See Part 1 here. Now, I go back to my college days...
Several Printed Engineering Magazine (PEM) subscriptions were a requirement for all those in my engineering college. Issues were shipped directly to me. Then again, it wouldn’t have mattered since issues were sprinkled over the campus like they were spread to the four compass crosswinds. I would read through the whole magazine, eventually. It became an obsession of mine for some time. I held issues in high regard, but others took it to another level.
I discussed the phases of PEMs use and utility with another engineer from around my graduating age group. The following is a retelling of a that talk. I asked this engineer to describe what PEMs meant to him, and to talk about what PEMs meant to him throughout his college to professional life.
[It was] Circa 2001:
The magazine section of DeVry University's library. I'm a noob. I am uninitiated. I am new in box. I don't know anything. But I think I do.
I don't understand most of what I'm reading. Understanding will come. For now, I realize that this is arcane, eldritch wisdom. With this knowledge I will become one with the gods!
I notice that the majority of my fellow students pay [PEMs] very little attention. I smirk to myself, thinking that I have found an inside track; an untapped vein of knowledge that will keep me ahead of my peers.
Flash forward to being young engineering professional:
Me: Hey, did the new [PEMs] get here yet?
Secretary: Um...oh yes, it is in all this mail. Make sure nobody else wants to look at it.
Me: OK!
....
Me: Hey, do any of you want to look at this [Magazine]?
In my desk drawer is as manilla folder with tech briefs ripped directly from the pages of [various PRMs]. Buffoons, these senior engineers! They know not the secrets they let slip away. And I, I am here to collect them! Fools!
[Now in present time] As a jaded pro, a guru among gurus:
At this point in my career, I have made my own pocket protectors from the cardboard backings of notepads. Long, unappreciated hours hunched over in a company issued cold war era office chair, under harsh, fluorescent lighting, have made me bitter.
Coworker: "Hey, you want this?"
Me: What is it, a catalog? Lemme tell you something, why would I keep a catalog around when I can look up nigh anything on the internet...right now I could...
Coworker (interrupting): No no no! It's [a PEM]!
Me: Huh, I remember when I used to read those in the college library...nah, throw it out.
Coworker: You sure? It's got an article about ________ in it...
Me: No, throw it out.
Coworker: You sure?
Me: Sigh. Fine, give it here, maybe I'll look at it later (said while picturing the office recycle bin).
Early on, [PEMs were] very important to me. But no longer. What happened? It is summed up nicely in the third act back there. I can, and do, look up nigh anything I want on the internet.
If [a PEM] happens to have what I am looking for then that’s just fine by me. But, with such an abundance of sources, all offering slightly different takes on the same information, it is sheer happenstance if I end up at the doorstep [of any one PEM].
After all, I get emails almost every day from vendors like Newark, Allied, Element14, Digikey, etc., peddling new products of all stripes. I don't even have to "look" anymore. It gets sent right to me. So much so, in fact, that I probably spend more time deleting than reading. Not really, but almost.
The Internet brought an unexpected change to all print media. Newspaper collapse, and later the niche markets followed suit. Many of the regular technical print magazines switched over to Internet only publishing.
I set out to see what history the latest college engineers have with Printed Engineering Magazines (PEMs) and their related websites.
I did this through a direct survey of college students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the same college were I graduated. I first toured of the campus, bookstore, and some of the communal areas during the engineering college’s senior design expo in 2013. I noticed no technical magazines located around the campus.
Over the next few months, I was over able to run a survey on the UIC campus with all engineering students. The subjects were a mix of electrical, mechanical, civil, and computer engineering students and computer science students. They ranged from early year students to Ph.D level.
To be concluded in Part 3...
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