An Engineer Creates for Fun After a Lifetime of Workaday Rules
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
There are bountiful comparisons between professionals everywhere on the spectrum from the hardest of sciences through the pliable ones to artists and poets, so I'll spare myself from typing and you from reading a repeated effort.
Thinking of engineers this way has impacted the way that I discuss with other engineers about their ideas for projects and how to solve problems. Like a collaborative art piece, it isn't right to 'correct' other artists contributions because their work is more than just a contribution - it's an expression. When collaborating on a joint art project it's wholey important to share the same 'artistic vision'. I find working with other engineers both the most enjoyable and the most productive when a similar type of shared vision can be reached.
Finally (and this is whimsical) on more than one occasion in thinking of engineers sharing a spectrum with artists I have been led to both imagine a Sotheby's style auction clearinghouse for 'engineering art philanthropists' where pet projects are traded, sold and hung on walls and imaginary corporations that build giant finger paints but relegate each artist to their own cubicle, have middle management stack rank them, and tally updates on the painting progress during daily scrum.
This portion is basically the better parts of kickstarter. I've funded a movie about the 6502 microprocessor (kindly hurry up Jason Scott) and a CPM based single board computer and what boils down to a PDP-8 SBC and theres plenty of stuff I haven't funded in that category like software defined radio dev boards.
The latter, corporate dystopia part, doesn't sound very appealing to me.
"When collaborating on a joint art project"
Observationally, much like novels, plays, paintings, poems... the product of one excellent mind is invariably better than any team production, both in lit and engineering. Team always falls short of the individual. This is a profound thoughtcrime, hope I don't get in much trouble for it. As for the weasel words, not all projects are necessarily artistic, good enough is often good enough, etc.
And before the "Mr. Money Mustache" squad comes, no, I am not willing to defer living my life today just so I may be able to live it tomorrow.
I am, on the other hand, lucky to be skilled in a market in which I can continue to work in so long as I have my mental faculties. I guess I'll take that for what it's worth.
To quote:
> But a middle-class American family with two teachers making $60k each per year, who are currently saving zero and struggling to get by? THEY SHOULD BE SOCKING AWAY $5000 PER MONTH. Word.
I'm personally doing closer to 15% per paycheck, but the realist in me knows that will never be enough to retire on.
> I am not willing to defer living my life today just so I may be able to live it tomorrow.
Living in poverty in the years when you need increased care is sub-optimal. Who is going to pay for your later years?
If there's one thing I could tell 16 year old me it would be "save, and save hard, for your retirement years".
Worse, what if you die at 100? How will you pay for your life to 100 if you spent it all getting from 65 to 85?
1. I felt like I saw a glimpse of the future where a computer was built to express human emotion, and it was beautiful.
2. A sense of horror seeing the moving parts playing human written notes, making a mockery of the human experience.
I think it was the final tune, and the music that made the whole video so poignant. So in this sense, this machine is a piece of art.
Conlon Nancarrow realised part of Cowell's program by writing piano music note by note with a player roll punch. He was pushing the medium and the resulting compositions are very hard if not impossible for a human pianist to play.
Daphne Oram used a more analogue system of photocells, blank cinema film and black ink to 'draw' music directly - her system specified the amplitude, frequency and harmonic complexity of sounds through time.
RO-BOW is an art work, but it strikes me as sort of like a deliberate use of black and white film in a pin hole camera by a photographer. Quaint, interesting, thought provoking, but quite retro when you can record images in full colour with enormous resolution. This paragraph isn't quite capturing what I'm trying to say so I'll have another think...
I can see myself being a continuer but I have a strategy in place to force/cajole myself into adventuring. My mother was, alas, a retreater despite strenuous efforts from family members. Useful categories for thinking about all of this.
My kids and I both play, its just that my play stuff actually works.