It’s easy to imply “it’s easy” — when you don’t have to make it happen.
Engineers of all disciplines have an image problem. It’s not that we are often regarded as “geeks” or “nerds” or that we are just not fun.
Instead, the non-stop tsunami of successes and advances which engineers have made at an ever-accelerating rate in the past decades have resulted in both unimaginable progress as well as fulfilled science-fiction dreams — think of the classic Dick Tracy phone watch (1946), as seen in Figure 1. These have made it all seem so easy and predictable.
The obvious conclusion: engineering can’t be that hard, and its outcomes can be foreseen and even scheduled.
Unfortunately, it’s not just non-technical people who have contributed to this problem. For example, I recently read an interesting article in IEEE Spectrum (the membership publication of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) entitled “The New, New Transistor” about the possibility of using aluminum nitride (AlN) as a substrate to fabricate superior power-switching devices.
According to theory and test devices, these devices are even better than the silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride (GaN) ones, surpassing older silicon-based devices. The article was technical and informative and explained how the many challenges associated with aluminum nitride have been resolved, at least in the lab.
However, after it discussed the significant lab-related progress the proponents had made, there was a brief quote that really rankled me. What did a project leader say? He implied all the hard work was done by saying, “It’s just engineering at this point.”
Wow…who knew it could be so easy, with “just engineering” all that’s needed to bring this lab development into production and have actual viability? Perhaps the quote was taken out of context, but I was still surprised that an engineering publication would use this sort of demeaning and dismissive quote to position a leading-edge technology and devices. While you are at it, just ignore the fact that it took decades to get SiC and GaN out of the lab and into volume production.
The harsh reality is that the path of technical advancement is littered with promising laboratory and R&D developments that don’t make it into production or even through pilot runs. When you scale up in volume, production, factory speed, and other attributes, there are lots of things that can go wrong or are unpredictable. There are both dead-ends and unexpected paths to success, as shown in Figure 2.
One prominent class of examples (but not the only one) is battery technology. We frequently read of yet another R&D battery-chemistry formulation or physical construction being lauded as “revolutionary” and “a breakthrough.” Yet almost none of these presumably dramatic improvements have made it to the mass market, and that’s not for lack of trying. It’s just that scaling up from lab to production brings unanticipated technical, practical, or cost problems that often cannot be resolved.
At the root of the perception problem is the success of Moore’s law (a conjecture, not a law), the visibility of the semiconductor road map, and countless advances across many other technical disciplines. These have conditioned the public in general and legislators in particular to assume trajectory of advances is known and can even be dictated by wishes and desires.
For example, the idea of mandating a numerical increase and date for improving automotive fuel efficiency or appliance energy consumption is testimony to lawmakers’ ignorance combined with their misplaced self-assuredness and confidence. Conversely, for engineers, it’s a case of “no good deed goes unpunished.”
What can be done? The short answer: I don’t know if there’s a realistic solution. In my dream, technical advancement would become a long, slow, difficult, and highly visible process so that the public would realize that it doesn’t come quick or easy.
My dream also involves widely publicizing and broadcasting important engineering awards ceremonies, such as the Draper Prize or IEEE Medal of Honor, with considerable pre-event promotion, focusing on the technical advances and those who make them happen.
OK, so this is not going to happen…but we can still dream, right?
Related EE World content
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Keysight’s Innovation Challenge is back for 2022
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Battery and charging innovations driving electrification
External references
The Daily Beast, “How Dick Tracy Invented the Apple Watch”
National Academy for Engineering, “The Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering”
IEEE, “IEEE Medal of Honor”
“Just Engineering”? The reason that so many assume that our strings of successes are easy for us and “just the way it works” is at least partly because it often does look that way. And also because we seldom elaborate on how much effort it really requires. As an example, I seldom show off all of the initial sketches that I rejected because at some point they no longer worked. Not every first idea is the one that works, sometimes unforeseen things appear. Usually we don’t complain about those things, we just alter the path a bit.
And never ever complain about how much work it is, or how difficult it is.
We don’t complain because if we did we would be given an assistant who would not be any help at all. Even just commenting on the size of the task can lead to getting unqualified help. I doubt that this was a unique experience of mine.