Variables

The initial regression yielded disappointing results. To boost the adjusted R-squared value, additional variables were added to form Model B. The dependent variable was plotted against each independent variable to look for non-linear relationships. These plots are located in Appendix B. Because of the low adjusted R-squared value, the functional form was modified and no further tests were run on the original model. The next evaluation of the model led to a more balanced view with offensive and defensive variables. These variables were added to Model A to form Model B: quarterback rating, opposition points per game, total defensive yards per game, interceptions per game, and passing yards per game.

4.1.2 Multicollinearity and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF)

Due to the omitted variables in Model A, Model B is the first model to have the VIF calculations. The results indicate that pass yards per game should be dropped due to a high VIF value of 10.9762. The correlation matrix shows that total defense per game has a high rho value (almost 0.8). The t-statistic p-value of total defense per game is also high, indicating that it is a candidate to be dropped. Correlation matrices are located in Appendix C; VIF values are in Appendix D.

4.1.3 Heteroskedasticity and Serial Correlation

The sample data is neither time series nor cross sectional-it is panel data. The data for this research is only for a three-year time period. Thus, serial correlation was not tested on the data. However, the White Test for heteroskedasticity using cross products was used to check for inconsistent variances. The tests indicate that neither Model B nor Model C suffer from heteroskedasticity. The high F-statistic p-values (Model B: 0.636; Model C: 0.608) are a good indication that no corrections for heteroskedasticity are necessary. The White Tests for heteroskedasticity are in Appendix E.

4.1.4 Wald Test for Joint Significance

The t-test and Wald test for joint significance reveals that first downs per game and rush yards per game, in Model B, are jointly significant. Therefore, reject the null hypothesis that these two variables have a zero coefficient and keep the jointly significant variables. The other Wald Tests for Model B did not reveal any level of joint significance that could adversely affect the final model.

4.1.5 Dropped Variables

Based upon the previous statistical tests and testing the t-statistics, the list of independent variables for Model C is selected. The high t-statistic p-value for average ticket price is a good indication to drop the variable; likewise for the location dummy variable (north, south, and west). Quarterback salary has a high t-statistic p-value; however, some investigation revealed that NFL teams have salary caps. Knowing this, the variable was dropped. The high VIF and high t-statistic p-value for pass yards per game was a good indication to drop that variable.

5.0 FINAL MODEL EVALUATION

Model C, the final model, has been tested using the same criteria as Model B, the intermediate model. The constant coefficient indicates that each NFL team will achieve a minimum number of wins, usually 2.8. Every first down per game contributes 0.179 wins to the team, while interceptions per game contribute 0.77 wins to the team. Rush yards per game adds to the number of wins, much like the quarterback’s rating. As the opposition’s points per game increases, the likelihood of an NFL team winning a game decreases, thus the negative coefficient. Contrary to the original assumption, financial measures do not influence the wins of an NFL team. Location does not significantly affect the outcome of wins since a team does not play all 16 games in one geographic area. The final model indicates that a balance of offensive and defensive statistics is necessary to explain the number games that a team will win.

6.0 SUMMARY

The final model dropped the insignificant financial measures and incorporated additional variables for defensive and offensive team statistics. It has an adjusted R-squared of 0.798, meaning that the model explains roughly 80% of the variation in the data. This percentage is satisfactory because football is a game that needs to be played out on the field. No model can predict exactly how many games a team will win given a limited number of factors. The p-value for the F-statistic is 0.0000, which means that the overall model is significant. The final set of independent variables including first downs per game, quarterback rating, opposition points per game, interceptions per game, and rush yards per game have t-statistic p-values meeting the 10% level of significance. The final model developed explains the statistically significant variables that contribute to a team’s overall number of wins.

APPENDIX A: REGRESSION OUTPUT

Table 3: Least Squares Regression for Model A
Table 4: Least Squares Regression for Model B
Table 5: Least Squares Regression for Model C

APPENDIX B: CHECK FOR NON-LINEAR RELATIONSHIPS

Omitted from the online version of this essay.

APPENDIX C: CORRELATION MATRICES

Table 6: Correlation Matrix for Model B
Table 7: Correlation Matrix for Model C

APPENDIX D: VARIANCE INFLATION FACTOR

Table 8: VIF Values for Model B
Table 9: VIF Values for Model C

APPENDIX E: HETEROSKEDASTICITY

Table 10: White Test for Heteroskedasticity for Model B
Table 11: White Test for Heteroskedasticity for Model C

APPENDIX F: WALD TESTS

The following tables have results from the Wald Test for joint significance. In Model B, first downs per game and rush yards per game are jointly significant. They are included in the final model, Model C.

Table 12: Wald Test for Model B
Table 13: Wald Test for Model C

APPENDIX G: HISTOGRAM

Graph 1 is for the dependent variable, number of wins. The normal distribution (or Gaussian distribution) indicates this is an adequate sample of data, both in size and its applicability to the central limit theorem.

APPENDIX H: DUMMY VARIABLE

Figure 1 indicates how the NFL teams were partitioned to form discrete geographic areas. The final model, Model C, does not use a dummy variable for location. Both models A and B, however, incorporated this geographic variable. The team locations were separated into four areas, three of which were used for the linear regression. The west area has seven teams and the mid, south, and north each have eight teams.

I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish (Murray 15).

As the nation listened to his speech on radio and television the process had begun. A nation already engrossed in the Cold War committed itself and on July 20, 1969, Kennedy’s realization was met. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and made the giant leap for mankind and later returned safely to Earth. A space program with only three fatalities was soon to meet its second disaster: Apollo 13.

On April 11, 1970, three men were launched into space as part of NASA’s continuing mission to explore our final frontier. This was the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the Apollo 13 lunar mission was compromised due to an explosion, Mission Control and the Apollo crew had to change their focus from a lunar landing to a rescue. The results of the mission show what a talented team can do in a crisis situation. The Apollo 13 objective seemed to most Americans as a “boring” mission, since it was only geological in nature and there were no major milestones. Everything was routine from launch to lunar module extraction, until the service module experienced an explosion. Mission Control was put up to the task of writing the many procedures for the new Apollo 13 mission, which was to bring three astronauts home alive. Most of America was sitting vigilantly at their television sets waiting to see the results of this unfolding crisis, hoping that it would be a smooth recovery.

When NASA received its directive to begin the lunar landing objective the first thing they did was name the program. Abe Silverstein, head of the Office of Space Flight Programs gave the name Apollo to the space program. Apollo is the Greek god who rode the chariot of the sun drawn by four winged horses (Murray 54).

The next question on the agenda for the Apollo program was: How are we going to get a man up there? This problem was given to the engineers at NASA. The actual rocket itself would be called the Saturn V. A truly great feat of engineering would be the design for the Saturn V boosters. The F-1 engines, as they were called, delivered a total punch of 7.5 million pounds of thrust (Murray 147). This was the individual technological achievement that more than any other made Kennedy’s lunar commitment a reality (144). The engineers then had to figure out a way of landing the men on the moon.

The first idea considered is what is known as a “direct ascent” mode, whereby a rocket takes off from earth toward the moon and once it is close enough the rocket turns around and uses its thrusters as a brake (Murray 108). Another mode was considered whereby a big spacecraft would be assembled in space with components launched separately from earth to then go to the moon. This mode was referred to as the earth-orbit rendezvous, or E.O.R. (108). Another type of mode was circulating around NASA and that was the L.O.R. or lunarorbit rendezvous (Murray 114). This involved the notion of using a second spacecraft to descend to the lunar surface. Von Braun, a head engineer, said that lunar-orbit rendezvous, “offers the highest confidence factor of successful accomplishment within this decade” (139). The final decision for L.O.R. was made on June 7, 1962.

With the mode for lunar landing selected, NASA proceeded to build the command module (CM), which was a three man space capsule. The service module (SM) housed the main engine, the reaction control system, fuel cell batteries, oxygen and hydrogen tanks, and the environmental control system. The CM and SM were combined to form the command and service module (CSM). Finally, they designed the lunar module (LM) which was designed to land on the moon (Apollo Program 1). With all the major components complete, NASA was ready to do serious testing.

Before the manned Apollo flights, other testing began on May 28, 1964. On January 27, 1967, during a flight simulation the CM of Apollo I had a fire. The fire spread through the 100% pure oxygen environment and the crew died of asphyxiation, not burns, and they did not suffer long (Murray 197). The accident took the lives of astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. NASA did not, despite the accident, switch to a two-gas system for technical reasons (Murray 206). Apollo 2 through Apollo 6 continued as unmanned test flights. Apollo 7 was the first manned flight of the Apollo series, launched on October 11, 1968; its objective was to determine if the vehicle was space worthy for the duration of a lunar mission, which it was. Apollo 8 through 10’s missions served as reconnaissance for landing sites and practice docking with the LM (in both Earth orbit and lunar orbit). Finally, Apollo 11 achieved Kennedy’s goal; Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the moon in July 1969, eight years after Kennedy’s speech.

The Apollo 13 mission was another scientific research mission. The crew would be conducting geological surveys and collecting moon samples from the Fra Mauro highlands. The Apollo 13 mission patch reads “Ex Luna, Scientia”, which translates to “from the moon, knowledge” (Chaikin 52). The crew named the CSM Odyssey and the LM Aquarius (the practice of naming spacecraft started with Apollo 9).

The crew for Apollo 13 consisted of Jim Lovell (commander), Ken Mattingly (CM pilot), and Fred Haise (LM pilot). Lovell was no rookie to the space program; he had been on Gemini 6, 12, and also on Apollo 8. A three man crew turned out just right because two men were needed for lunar exploration and a third was needed to operate the CM while the other two were on the surface of the moon. At the time the decision was made for a three man crew, the engineers hadn’t thought about such things as lunar modules. They figured they would run duty shifts like the Navy, four hours on, eight off, which meant they needed three astronauts to ensure that an astronaut would remain on duty all the time (Murray 106). Just as the Apollo 13 crew was getting adjusted to each other, Mattingly was pulled off the mission 72 hours before launch because it was suspected that he had German measles. Jack Swigert was the replacement CM pilot.

Launch day for Apollo 13 was April 11, 1970 at 1:13 PM. The launch for Apollo 13 only had one glitch: the center engine of the five F-I engines cut off but did not affect the rest of the mission. Staging of the Saturn V rocket continued through the third stage which breaks through the earth’s gravitational field and aims toward the moon. After the third stage of the Saturn V is complete the CSM separates from it and turns around and docks with the LM. After docking is complete the next step is to fire up the CSM engine and head toward the moon, this was done on April 12, 7:54 PM.

Monday evening on April 13 the crew was to give a live tour of the spacecraft to America but the TV networks decided not to carry it. It had just been nine months since Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon and the Apollo missions seemed to have lost some of their magic (Chaikin 50). We had won the “space race” with the Soviet Union and by the time of Apollo 12’s flawless landing the public was losing interest (50). Apollo 13’s only audience for the broadcast was the team of flight controllers at Houston.

After the broadcast, Mission Control requested that Odyssey stir the oxygen tanks. This was a daily practice; the super-cold cryogenic liquids would tend to stratify, making it difficult for both astronauts and flight controllers to get an accurate reading (Chaikin 52). The fans were activated and the oxygen was stirred up. Seconds later the men heard a loud, dull bang and an alarm signal rang in their headsets. Red warning lights indicated there was a problem with Odyssey’s electrical system. One of the two main electrical junctions, or buses, wasn’t delivering enough power. Lovell keyed his mike and said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt” (Chaikin 52). An “undervolt” means a substantial reduction of power which puts the equipment running from it in jeopardy (Murray 391). As the two joined ships rocked back and forth against one another Haise heard the sound of metal flexing (Chaikin 52). Haise scanned the instrument panels and saw that one of the SM’s three power producing cells, which combined oxygen and hydrogen to produce current was dead (53).

The mission was already over. Without all three fuel cells working the men were forbidden to go into lunar orbit. More warning lights came on and another fuel cell had died. Meanwhile, Swigert was trying to stabilize the spacecraft using the SM’s maneuvering thrusters, although he was unsuccessful (Chaikin 53). Lovell saw disturbing readings for Odyssey’s oxygen tanks: minutes earlier they were full, now tank 2 was completely empty and tank 1 was down a third of normal and still continued to fall. With so many redundant components built into the spacecraft this particular combination of glitches was unthinkable (53). The individual parts of the spacecraft were supposed to have reliability of .99999, or .999999, or sometimes .9999999 (Murray 101). Had the extra cryo stir not been ordered, the accident would have been postponed to the next day, not prevented (Murray 390). The chance that two independent fuel cells would go bad was in the area of one in 100 million (397). Apollo 13 was dying 200,000 miles away from earth and something had to be done.

Meanwhile back at Houston a full team of flight controllers worked to solve the problem. Under the direction of White Team flight director Gene Kranz, they had to determine if the problem was real or was actually instrumentation error. Kranz had seen what these young flight controllers could do, most of which were in their mid-twenties, were so sharp, so savvy, and so well trained that they could solve almost any problem, sometimes within seconds (Chaikin 53). Fourteen minutes after the explosion Kranz heard the chilling message from Lovell: “We’re venting something into space. It appears to be a gas of some sort” (53). Both the astronauts and Mission Control realized that it was oxygen spilling from Odyssey. Kranz said, “Let’s solve the problem, but let’s not make it any worse by guessin’” (Murray 396). The flight controllers decided to power down the CSM. The LM was then configured to supply the necessary power and other consumables. Swigert powered down Odyssey and Aquarius became their lifeboat. They made a course correction to get on a “free-return” trajectory. In this maneuver they use the moon’s gravitational field to slingshot them back to earth (a fail safe in every Apollo mission). Making a u-turn back to earth would be too risky since Houston didn’t know what had happened to Odyssey’s engine during the explosion (Chaikin 54). Kranz turned over flight control to Glynn Lunney’s Black Team, then to Gerry Griffin’s Gold Team. The White Team had been asked to make more life-and-death decisions than any other flight control team (Murray 423).

As Apollo 13 flew into the darkness of the lunar shadow they would truly be on their own. Radio contact is lost for about 30 minutes and just as every moon voyager before them, they sped around the moon like a toboggan taking a curve until it was, at last, heading toward Earth (Chaikin 86). Now a crucial point in the return home: the PC+2 burn. This is when the crew fires up their rocket two hours after their pericynthion, or closest approach to the moon (Chaikin 56). This burn would trim a full day off of the return trip and conserve their precious supplies of power and water. It would also get them on the correct trajectory toward earth (56). In order to accomplish this, the onboard guidance platform readings had to be precise. Otherwise the crew would be sent on a path from which there could be no recovery. In order to validate the accuracy of the platform, ground control had to devise a new method of verification. Typically the stars could be “shot” optically to derive an angular reference. However, debris made this impossible. Ground control developed a method which utilized the sun as a reference (Chaikin 86). This was unusually difficult to do because of the size of the image but it worked. On April 14, 8:40 PM, Aquarius fired its lunar descent engine to propel the spacecraft toward earth. The crew was successful in manually “flying” the spacecraft during the four minute burn and were on their way home (86).

As Apollo 13’s course was under control another problem arose. The carbon dioxide levels in the spacecraft were rising every time they each took a breath. The LM, which was designed to filter air for only two people, now had the task of three. The LM used round canisters of LiOH (lithium hydroxide) to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and by Wednesday the supply was almost used up (Chaikin 86). Mission Control came to the rescue once again. The canisters in the CSM were square and had to be adapted to fit in the LM’s using some of the items available onboard: a plastic storage bag, a plastic cover from the flight plan book, and gray tape (86). The makeshift filter looked something like a mailbox and it worked. Just minutes after Haise installed it on the LM, the CO2 levels began to fall toward normal levels. This “mailbox” profiles the resourcefulness that Mission Control was bringing to bear on each problem as it arose (86).

Ken Mattingly, who had been working on reentry procedures in the NASA simulators, was ready to read them off to Swigert. The process took almost two hours and on April 17, 7:15 AM they cast off the stricken SM (Chaikin 87). As the cylindrical module drifted away the men saw the damage. Lovell responded, “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing!” (87) The heat shield on the CM was of concern because if it was damaged in the explosion it might not withstand the hellish conditions of reentry. Aquarius, the vessel that had served as their lifeboat for the mission, was then cast off into space. As the Command Module entered the earth’s atmosphere it left an ionization trail that blacked out communications for a few minutes and then on April 17, 12:08 PM, Apollo 13 splashed down into the South Pacific (Chaikin 88). Men at Mission Control and all throughout NASA cheered. The triumph of Apollo 13 belonged to these earthbound heroes as much as it did the astronauts (88). By the end of the flight a total of 17 astronauts helped in getting Apollo 13 home (Murray 419). Years later many would call Apollo 13 NASA’s finest hour (Chaikin 88). Prayers were said at the Vatican, at a congregation of 100,000 in India, and at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (Chaikin 56). The world was truly with the crew of Apollo 13.

The cause for the problem aboard Apollo 13 was determined to be a faulty thermostat. The subcontractor never got word of the change in design specifications so the thermostat had a voltage rating of 28 volts instead of 65. During testing voltage was applied to the thermostat and it had welded shut, temperatures inside the cryogenic oxygen tank increased to 1,000° but no one knew because the temperature gauge didn’t go past 85° (Chaikin 88). The intense heat cracked insulation on some of the fan motor wires. Nothing else happened until April 13 on Apollo 13. The cryo stir created an electrical short and started a fire within the tank; pressure built up and blew off an outer panel, also crippling the fuel cells and Apollo 13.

As for the crew, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise never went in space again and Jack Swigert died a few years after the mission from cancer. Ken Mattingly never got the measles and later went up in Apollo 16 as the command module pilot (Apollo Program 3). The Apollo program came to an end with Apollo 17 on December 19, 1972, eleven years after Kennedy’s speech and at a total cost of $25 billion (Apollo Program 1).

To illustrate communication levels a sociograph can provide insights such as the most frequent and least frequent participants in a team. The resulting data for the movie is presented in tabular and graphical formats. It is important to note that these graphs do not show communication as a function of time.

• The data in Table 1 is the quantitative results of each juror’s communication with the other eleven on the jury. To read the table you find the juror number or actor name of interest, then, to see how many times he communicated with the other jurors, move to the corresponding column. For example, to see how many times Jack Warden talked to Henry Fonda, read from row seven and column eight. Each row also indicates the total number of encouragements (ENCOR), interruptions (INTER), and group (GROUP) communications for each juror.
• Figure 1 displays the communications of each juror based on 100% of his own communications. To read the sociograph, find the actor name or juror number of interest on the vertical axis; scan across to the bar of interest, then find the color that corresponds to the juror on the legend. For example, to see who Henry Fonda talks to the most, go to the bottom bar, read across to the bar that has the greatest number (32) and find the corresponding color on the legend. Red corresponds to Lee J. Cobb.
• Figure 2 displays total encouragements, interruptions, and group communications for each juror.
• Figure 3 displays total individual communications from each juror. This includes communication to every juror, interruptions, encouragements, and communication made to the entire group.

Graphics innovation has become inextricably tied to the development of PC and console games. Demand for gaming graphics has pushed the semiconductor industry, research in academia, convergence, and even art. Computer games are changing the concept of military defense and simulation. What was a niche market for arcade machines has expanded to “convergence” devices that combine utility with home entertainment. Demand for lifelike graphics is expected in all sorts of applications but what started the trend? Over the course of three decades, multi-billion dollar industries would be created, gaming would flourish, and digital actors would replace real people in the movies. Trace the money back to its roots and you’ll likely find a game of table tennis.

SIMPLE BEGINNINGS

The tremors began with a dubious game title that emulated table tennis: Pong. Households across America would not know the PC for another decade and could not imagine the revolution that was about to ensue. Pong’s beauty was in its interactivity. People could now have total control over the graphics seen on-screen. It attained popularity in the early- to mid-seventies and was a game unlike any other at the time. Game programmer Steve Ogden said, “[Pong] was not a ping-pong game; it was a series of icons that stood in for a ping-pong game. The conversion took place in the player’s head.”¹

I was raised on an 8-bit computer system–the TI 99/4A. I can still remember the awe of first seeing an interactive game played on TV. Pong wasn’t much to look at but was the predecessor to a slew of 8-bit computer systems. These systems had limited memory and processor speed but were advanced for early-eighties computer systems. They had graphics no one had seen before but like Pong would yield their gaming crown in a matter of time thanks to better game titles. Again, as Ogden pointed, “Only content can compel us to play a game that is past its prime, for if a game is only the sum of its technological advances, it has nothing to offer when its technology is trumped by the inevitable newcomer.”¹

Two 8-bit systems were part of this revolution and each had its place in gaming history: the Atari 800 and the TI 99/4A. My friends can speak for the Atari games. However, my childhood memories are of the Texas Instruments. These computers proved to be a viable platform for games. The TI 99/4A had 48K RAM, 16K ROM, and a maximum resolution of 256×192. The Atari 800 had 48K RAM, 10K ROM, and a maximum resolution of 320×192. Given this limited technology, game writers were still able to develop 2D and even 3D games.

Using sprites, primitive components of computer graphics, game writers could draw graphics on the screen (then TV monitors) to the foreground and background using sprite priority. This gave the illusion of 3D effects. As Collins stated, “The simplest method used to convey the impression of depth involved the use of spritebackground or sprite-sprite priority to achieve a degree of hidden surface removal.”² Despite their similar technical capabilities, the product differentiation was achieved through game titles. I can remember my favorite games from the TI–games that provided hours of enjoyment–but the name Atari is synonymous with gaming, not Texas Instruments. I’m sure no one imagined this to be a multi-billion dollar industry. Thus, gaming did not propel itself directly on American society. Instead, gaming would take multiple paths into American homes. The PC, dedicated gaming consoles, and hybrid devices would introduce the lust for gaming on the public.

LEVERAGE FROM THE PC

The 8-bit computers quickly evolved into the PC. As Montfort identified in the late nineties, “[T]he games played on these early systems made graphics and sound capabilities more common and therefore affordable, fastforwarding the development of other uses of graphics, in areas like desktop publishing.”³ Part of the gaming graphics feedback loop is acceptance into the mainstream. There are many crossover technologies from gaming that shaped the future of the PC. Gaming itself has made inroads into various technologies, including graphics, but that progress has been leveraged by using the PC.

Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins notes that, “The video game is driving the demand for graphic computing. You wouldn’t even have graphics cards in PCs if it weren’t for games.”³ We take for granted the amazing 2D and 3D capabilities of modern PCs. Perhaps we’ll take for granted the next step in computer technology: haptics. Games started using this in arcades to shake the control stick and provide tactile feedback. This technology was first introduced for the PC by a company called Immersion. Now the PC is using this technology to complement the visual feedback from the computer screen. Microsoft is using this in mainstream office applications to let users feel when they move over a web link, or perform other routine functions. PC software now supports haptics and it is standard technology in gaming consoles.

Few other technologies have gained more leverage from the PC as 3D technology. Graphics chip designer NVIDIA develops 3D chips for use in PCs. These chips are also used for Microsoft’s Xbox system and even for the F-22 fighter aircraft.⁴ Some cards have upwards of 128MB of video memory and produce 32-bit true color in resolutions exceeding 1280×1024. Microsoft research is also developing a 3D desktop environment to replace our flat, 2D PC desktop. Their Unit Interface group calls this project “Task Gallery.” George Robertson, head of that group, said, “The computer science researchers who work on 3D navigation techniques pay close attention to what goes on in the gaming community.”³ The gamers who once played 3D games might soon ask for the same capabilities from the PC.

Politicians and other pundits who panned the intensity of some games are overlooking the technologies they are bringing to the PC. Online gaming has become a huge segment of gaming. Just go to Yahoo! and check the list of available online games (for free!). These are fun trifles but the real influence comes from games like Electronic Arts’ The Sims Online and Sony’s EverQuest. The role playing in online gaming lends people to identify not with the other person but with their avatar. It’s an abstraction of real-time video conferencing. Microsoft is also investigating this phenomenon where people identify with the representation of the user–a fake image–but not an actual picture of the user.

For an example of the blinding pace of graphics in the PC industry, you need only look at the number of graphics cards available. There are no less than 20 available at any given time. They all offer various levels of technology; they all capitalize on the most recent advances in gaming, such as shadowing, bump-mapping, and increased frame rates. The turnover rate for graphics cards is very high due to the number of games available. Games often demand the most advanced video technology. For gaming consoles, the turnover rate is not as high but their contribution to graphics is no less astounding.

CONSOLES AND CONVERGENCE

The consulting firm IDG estimates that 72 million dedicated gaming consoles will be owned in North America by 2004. To that end Sony is investing $400 million just to develop the chip, not the system, of the PlayStation 3 console.³ Most new consoles are supporting DVD technology and companies are devoting increasing attention to networking capabilities. The feature list of consoles is reading more like a slimmed down PC rather than a dedicated gaming machine. As Richard Rouse, PlayStation 2 game designer said, “Each time a new generation of console gaming systems is launched, the death of the PC gaming market is predicted. In the end, though, the PC market survives and evolves, maintaining its position as a separate and unique form of interactive gaming.”⁵ The common link between PCs and consoles still remains the graphics. The difference remains in the presentation.

Rouse noted, “PC and console games also use radically different visual output devices.”⁵ The difference between a TV and a computer monitor are like night and day–when sitting 12 inches from the screen. Trying to read the fine print on TV commercials is nearly impossible. Thus, PC gaming has an edge when highly detailed characters are used. Game developers are aware of these limitations but graphics are still a key concern. Rouse continued, “A console system remains commercially viable for a span of at least four years, meaning that a developer can learn how to develop for a system and then reuse and refine a game engine for the next few years. A PC developer, on the other hand, is constantly faced with shifting technology targets, where each year or even half a year new hardware becomes available which allows for more impressive graphics. The prevailing wisdom is that these snazzier graphics must be delivered if the PC game is going to compete in the marketplace.”⁵ He concludes by saying that consoles carry much higher development costs, thus, constricting small game developers with limited finances. Better games will almost always debut on the PC.

With so much going for the PC why pour so much money into consoles? That’s the billion dollar question. Sony is betting that home entertainment will converge to the gaming console. Convergence of “systems-on-chip” is a greater issue for consoles. As England stated, “Integrating CPU and graphics is more a business issue than a technical one; game consoles represent one area where tight integration is mandatory.” He later states that game consoles are the “first real graphic appliances.”⁶ Many consumer electronics are adding visual interfaces. For some devices such as DVD players, digital satellite receivers, and digital video recorders, a graphical interface is requisite. Gaming consoles could offer the level of convergence necessary for modern home entertainment.

The process of convergence has already begun with various gaming technologies. As Froggatt stated, “The level of semiconductor integration was, for the time [1994], simply staggering. It had taken ten years for the appearance of a semiconductor process capable of integrating 1 million transistors onto a single device and capable of turning the 20,000 discrete components of System G into those two ICs. PlayStation was a standardbearer for the principles of system-on-chip integration, and set the trend for the extensive semiconductor integration that is to be seen in the current generation of consoles.”⁷ The gaming industry is focused on convergence and integration. Smaller components means the same device can have more space for added functionality. The Xbox is the current king of game consoles. It has more functionality installed than other consoles such as the Nintendo GameCube and Sony PlayStation 2; networking for online gaming and a hard drive are already installed. Electronic convergence might enter the living room sooner than we realize.

Jon Peddie, a consultant in the graphics industry, predicts that digital entertainment will evolve into three forms: smart digital TVs, game consoles, and virtual appliances (a derivative of the entertainment PC). He noted, “Although CISC and RISC processors have advanced according to Moore’s law, doubling speed every 18 months, graphics controller performance, as measured in MHz, has improved even more quickly.”⁸ These graphical leaps are more apparent in the movie industry. Distinguishing real from computer generated is becoming harder with the passage of time. The movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an example of a computer game made into a movie with very convincing, human-like renderings of people.

Cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras, and other small personal devices are the next big question mark in convergence. People want the functionality of all devices integrated into a compact, easy-to-use device. Several combinations have been attempted but it seems the cell phone has the most potential. The ability to connect to the internet via cell phones is not new but the color screens on those phones are only now becoming popular and widely available.

According to handheld device sales, 90 percent are simple PDAs. The trend is simplicity. The most advanced PDAs incorporate wireless connectivity, stylus data entry, color screens, and now miniature keyboards (e.g., the Palm Tungsten W).⁹ Microsoft Pocket PC devices had installed keyboards but users rejected them for being too clunky. New PDA designs seem inspired by the old Nintendo GameBoy. The most obvious similarity is a four-direction navigation key with a few thumb buttons. Even the design of these devices is converging.

Go to any online consolidator like ZD Net or CNET and you’ll find a game download section clearly marked for PDAs. Cybiko, maker of popular handheld devices for kids, has teamed with Nortel Networks and Motorola to offer game downloads to Motorola phones. Cybiko’s founder, David Yang, notes that video games are a major factor for color graphics and improved displays on cell phones.³ Until manufacturers determine what buyers want, we’ll see plenty of these hybrid convergence devices. The effect of gaming convergence is not limited to popular culture. The military has also benefited from PC games and consoles.

EXTREME RESEARCH

Many people enlist in the military just after high school. They’re maybe 17 or 18 years old. Few expect to play games or simulations based on the very games they played as adolescents, but that’s exactly what is happening. The government spends roughly $4 billion every year on simulation and equipment.

Michael Macedonia, an employee of the U.S. Army Simulation and Instrumentation Command said, “[T]he Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles are being adapted for distributed networked military gaming.”¹⁰ It’s no surprise that these machines are being used for practical purposes other than gaming. Today’s military isn’t like the military of yesteryears. Cost effective solutions come in whatever form they take. In this case, the military uses these devices because all the components, audio, video, and input/output are completely integrated.

A recent Xbox TV commercial shows teenagers playing an online, first-person shooter; they’re losing the battle. The scene cuts to some actual U.S. Marines; they’re playing the same Xbox game in the desert; the teenagers lose the game. The analogy is no coincidence. Playing on a gaming console is nothing new for Marines or teenagers.

The concept of war games in the military is not a recent development. The Army tried to enhance gunners’ hand-eye coordination with the Atari game Battlezone. It wasn’t until the U.S. Marine Corps modified id Software’s popular title Doom when I could relate on a personal level. I played the original game (and its sequel) many hours in my high school days. The modified version was known as Marine Doom–an urban combat simulation.¹⁰

According to Platoni, “Off-the-shelf video games can be modified for military use for under $200.”¹¹ That’s very reasonable if you consider the retail price of most games to be $50. Some game developers are releasing the underlying code of their games to the public. This permitted many new opportunities in research areas including “augmented reality” systems, which will be discussed later.

Gaming is a lucrative business, as Platoni said, “some of the bigger defense contractors are trying to make the pendulum swing the other way.”¹¹ The example given by Platoni is Lockheed Martin, which spun off Real 3D. The company even came to UCF’s Engineering Expo Week during 1999 to demonstrate some of its technology. Their demonstration consisted of a flat panel LCD display running at an amazing resolution of 2048×1024 in 32-bit color, running at over 24 frames per second. It was a repeating 3D simulation of a roller coaster. Through these developments Lockheed Martin has sold back this technology to the Department of Defense; they call this process “defense conversion-reinsertion.”¹¹

The augmented reality I mentioned earlier is part of an academic experiment. Gaming has finally extended its reach into academia. Thanks to wholesome efforts by game makers the source code to certain games is available to the public. Open source also allows for development into new computer operating systems such as Linux. One such example is the ARQuake system based upon the id Software Quake graphics engine. Quake was a popular sequel and massive leap from previous generations of 3D first-person shooter games. To quote Piekarski and Thomas, “Augmented reality (AR) is the process of overlaying and aligning computer-generated images over a user’s view of the physical world.”¹² This was accomplished with a laptop computer, head mounted display, a modified pistol to act as the gun, and a GPS to determine the player’s location. Augmented reality brings gaming graphics into our world. Very often it’s the exact opposite; game developers incorporate aspects of our world into the fake realms of games like The Sims Online–a micro simulation of society itself.

The Quake doppelganger, Unreal Tournament (another first-person shooter), has also been converted into a practical graphics application. The result is CaveUT. As Jacobson and Hwang described, “[C]omputergenerated imagery could respond to input from a performer or the audience itself. At this point it is more like an interactive game–a boon for entertainment and educational applications, as well as certain areas of research.”¹³ The premise of its development is to put the user within a virtual world. Real-time images of that world are then projected on all sides onto white projection screens. The authors of CaveUT relate the technology to planetariums and IMAX theaters.

ART FROM THE MACHINE

The discussion thus far has focused on gaming and graphics as a technology, a form of science or engineering. What about gaming as a form of art? Gaming has influenced the creation of numerous movies and TV shows. It seems just as likely that this technology will influence our concept of artistry. Henry Jenkins wrote in Technology Review, “Computer games are art–a popular art, an emerging art, a largely unrecognized art, but art nevertheless.”¹⁴ The skeptics might say that game graphics aren’t worthy of an art museum. To that end, Jenkins uses the example of Web artists being invited to New York’s Whitney Museum. The same hesitance of inviting them to the museum is likely to translate to game graphics designers. Jenkins said, “Games also depend upon an art of expressive movement, with characters defined through their distinctive ways of propelling themselves through space, and successful products structured around a succession of spectacular stunts and predicaments.”¹⁴

Computer game designer Richard Rouse also shared a similar viewpoint, “As game developers, we need to realize that as of now we’re still a fringe art form with little mainstream appeal, and it’s really too early to tell whether or not computer games will ever evolve to become the mass media phenomena movies are.”¹⁵ Ultimately, this transition will probably be based upon the merit of the game design, not the medium. Paintings, movies, theater, and sculptures are all accepted. Gaming will eventually make the transition from mere graphics to artistry. Game designer Steve Odgen said, “[E]xactly how good do game graphics need to be? We are well past the midpoint on the continuum between icons and thoroughly convincing visual representation. So how good is good enough?”¹

CONCLUSION

Predicting the future of computer graphics is easy: it will become more advanced, more life-like, and more pervasive. The hard part is to know how we’ll get there. Gaming seems to be the common link between disparate technologies; the link between art and science, and the key to new devices. Consoles will be a hot commodity. Knowing how much functionality they will have beyond gaming is still a mystery.

The medium of gaming as a form of art is still too abstract in the public eye. The internet helped to launch a career for many computer graphic designers. The moving picture helped launch an entire industry. Technology initiates trends but it is the art form that perpetuates them. The gaming technologies discussed in this paper are simply an enabler; people don’t demand better graphics of their own volition, they want better games. It’s a causal relationship whereby games are the art form that will push graphics technology into the future.

Job security was of little concern to people prior to the industrial revolution. Peoples’ jobs were either dictated by an emperor or king or otherwise predetermined at birth. Class divisions and a lack of widespread education were the causes of an ignorant society. A lack of education limited the careers from which a person could choose. Early civilizations had few job options available. Agriculture was the primary industry because eating was one of the main concerns. Traders, shippers, craftsmen, and implement makers supported the primary industry of farming. It was simple, efficient, and secure as the weather would allow.

Later, as the industrial revolution was starting to affect a larger population of America, the definition of job security was beginning to be redefined. As America’s agricultural society was beginning to find new and more efficient ways of harvesting crops, quantity of product became an issue. Profit was part of agriculture; no longer did people just farm for food. Security depended upon the amount of land you had, the more land, the more profit you could make and the easier it was to pay your debts. If debts were not paid, your land would be taken, and you would have no job security. Offsetting the displaced farmers and an increasing number of immigrants out of work, the manufacturing industry began to expand, requiring more labor. As manufacturing expanded, costs came down and demand went up.

The manufacturing industry changed the way job security was viewed by America. Now workers had to deal with large employers. Rapport with the supervisor became an issue because your relationship with the boss can affect your status in the workplace and can even determine if you keep your job. This employer-employee relationship will become one of the many issues of job security and gets added to the paradigm. During this early stage of industrializing America, the bosses of these industries were more concerned with making a profit rather than the safety and concerns of the workers. The lack of care for the working conditions of the workers gave the industrial revolution a dark side. Workers were exposed to dangerous machines, unsanitary conditions, and were underpaid. Women and children were also exploited as a cheap source of labor. There were no regulations or laws passed by government to protect the worker from these conditions and it continued until people began to organize into unions and demand a better workplace.

Complacency made way for new conditions in American labor. Workers began to form trade unions which enabled them to effectively decry the bad conditions of the workplace. The main objective in forming a union is to gain strength by representing a large group of workers. When the workers would individually make complaints to their boss they would get little accomplished. Through unionism, significant gains were made to alter the poor working conditions. Significant labor wins such as the Taft-Hartley Act, establishing the National Labor Relations Board, and the Adamson Eight Hour Act culminated in a tenable relationship between management and labor. Having obtained favorable working conditions, workers turned to improving their job security. To that end, the seniority system was established as a basic bargaining issue and pension programs were initiated.

It was the 1930s and 40s, manufacturing was king and we had a world market. Most employees enjoyed a secure future according to his abilities and so we languished for nearly fifty years. In the 1980s we were taken over by a technological revolution which added a new factor to the job security paradigm. Many jobs once held by skilled craftsmen were and still are being converted to robotic production. The continual rise of computer sophistication has revolutionized other skilled laborers such as corporate managers, accountants and secretaries allowing fewer people to do more work. Sometimes the result is displacement of jobs. The worker may lose his job in one field only to be moved to another position in the same company for which he may not be qualified.

Due to the creation of a vast computer industry, more jobs have been created but with different skills required. Many displaced employees do not qualify. Technology has put their job security in jeopardy. Secretaries must now learn how to operate word processors and get rid of the obsolete ways of the typewriter. Architects are faced with learning how to use CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems and retire the pencil and paper. Certainly in the automotive industry the use of robotic automation has put many people out of work. Fewer people are needed to monitor an assembly line producing an equivalent number of units.

Advancements in technology have created a disparity between the obsolete craft and the new. If the number of skilled employees goes up, the worker needs more education and training to compete in a more complex society. The transition between old skills and newer 21st century skills is often a difficult one and cannot be achieved without formal education. Others which do not succeed in retraining must find lower level jobs with less pay and subsequently lesser job security.

Automation has created an increasing number of temporary workers. These people work under contract on a part time or independent basis and are essentially under employed. They receive only a fee for service and no benefits at all. These people are often referred to as short-timers, per diem workers, leased employees, or supplementals. They have become the replacements for many full-time employees. This is the era of corporate down sizing. For all corporations to remain competitive they have to reduce staff to the essential level. All tasks which could be identified as intermittently required would be given to the temps, eliminating the need for full-time positions, thereby saving costs. There appears to be no limit to the power, sophistication, and influence of computers and robots in our foreseeable future, so the trend will continue.

Companies are faced with great competition in the worldwide market. With the availability of a worldwide labor market companies are forced to adapt in order to remain profitable. As American companies capitalize on cheaper foreign labor the result is fewer American jobs. When American jobs are replaced by cheaper foreign labor, the cost of production goes down, raising demand for the product. Relatively unskilled manufacturing workers have now had the foreign labor factor added to their job security paradigm. Worldwide competition has vastly increased the number of comparable products. Each company wants to make their product better and cheaper. This has forced US companies to forge ahead, keep up, or drop out. For American companies to remain a dominant world leader they must innovate.

Job security would not be a problem if we were able to adjust easily but that is not the case. More Americans are finding their jobs are being sent overseas to cheaper manufacturing locations. They are being taken by robots and computers. Jobs are lost as companies become more efficient. All these reasons affect the worker emotionally and financially. The worker finds himself looking for a financially equivalent alternative. Few of these workers can afford a sabbatical to reeducate themselves; few workers are able to accept the pain and expense of relocation. Some Americans see their jobs going overseas as an act of piracy, abetted by such trade agreements as NAFTA and GATT. The trade agreements are merely an attempt at controlling an inevitable fact of life, which is the presence of foreign labor, trade, and competition. The traditional method of control (tariffs) is no longer relevant because the majority of the market is off shore.

Americans have proven themselves unwilling to purchase more expensive (equivalent) products just because they are “Made in the USA”. This commonly found sticker is deceptive in many ways. For example, a TV may be assembled in the US but all the parts may not be made in the US. The sticker should read “Partially made or assembled in the USA”. The bulk of the jobs making product components are dispersed around the world, often in places like Japan, Korea, and Malaysia. Only a portion of the jobs to make the complete product are here in the US. Since fewer people are needed to assemble it, the company must lay off people; adding to unemployment and eroding job security among Americans. Many of these people are reduced to subsistence living, or worse, because they must take lower level employment elsewhere.

All of these changes shift the paradigm and as the paradigm moves, so must the worker to retain his job security. A trivial example: when dry-erase boards were introduced teachers had to transition from chalk to new dry-erase pens. This was a simple change but the teachers had to adapt. It’s quite different when the paradigm requires computer expertise and you have none. To move with a paradigm workers must be able to adapt to the changes around them.

America is in need of a “high-flex society” or one which can move with and conform to the working environment in a highly competitive world. College students are faced with similar problems: How secure will my field of study be when I graduate? Many students are taking two majors at the same time. If one skill becomes obsolete or there is little demand for the job, he will be able to fall back on the second major.

In our changing world economy we see a shift of US-based manufacturing to places like Mexico, China, and the Philippines. It’s almost natural evolution for the production of high volume products to shift to developing nations. The economic base thus established enables the developing nation to ascend up the economic ladder to eventually become a world competitor, much like Korea or Brazil. As a consequence, the market share of US manufacturers has declined. It has declined because business leaders failed to see this economic ladder of ascendancy.

A consequence of this activity and the heedless response of US industry is that more and more well paid US jobs are being lost. Industrialists must become aware that the key to our economic future does not lie in high volume production. The question then becomes: How can we restructure American industry to allow continued prosperity and resultant job security for American workers? According to Robert B. Reich, Secretary of Labor, an essential step is to convert our mass production industries to a flexible-system process. The flexible-system process requires that traditionally separate business functions (research, design, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales) be merged into a highly integrated system that can respond quickly to new opportunities. This must be coupled with innovative engineering and corporate management capable of moving into new markets. In order to move into a flexible-system of manufacturing we must upgrade our manufacturing skills and know-how by upgrading networks of suppliers, distributors, and customers already in existence instead of leaping into a totally uncharted sea of products and processes unrelated to an industrial base of the past.

Take Swiss watch makers, for example. Prior to the 1970s they had 90 percent of the total watch market. They had thousands of workers occupied in assembly plants manufacturing mechanical watches. In the 1970s Seiko adapted a microchip and a quartz crystal to make the first electronic wristwatch. It was accurate, inexpensive, and reliable. By the beginning of the 1980s the Swiss saw their market share drop to 30 percent and employment in the industry had been cut in half. They were the victims of a high production, fixed-purpose industry. They were not capable of making the transition to electronic watches and no one saw the change coming. The Swiss could have saved their jobs and industry had they used the flexible production system and had been researching alternate products for use on their production line.

Our job security rests on our abilities to produce or provide something that no one else can make, but that everyone wants. To ensure that America constantly innovates requires that we have a flexible work force. Establishing a flexible work force should start at the lowest level of education. Flexibility and adaptability should first be introduced into elementary level schools, then to middle schools, all the way through a high school education. This includes basic education in a variety of fields so the student can acquire the fundamental knowledge to understand how advances in society are going to affect her. Good work habits begin at an early age and building on these will help the workers of tomorrow conform to a quickly changing society. Colleges and universities should also adjust to a flexible work force by offering more diversity of courses. In particular, computer courses should be mandatory at the college level for all majors because more and more jobs are requiring that you have basic to advanced skills in some field of computers. Economics is also a very useful course. We need to acquire more knowledge about how our economy works and how it affects us. The more we know, the easier it will be to predict coming paradigm shifts affecting our future.

Public educators, corporations, and government, all need to be involved in an ongoing reeducation process for American workers. Corporations, large and small, need to recognize that meaningful reeducation programs are necessary to support a flexible production system. Using on-the-job training and classroom techniques, workers need to be trained in new methods of production. Ongoing education for managers is necessary in order for the corporations to effectively deal with new products and markets. Research and development must be given high priority in order to maintain leadership on a technical level.

Government involvement in the economy does those things the market and business cannot or will not do. For example, manage the business cycle and finance projects such as the Interstate Highway System and the space shuttle. Equally important is that government sets the economic rules, such as antitrust and regulatory policy, to ensure the operation of the market and to set the legal boundaries of business activities. Within those limits, markets and businesses have much freedom to assign resources and balance consumer preferences with producer capabilities. Although the US has used this rule-driven market economy for many years, it no longer suits our changing needs. Watching industries fall one after another raises questions about how companies are running their business and also what the government’s role in the economy should be.

Today’s employees will still make up much of the work force at the turn of the century. They will require additional education and training many times during their careers. Employers are the logical source for government sponsored retraining funds. They operate the nation’s largest training system; their own. They are also the most familiar with their own needs. Although the company will receive the funding, there must be a way to monitor where the money goes. Government must establish an agency to monitor the needs of the employer and to oversee the ways which the company is using the money. The agency must make sure the money is going to the needs of the employee and not to the company’s equipment and technology. The government must ensure that long-term needs of the economy are met.

When thinking about my future and the job security that I will have, I always consider what kind of jobs will be the most secure. If being a garbage man is having job security then fine, but I don’t intend on spending my life in waste management. I see myself in ten years as a person involved in the area of computers. This area of electronics is certainly a growing field and there is plenty of evidence to back it up. We are in the age of the computer nerd (not meant to be derogatory), and nerds are in demand. Our world is becoming more digitized everyday. The Internet and the World Wide Web are growing at a fantastic rate and people (workers) are needed to make the best use of it. Bill Gates is a perfect example of someone who saw a paradigm shift. He realized that companies like Apple Computers and IBM were making tomorrow’s tools: computers. He used this to his advantage and created an operating system for the IBM PC: Microsoft DOS or MS-DOS. This became the standard in every PC and then he created another standard: Microsoft Windows.

Bill created his own paradigm by designing a standard by which all else is measured. His company, Microsoft, employs more than 10,000 people. Bill’s drive and creativity has given him the ultimate in job security and he is fast becoming the richest man in the world. America’s economy may be on the wane but not because of any lack of opportunity. If more people like Mr. Gates can be inspired and cultivated then America will remain on the top rung of the economic ladder. Anyone who says the riches of a few men won’t count is sadly mistaken. Think of all the people who made their fortunes or their livelihood from Bill Gates. All we had to do is believe in the product and invest in it.

This competition comes from new, highly educated labor markets. Ben will likely lose his job for now, but not due to automation or labor union disputes. Something had created a vacuum in job security. Now, following the era of corporate downsizing comes the era of off shore job outsourcing.

Webster would be envious of all these linguistic tricks. Downsizing, as a word, didn’t exist 20 years ago in relation to labor. Trends in labor seem to invent their own vocabulary and solutions, once again with outsourcing. Whereas downsizing sought a long-term growth strategy, the outsourcing strategy seeks lower costs. According to Ben, outsourcing added the indignity of retraining his counterpart lest he forfeit his severance benefits. Is the maxim “what’s good for business is good for the country” still valid? As more workers become disenfranchised and angered by outsourcing, it may prove false.

Outsourcing to foreign countries could be the epitaph for corporate downsizing, if it proves reliable. Instead of doing more with less labor, companies can do more with cheaper labor. Because the focus for white collar labor is now shifting overseas, the U.S. government is positioning itself to rein in the powers of business labor practices. One example: according to the National Foundation for American Policy, 37 U.S. states are now considering legislation that would restrict contracts awarded to offshore businesses.ⁱ For Ben, it quells some tension and prides him to know “America is fighting back,” but will it get him a job?

Whereas immigration created the manpower to do jobs for lesser wages, outsourcing seeks the same result, proactively. Americans are loath to have huddled masses, the poor, or the uneducated, immigrating into our country. In the global economy, we see a shift of U.S.-based manufacturing to countries like Mexico, Korea, and China. It’s natural evolution for the production of high volume products to shift to developing nations. As Americans, we see this and expect it to happen. Sometimes, for a lark, we look for the “Made in China” label on our Wal-Mart products.

The economic base established by governments of developing nations enables their businesses to ascend to world competitor levels, such as India. But for outsourcing to deny our right to do the same exact job, at our pay scales, is what insults an American. U.S. businesses share a philosophy similar to Genghis Khan: it is not sufficient that we succeed (at manufacturing, software design, etc), all others must fail. Unfortunately, they excelled. Because of our hubris the market share of U.S. manufacturers declined. It declined because business leaders failed to see this economic ladder of ascendancy. The net effect is lesser job security for the American worker.

The preeminence of U.S. manufacturing for such a long period and its eventual decline created a huge proportion of blue collar jobs lost to downsizing and/or competition with foreign countries. The opposite of the spectrum is the outsourcing movement of white collar jobs. But, if downsizing affected manufacturing and job security so dramatically, why is the acid debate over such a small percentage of jobs lost to outsourcing? It arises from the common job losses these social and economic classes now share. The critical mixture of these two working classes and their diminished job security to foreign countries has finally bonded our mutual needs for job security, job satisfaction, and…more pay.

Ben has worked part-time before. He knows what it’s like to work without health insurance or medical benefits of any kind. Why, then, should a foreigner get his full-time job and take away his healthcare? After calling the credit card company to dispute his balance, he was reminded by the accented voice on the phone just how closely this whole affair is affecting his life. He can’t even name the president/prime minister/whatever, whose country “stole” his job, but he sure knows what they sound like.

Most troubling to Americans is partaking in a global society where everything seems to be a patchwork of products and services devoid of personality. Our feelings are an inseparable part of our work and our jobs. We’re also patriots. We would pause in disbelief to see a sticker assuring our purchase is “Proudly Made in China.” Such gusto is the norm for American workers who revel in seeing their patriotism (in sticker form) advertised, and with overwhelming pride. Outsourcing has the potential to alienate Americans like Ben, or worse, exorcise the soul of American labor.

Outsourcing provides the workers—the cheap labor—to create an output or something of value. It doesn’t matter who or what is within the outsourced unit of business, just so it provides the intended results. It’s a black box of labor. Without the hassle of unions, individual wants and needs, and immigration sponsorship, the same (or near-same) work is provided. There are serious questions about the black box model of labor management when used on a massive scale. We aren’t there yet, but surely as this trend continues the U.S. government and others will have to assess in what ways job security, worker health and welfare, and training are being curtailed by outsourcing.

But can a black box want for health care, life insurance, or retirement plan? A black box has no soul, no dignity, nor any loyalties. It simply performs. That, above pay or anything else, troubles the American. He wants to be an individual and feel his contribution, not be unitized.

Some Americans see their jobs going overseas as an act of piracy, abetted by trade agreements such as NAFTA. The trade agreements are merely an attempt at controlling an inevitable fact of life, which is the presence of foreign labor, trade, and competition.

The folly is that U.S. businesses have failed to maintain manufacturing supremacy and could not mitigate technology costs to maintain skilled white collar jobs. Those jobs are now being reshuffled between the U.S. working classes and foreign labor markets. Ben never suspected he would take work laying cable in the ground, nor did he suspect a wide swath of immigrants was not only capable of doing these jobs, but they were content to accept the low wages.

Unskilled workers coming into America, jobs going out, and a stagnant job market looked to Washington as if the country had raised a white flag. Fortunately for Ben, the USA Jobs Protection Act, in all its patriotism, says that no U.S. firm will hire a foreign counterpart when a U.S. worker can perform the same job. But pending legislation isn’t stopping the immigrants from coming in droves, nor from jobs going overseas. What, then, are they seeking if outsourcing has contributed to this situation?

For a fee, and no benefits, these individuals fill the gaps that full-timers and part-timers cannot (or will not). Downsizing made these individuals popular choices for employers seeking a lower-cost option for non-essential work. But who’ll represent these people and take the lead for some measure of job security? Unless we are all to be contracted, leased, or manipulated like a black box, there must be oversight and representation for our rights, our health, and our safety.

Americans feel that a right has been stripped when their means to compete have been taken away. Perhaps the USA Jobs Protection Act is as much a statement that Americans can do any job, as opposed to should do any job. Immigrants humble themselves to our country and seek the benefits, opportunities, and freedoms. When outsourcing struck the emotions of the middle class, white collar American worker, he understood emotions immigrants have known since first coming to America: helplessness and indifference to another culture’s ability to do the same job.

The promises made by outsourcing must not out pace the ability to maintain the dignity of workers, globally. Some questions still remain about how disruptive off shore outsourcing is to the U.S. economy. Is the slower upturn in our economic recovery foreshadowing the future? Immigration is skewing the balance of skilled-to-unskilled workers, yet the jobs needed to support those workers have not been created. The U.S. might be more globally integrated, labor wise, but does the amalgam of unemployed labor classes lessen our power to recoup, retrain, and win the next battle for job security?

If this ad hoc workforce is the way of the future, then the government must take a larger role as a surrogate, who’ll define the benefits for the individual and shore up some measure of job security. If not now, then soon, so we can move on and feel better about ourselves and our jobs. As for Ben, his patriotism feels good but it alone won’t pay the bills.

i. National Foundation for American Policy. 5 Aug. 2004. Summary List of States With Proposed Outsourcing Restrictions. http://www.nfap.net/researchactivities/globalsourcing/.

Hood proposes three main questions as topics for the book’s discussion and in a Thomistic manor he sets out to answer them through proofs. These questions are: What was Aquinas’ attitude toward the Jews and Judaism? What were its social and theological sources? And lastly: What role did his teaching play in the persecution of European Jews? These questions give the book its structure.

The author gives adequate proof for every claim that Thomas made about the Jews. At the end of the book there are approximately 20 pages of notes and three pages of bibliographic information. Aquinas is a man of reason and much like him Hood sees that the only way to fully support his argument is through an observation-proof methodology. Hood comments on proof claiming “scholars not only had to show that the Bible was internally consistent; they also had to “prove” that it supported the teachings of patristic writers and the medieval church” (Hood, 3). An example of this kind of proof is in his discussion on a Jewish sect called the Pharisee. Pharisee members emphasized strict interpretation and observance of the Mosaic Law in both its oral and written form. Hood shows that Aquinas had empathy for the Pharisees. And while Aquinas condemns them for accusing Jesus of being a Samaritan, Hood selects a quote from Aquinas that shows the logic he injects into every argument.

“The Jews said this about Christ for two reasons. One, because the Jews hated the Samaritans, since when the ten tribes went into captivity, the Samaritans took their land…And because Christ was arguing with the Jews, they thought he was a Samaritan and an enemy, etc. Another reason is that the Samaritans observe some Jewish rites, but not others. Hence, when the Jews saw that Jesus observed the Law in some matters, while in others he mitigated its rigor, as in the case of the Sabbath, they called him a Samaritan” (Hood, 67).

Hood expands Aquinas’ view of the Jews by claiming that “Abraham is as much the father of Christians as of Jews” (Hood, 39). There is a lot of support for what the author says about Aquinas. But there is almost as much text dedicated to other people and topics as there is for Aquinas himself. This is distracting at times. Hood devotes much of the book to talking about Mosaic Law in my opinion. While Judaism and Christianity are very close in nature, he is justified to a certain extent for his detail in the theological and historical contexts of the book. Commenting on the diversity of Aquinas Hood finds, “The relation of Judaism to Christianity was only one of many issues Aquinas dealt with in pursuit of this synthesis, but the myriad links between the two religions made it a topic he returned to again and again” (Hood, 3). I believe the author has fully supported his interpretation (reasoning) of what Aquinas’ views were of the Jews. I will next determine whether Hood has sufficiently supported his second question with facts. Specifically, what were the social and theological sources of Aquinas’ opinion?

Thomas Aquinas was not completely unbiased. The writings of St. Augustine were a major source of Aquinas’ beliefs. Augustine’s writings were not important in themselves but as a carrier of information to the Middle Ages, they were important. This transmission of ideas was part of the reason thought on Jews remained essentially unchanged from AD 1200 to about AD 1400. Largely, Hood points out,

“Religious and economic factors combined to create the stereotypical Jew of popular belief. Because Christians, were convinced that Jews were usurers whose stock in trade was dealing with tainted lucre, they thought of them as dishonest, scheming, and unclean. These vices dovetailed nicely with the demonic qualities Christians attributed to Jews because of their role in the execution of Jesus.” (Hood, 25)

Hood also points out that Aquinas thought an elite group of Jews had explicit faith in Christ. They were called the Perfecti and were part of his threefold sociological scheme. Summarily, Hood tries his hardest to explain what Aquinas’ feelings are but there is a certain tension. It is somewhat distracting reading the Jews as being loved by God and at the same time reading them to be sinners and heretics. This involves Hood’s last topical question.

Hood’s final question is: What role did his teaching play in the persecution of European Jews? In my opinion, sections of the book pertaining to this question provoke interesting thought. In The Catholic Historical Review author Edward Synan presents his opinion on the book.

“In the tradition of Aristotle, Brother Thomas produced reasoned condemnations of usury (one thinks of the intolerable ’servicing’ of national debts in our time). Hood suggests a parallel with prostitution, an evil tolerable to avoid greater evils, as a way that Aquinas might have eased this ban. In the name of natural law Thomas explicitly defended the rights of Jewish parents over the upbringing of their children” (Synan, 550).

Synan’s observation is valid and satisfactory in my opinion. Stated from the book, “…toleration of the Jews certainly did not flow logically from the theological vision embodied in canon law, which saw them as wicked…” (Hood, 110). Aquinas thought that all killing was immoral and should be punished. The author presents both sides of Aquinas’ frequent duality. In general the chapter stated that Aquinas’ thoughts on the Jews may have contributed to a cultural and theological element. I can give positive affirmation that the author’s confusion on this duality shared. I was baffled at times whether or not Thomas felt apathetic in his reasoning or if he truly felt the Jews are malicious heretics.

Aquinas and the Jews is a good book when evaluated as a whole. It opens up new ideas and opinions to who Jews are and why Christians have had a stereotypical view of them. If poor, uninformed ideas are spread by influential people, many of the uneducated may follow suit. This is evident in the pogrom against the Jews. St. Thomas Aquinas was a man of logical thought. But his beliefs were definitely influenced by the church and by the works of Aristotle and St. Augustine. Hood does not seem biased in any way. In the beginning of the book he explained that there have been no books written prior to this solely dedicated to the Jews and Aquinas’ opinion of them. So it stands to reason that the author is on his own—and the conclusions formulated are truly original.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Thomas Aquinas. Personally, I find his philosophical theories to be quite interesting. His five arguments for the existence of God is one of my favorite essays. The way he combines religion and logic in such complimentary ways is astounding. Having built up my opinion of him as a philosopher, I was rather disappointed in him regarding his opinion of the Jews. He seemed inconsistent and vague at times. Although, he is still one of my favorite philosophers, no single person can debate every issue flawlessly. Aquinas and the Jews is part of a Middle Age series of books put out by the University of Pennsylvania. I briefly examined other books in this series and found them to be just as interesting. Hood is a good writer and presents otherwise deep, hard to read topics in a fluid and logical sense. Hood summed up this book best himself concluding:

Hood summed up this book best himself concluding:

“…the stereotypes theologians such as Aquinas had helped develop and perpetuate–the image of Jews as dangerous infidels, as usurers, as Christ-killers–…the more tolerant tradition that Thomas Aquinas represented was simply irrelevant” (Hood, 111).

Beliefs that might be benign to one person may do harm to another. But whether you are Christian or Jew this book still lays a base of how theologians and society during the Middle Ages were affected by the workings of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Our nation has undergone unprecedented prosperity in the last 50 years. That means for three generations everything has been going just fine. The same period was dominated by a democratic government with the Republican Party compromising ideals in order to make any difference. The consequences were, to the American voter, a blurring of party principles. One candidate looked much like another. Maybe confusion is the cause for apathy in America’s youth voters. It’s obvious that political candidates need a fresh angle on campaigning.

Our national press is also to blame, but not just for sensationalizing. Their frequent sponsorship of polls also leads to voter apathy. Politicians are quick to respond to polling data regarding national issues–the same for local politicians. With that being the case, issues tend to lose relevance on Election Day. The Internet can provide a quick way for these politicians to post their views on important issues.

There’s no doubt that society’s youth is preoccupied with education, careers, social life, marriage and family. With all that to contend with, is it any wonder why politics should take a back seat? Political apathy may be due to the inconvenience of researching and identifying a candidate’s political views. The issue is time.

It’s insulting to infer that appealing to a short attention span will help. The challenge is for politicians and the media to present politics in a positive, motivational manner. There’s no doubt the Internet can change this–for the better–is questionable. Our political candidates are taking heed to this and are focusing their campaigns online. No matter how good their sites look, they can’t kiss virtual babies. And there’s no substitute for a real handshake.

Regardless of how long the workday lasts, an engineer should enjoy his work. Aristotle once said, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” Many engineers have created their inventions with the soul purpose of creation itself. Myself included, the feeling of creating something, however mundane, overpowers any notions of necessity. Bringing this spirit to the workplace is essential to a productive engineering career. This is how ideas for novel inventions are seeded.

For all the work put into product development–research, market sampling, trends, and general analysis–sometimes an original idea is only worth the value marketing research says it’s worth. The roots of engineering start at home (even work) and sometimes the best ideas are kept down because of stifling market analysis. Like nature, engineering relies desperately upon randomness. No amount of research can predict the value of an engineer’s idea.

A case in point is the work of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the operating system (OS) Linux. Not only did he recreate an existing idea (a spin-off to the operating system UNIX), he did something unprecedented. He gave away his work for free with only a few stipulations: he is the arbiter to any changes made the OS and changes can never be resold. Linux will always be free. The engineering aspects are shadowed by the method which he delivered his idea to the world. He took all his creative talents, put them into this project, and released it into an unknown void for all to use and modify. Necessity will be the final judgment of the Linux OS.

Creative ideas in engineering are not limited to tangible products. In the case of Torvalds the novelty was in giving away his idea to the world. Today, Linux has an enormous following not limited to independent engineers. Large corporations now see the value of Linux and “open source”–revealing the inner workings of an idea–for all to see and improve upon. The creative process is put into the hands of the world’s engineers. Ideas now evolve on a global scale.

Another example of a creative process gone global is the wireless standard called Bluetooth. It is named after the Norsk explorer, Bluetooth, and a product of years of development by the Ericsson Corporation. The famous producer of cellular phones, Ericsson, is gaining recognition not only for the originality of the idea but the freely distributed standards on which Bluetooth is based.

Even the midnight engineers working in their garages and basements have an equal opportunity for presenting their ideas to the world. The Internet has broken down old communication barriers regarding information sharing. One man’s ambition can become a statewide, national, or even global endeavor. With so many links forming between communities of engineers, a creative product can quickly develop. But equally possible, a novel idea can be dismissed and never seen again.

The Internet has brought this creative process to a head and given new meaning to an evolving idea. The Renaissance of modern times will not be published on the printing press. It will be cut, copied, pasted, and deleted on a Web site for the whole world to see. This will happen not over a period of months or years, rather hours and days. It’s a natural selection of creative ideas taken to an extreme degree. The minutiae of one man’s creativity can be visible to the entire Internet if he chooses.

The deep feeling of satisfaction and pride when an idea comes to fruition is hard to put on a Web page. No matter how well an idea is accepted, the fatherly (or motherly) feeling the creator has for his idea is hard to duplicate. This is the value and limitation of one person’s idea turned into a global project. The creative, emotional value of an engineering project can get lost in our global Web. One person’s project, into which he poured his heart and soul and risked possible failure, can lose its significance when it trades hands multiples times through a corporate engineering team or faceless names on the Internet.

The time-to-market factor is a big strain on the creative process. Wasting corporate time on a project which is (unknowingly) destined for the scrap heap is a horrible prospect many engineers face. As the project begins to take shape, market details or shifting technology trends might affect whether the project is completed. Inventing and creating a novel idea takes time. In many cases the first try might not be sufficient for success. Thomas Edison had many successes but his failures far outnumbered them. It took time for his ideas to evolve and he didn’t let failure cut his ambitions short.

The dedicated engineer cannot let failure be a deterrent. The creative process falls apart when we, as engineers, worry too much about logistical details. Sometimes the randomness and unpredictability of our ideas form a practical solution to a problem. Other times creativity can yield a wonderful solution to no one’s problem. This is the prospect engineers must face each day. A creative idea can be a windfall one month and the next, an obsolete token of technology. The engineer is left to contemplate whether such a time investment is really worthwhile.

With reckless regard for necessity we can act like children, eager to investigate and explore new ideas. As we grow older, failure becomes an overwhelming fear within us. As engineers we have to set aside this fear. The only failure for an engineer is the idea that is never acted upon or given a chance to succeed or evolve globally. This is the evolution of creativity in engineering.