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Has complexity killed the engineering bug?

AltiumComms

Read Matt Berggren's lastest blog post for New Electronics:

 

Exerpt:

 

Over dinner with some friends, I'd gotten into a discussion about my earliest motivations to get into engineering and computer science / computing systems.

The conversation read like a page right out of the engineer's playbook. Boy gets curious; finds an early fascination with how things work; boy begins taking things apart to quell that curiosity (mindlessly ignoring the steps involved in putting them back together – dinner guests laugh); boy gets computer; learns to bang out Assembler; graduates to C & other high level languages. Rinse. Repeat. All the way through high school and on to college.

Then, the conversation took a decidedly darker turn. A turn towards what our kids do. Or rather, what kids – in general – don't do any more. "Too much time in front of the TV" or "too many video games" or "they just don't go outside like we used to"… "I can remember when…," etc, etc, etc.

.......

 

Read the rest here: http://bit.ly/5SOFgL

  • Is it correct to say complexity? I know when I was young you generally made your own amusement, whether it was sport, building treehouses/carts/anything in general, and then taking them apart again to see if you could build it better.

     

    Kids these days have too many other distractios, which is encouraged by parents worried by the numerous scare stories on television or in enwspapers. Take away the PS3/TV/DVD or any other distractions and underneath kids are just as inquisitive

  • Hi,

     

    When i was a child the village where i lived was quite a small place. But, the most, it was very secure. there was almost zero danger. Sometimes, i used to go out and turn very lately. My parents had no doubt about what i did. I used to climb trees, play different games with my friends and many times i used to go out the village to discover the world. But now, there is no place to be safe. I do trust noone. So my children never go out without a person from our family. So, their creativity is limited with home activities. Many times i have no time to share with my family. But children have curiosity about many things. Thay want to try new things and ask so many questions. I am trying to answer them all as much as possible. But sometimes questions make me crazy. Thus, in a way, i prevent them to increase their creativity by my hands. As a result of this, they spend much of their time on the tv by watching child films, animations.

     

    Finally, it is a bit at our responsibility to help them improve their creativity. We should help them to make the engineering bug live.

     

    Best regards,

     

    Firat Kocak

  • in reply to firatkocak

    Firat,

     

    Do you reckon there is actually more danger, or it is attitudes that have changed? I have no doubt the dangers that you are protecting your children from existed when you grew up, and I'd guess that the level of threat hasn't changed a lot. My opinion is that newspaper scare stories have changed our attitude a lot more than the actual threat has increased.

  • in reply to awinning

    Not totally but partially, yes. There is more danger than it was in the past. But, in the mean time, attitudes have also changed, too. But you are certainly very right that newspapers,televisions and films containing violance changed the attitudes a lot. Those are, unfortunately, not on our hands.

     

    Firat Kocak