The term “Web 2.0” has been tossed out at a few meetings I’ve attended recently. When asked to give a definition, people tend to start gesturing grandly—seeming to imply that this new thing is a wonderful invention that will make your life better, happier, more productive—just what you’ve heard a million times before. In reality, Web 2.0 is a tool just like any other tool. I’m a great believer in tools because their purpose is to make my life easier. And if anything is going to make my life easier, I’ll embrace it with open arms.

The challenge is discovering how a particular tool can be put to use making my life easier right now, right here. It took a little while to get past the grandiose terms in which Web 2.0 is always couched, but I finally figured it out. Web 2.0 is ...Read More

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According to a Boston Globe interview in 2000, if Bradford Washburn’s obituary was one sentence, he would be happy if it said, “He built the Museum of Science.” And as someone who grew up being a regular visitor of that Boston museum, I agree that it is certainly something of which he should be proud. But what is truly remarkable about the man is how much more he did. He was an accomplished mountaineer who was the first to climb many peaks. He was also a remarkable photographer >, taking breathtaking photographs of the mountains that he climbed. ...Read More

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If most youth of today are like my college-aged son, definitely. Forget climbing a mountain, he can’t take the 40 min. train ride from school to our house without calling at least three times to confirm that he is, indeed, on the train; that we do remember to pick him up; and that we did not forget him, but are just one minute down the street from the station—which he would have found out for himself had he simply waited that one minute instead of calling the instant he got off the train and did not see us.

Today’s youth are quickly loosing the ability to function without having instant access to each other, their parents, and their entire music collection. Now, according to the newly renamed Apple Inc., they will be able to do all of those things with ...Read More

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I am lucky. No one who I know has AIDS.

In a recent e-newsletter, Terri Stone, editor in chief of Creativeprose, reminded me how many people are suffering from AIDS by posting a link to a photo essay taken from photographer Steve Simon's new book, Heroines and Heroes: Hope, HIV and Africa. Terri also noted that, to honor World AIDS Day, Popular Photography magazine has created a photo gallery of HIV-positive people and their communities. These ...Read More

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High divers routinely plummet from great heights into small bodies of water and survive just fine, so why can't a cell phone? A friend of mine recently knocked her brand-new cell phone off the counter and into her dog's water dish. Though she instantly scooped it out and carefully dried it, the next day the screen went blank. At the cell phone store, she was told that the connection from the battery to the phone had been irreparably damaged and she would have to get a new phone. And, by the way, the damage was not covered under warranty.

My son bought an iPod last year. He had problems with the controls, took it in to the store and was given a new one. Though the difference in customer service is definitely noteworthy, I can't help wondering how we became such a throw away society? My dad kept our original RCA color television working for twenty years by ope...Read More

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FIGURE 1

A machine shop drill press sitting by the side of the road with a “for sale” sign; a vintage camera flash attachment found at the bottom of a storage closet; and a Bic lighter purchased this Halloween, designed to light luminaries—after spending my workdays sitting in front of a computer monitor working with state-of-the-art software, it is refreshing to consider some of the simple yet impressively practical mechanical tools we take for granted.

The ...Read More

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This comment was sent in response to my first blog post, "The engineering filter."

It is amusing that I ran into this piece on the mind of engineers and artists. I've been an engineer 30 years and your description of your table conversations reminded me of my own at home with my daughter. In her junior high years and high school years she was very technically oriented, but in the biological sciences. Some time late in her high school years she discovered creative writing and decided to major in that. It was a pretty radical change in direction that happened over about a 2 year time.

I tried to encourage her to do what she wanted to do, but as an engineer, and focused on practical, hard skills that could be applied after graduation from university, I was a little concerned. I'm convinced that her mother's artistic genes kicked in late in high scho...Read More

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What drove workers crazy before new versions of software came along? Did the caveman miss bagging dinner because his version 2.0 club didn’t process signals like the old one? What is the attraction that makes us want the newest, shiniest version of every tool? Well, really, the newness and shininess of it, of course.

New software seems like such a good idea—in theory, anyway. "It's new, they must have fixed all those pesky problems, right?" But learning the new names for the same old commands can get frustrating—especially on deadline. It is at times like this that I recall what it was like making magazines on a phototypesetter<HTTP: Phototypesetting wiki en.wikipedia.org>. Back in the 1980s, Compugraphic and Itek typesetters did the job just fine. They only he...Read More

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Does our parents’ career choice alter the way we look at the world? Maybe, maybe not--unless the parent in question is an engineer, then yes, it most definitely does. I’ve lived my life among engineers, so I claim a certain understanding of the species.

The biggest lesson my engineer father taught me is that it is possible to understand the inner workings of everything. My mealtime entertainment was to ask, "how does _____ work?"--and spend the next half hour happily listening to a full description of the workings of anything from the television to the toaster. All the household appliances were laid out before me, mentally disassembled and spread out in a glorious exploded view. While other girls my age were playing with Barbie dolls, my father and I were building a Ferris wheel with my ...Read More

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