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America Losing Its Edge In Innovation
jaywhybee writes "Forbes has an interesting article about America losing its edge in innovation because engineers and scientists in the US are not as respected as they are in other countries, and thus fewer youths aspire to become one. Quoting: 'I’ve visited more than 100 countries in the past several years, meeting people from all walks of life, from impoverished children in India to heads of state. Almost every adult I’ve talked with in these countries shares a belief that the path to success is paved with science and engineering. In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the US, but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the US, almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.'"
Especially among crooks^H^H^H^H^H^H politicians.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
is pritty edgy.
Think back to the TV shows of the '50's and '60's. We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others. The key factor was, they were all intelligent.
These days we have Homer Simpson and the King of queens, et al.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Hey, then there are some in Politics! Social Engineers and Psuedo Scientists!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Does anyone remember a film called 'A Face in the Crowd' that was done in the 1950s? This anti-intellectual bumpkin rises to the top of the media ladder on a wave of folksy intolerance and blather. Well, this was satire that's become truth. This weird form of popularism has become a way of attacking anyone with expertise. Elites are bad. People with specific knowledge are bad. If it's not blue collar around his neck -- DON'T TRUST HIM!
Amazingly enough, the brainwork of innovation doesn't thrive in that culture.
Only brainless jocks are perceived to have leader quality in the US, as long as you are tough and aggressive.
People think that fear is respect and thus think that the one instilling most fear has to be respected most.
Highly respected and loved by Americans of all ages...of course his time ended decades ago.
We've replaced Asimov (and others like him) with Glenn Beck and the Home Shopping Network.
No time to read this article, I have to see what my favourite hollywood actress is doing with her hair this week
People tend to gravitate towards professions that pay better. For instance, your typical Wall St analyst has about the same level of education as an engineer. If somebody is looking at those two options (because they're good with numbers and analysis), and wants to make the big bucks, which one are they going to pick, the one that will pull in $120K a year or the one that will pull in $250K a year?
The wonderful thing about using the numbers here is that it's a completely objective measure. Unlike "respect" which is harder to quantify.
I am officially gone from
heh, they don't even teach fortran anymore. It's all java this and java that. pfffft!
If you classify patent trolls as innovators then all is well.
It doesn't matter if innovation ceases in the US because innovation will occur elsewhere. The ideas, the innovations, that tangibly improve life will be shared by their creators wherever those creators are. Those ideas will still benefit us, whether those ideas were conceived in Hydrabad or Sunnyvale. Ideas and innovation are a type of imaginary property. Ideas are written down and transmitted digitally. Like any digital copy, when you share an idea with someone else, you do not deprive the person who conceived that idea of their property.
I was just thinking of this the other day. We put so much importance on children to excel in sports, hoping that one dey they will make it into the NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB that we neglect to realize how minuscule that chance is. The problem with trying to excel at sports is that if you aren't good enough to be in the top league, you are basically just a point where you don't make any money at all, or at best have to have a second job even to make ends meet. Even if you are good enough at football to make it to the CFL, you still have to have a second job because you don't make enough doing your sport. On the other hand, if we pushed kids to excel in school and intelligence, even if they didn't make it into the elite, for instance being a world class heart surgeon, they would still have plenty of good jobs to fall back on if it turned out they couldn't achieve being one of the best in the world. They could be a family practitioner, a nurse, or do many other things in the same field, and still make quite a decent living. There's only a market for 400+ (432 currently based on quick google) professional basketball players. The market for most other professions is quite higher. There's probably 400 doctors in my city.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
why is it always the cynical capitalists that complain
about lack of engineering talent. it's not like they're willing
to pay for them.
if you're a bright kid and want to make money, you don't
go get an engineering degree. you go into finance.
Only real economics sets real public policy.
You can debate in government until you are blue in the face, but if the government is the one destroying the economy, it will not help you, will not see things your way.
Government is the one, that is causing the fall of US economy, and from the time of capitalist industrial revolution, the sciences and engineering was promoted exactly because the capitalist industrialism needed the sciences and engineering.
Science and engineering will not be promoted in a society that has no production, we have talked about it before, didn't we?
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, a lot of those kids say they want to become scientists or engineers but very few actually have a passion for it, they only get into it because it's what their parents tell them to get into. It's been my experience that people without a passion for science/engineering and are only going through the motions because they were forced into make really shitty engineers. It's Friedman-esque reporting at its finest(ie taking PR points from companies as the honest truth and not scrutinizing a single thing they are fed provided it matches their preset narrative).
Monstar L
Who cares? Can't we just outsource that, too? Actually, *don't* we just outsource that, too?
Anyway, America is about money, jesus, and big tits. Success is about catering to the common denominator. Intellectual advancement and pursuit is for "elitist" pricks with their fancy words and all. Anyway, America loves Jesus and Jesus doesn't give a shit about it. Jesus cares about celebrity and sports. If you need proof, just think of the last time you heard a scientist thank jesus for their discovery? Never! Because jesus only helps football players blond bimbos accepting their Golden Globes.
And society reinforces this. I've been a jock and a nerd my entire life and I probably don't need to tell anyone what activities and accomplishments got audiences, rewards, cheerleaders, public acknowledgement, and respect . . . and which didn't.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for scientists to have more of a role in political decisions, but let's hope that China is not illustrative of what happens when engineers are in charge.
I don't see how putting engineers on political posts instead of letting them do what they have been trained for should be an advantage. Except, of course, if you have a surplus of engineers (which one never has).
In America, you purchase respect. America losing its edge in innovation because engineers and scientists in the US are not as well paid as they are in other countries relative to local prices. Why would anyone spend 4 years training to become a low paid engineer when they could become a highly paid lawyer or financier or manager?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Maybe it's better not to have the people vote. To be more serious, I always thought it was weird that in the US, they elected everyone. From politicians, to judges, to dog catchers. I think elections are important, but that most people lack the interest in figuring out what to do in every single situation. It seems to work better in countries where people only vote for their member of parliament, and let the millions of little decisions be handled by someone else, so they can spend more time figuring out who to vote for in the first place, rather than obsessing over a million questions on the ballot.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I don't quite get the meaning of the example about China. I don't recall when was the last time we have any significant innovation for the world. Oh, and we the people don't really care what did the top politicians study in college. End up they are just communists.
It has been obvious for more than a decade for anyone watching USA from abroad.
From watching US TV series I learn that brains have been replaced by God or other mysticism. Pseudoscience galore and the good science (from PBS) has no viewers.
Universities are graduation foreign students in the sciences and Americans with lawyers and political degrees. Luckily you still have a private sector that has a lot of innovation and hires brains from other countries. That keeps a lot of the patents and wealth in USA.
Imaginary property law shifts the balance of power away from engineers and towards the paper pushers. It doesn't matter how smart an engineer you are if some lawyer waving a patent gets to determine what all engineers can and cannot build. By definition, patent monopoly grants prevent a free market in engineering services, distorting the market so that it's more profitable to be a lawyer with the right to control what thousands of engineers can do and horsetrading those rights. So smart americans aspire to be lawyers not engineers, because in america it's the lawyers in charge, thanks to patent grants. You have to really love engineering to become an engineer in america, because it's a fundamentally irrational choice to do so in america.
Patents are a "right" to prevent other people doing something - engineers, psychologically, typically simply don't want to do that (there are exceptions, and lo, they are giant douchebags hated by most actual engineers - see edison vs. tesla...).
Politicians in America (especially at the higher levels) are almost exclusively lawyers, with a handful of businessmen and sports or movie stars. The only exception are the two or maybe three former doctors that I can think of out of about a thousand in the house and senate. There are a few religious nuts sprinkled in, too -- but for the most part, almost 100% of politicians merely cater to the religious nut angle, because that's the lowest common denominator which consistently wins them elections.
Does Economic Engineering count, or is that in Mad Scientist category?
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In 2008, NH Senator Sununu was the only graduated, certified engineer in the US Senate...and was replaced by former Governor Jeanne "Red Ridinghood" Shaheen...
If the people of the developed world knew more of history and geography, they might realize that the lifestyle they enjoy is due to their societies' mastery of technology, and that it is not an entitlement. People of the developing world, for whom this issue is more clearly germane, can see that this is so.
This should not come as much of a surprise. After all, some American people want to teach creationism in schools. If science does not get respect at the bottom most level, its hardly surprising that it doesnt get it at the higher ones.
This is the first generation that has lower expectations than the previous one.
We just got greedy, lazy and too drunk/stoned to give a shit.
I don't blame society, government or any other accretive social construct.
WE did it to ourselves.
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We used to be America, now we're occupied by Globalistan. The idealogues approve, but for differing reasons!
It seems that the article's author leaps to the conclusion that a lack of engineers and scientists in politics is a bad thing for innovation. I would like to see evidence of that.
In fact, one can argue the opposite: that engineers and scientists focused on engineering and science, rather than politics, is a better way to insure innovation.
But since this article was probably not written by a scientist, I suppose we're unlikely to see any scientific methods used in his argument.
We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others
Well, if someone thinks a "senior marketing executive" is a position that inspires technical innovation, I think I've found why the US is losing its edge.
In other TV shows of the time there was "Get Smart" with the most incompetent secret agent you can imagine and "Gilligan's Island" with the most incompetent sailor you can imagine. Of course, in the 1960s you also had "Hogan's Heroes" with a bunch of pretty competent fliers. Then in the 1980s there was "MacGyver" which is the epitome of technological ingenuity.
No, I don't think you can get much information on this trend from TV shows.
They follow the jobs.
My daughter went to a top high school, worked at NIH during the summer, and won an Intel semi-finalist for her NIH project. After noting the job insecurity of the post-docs at NIH she crossed science off her list.
She is now a successful lawyer.
Also -- note that the most famous engineer in the US is Dilbert.
The popular belief these days is that everyone is allowed to a have 'democratic' opinion on any subject regardless if they have any clue as to what they are talking about.
No more do we look up, listen to and expect people with expertise to give us the benefit of their experience. Rather we shun 'experts' with their 'facts', since surely that sort of commitment to their field has made them biased and unreliable sources. Only the truly uneducated and ignorant are 'pure' in their innocence, only the most intuitive, simplistic and superficial description of the world maybe be considered honest. Anyone with an explanation longer than a sound bite, let alone a formula, is a charlatan, using his book-knowledge to fool us!
Trust your gut feelings, your most primitive prejudice, that which you share with those who are the loudest. Because they are the ones in charge now, they are the ones who get what they want in this world. Who gives a toss about the laws of physics, logic or math, when the truth is determined by everyone - with mod points.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I don't think China is communist by any sense of the word. It is a dictatorship and that's true. And I do think democracy is a mess.
But I don't think a country which lets large foreign corporations open large factories on its soil can be described as "Communism" by any sense of the term. In fact:
"7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. " ... "all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation"
When a country starts seriously teaching creationism in schools, how can anyone be surprised? It's likely no coincidence that the US comes out very high in surveys on religious belief and apparently fairly low with regards to respect for science.
If you want to make the big bucks, you will go into business. Employees always have their salaries limited.
Engineers are usually employees. Even engineers who do consulting are like employees except their paychecks are less regular.
Employees are saps who just beg to be exploited. Intelligent and talented Americans make the logical choice.
Am I being too cynical?
When we keep cutting (or allowing to stagnate) the funding for science and engineering research, this is exactly what we get. We can't expect good science to be done with no financial backing. Scientists who love their work will indeed work for embarrassingly little money, but eventually they do need to pay the bills to keep the lights on in the lab to keep the work moving.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Masterful trolling, sir. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
From TFA: "Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities.
Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don’t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects."
Um. If the jobs aren't there for US grads, it's the fault of their parents and teachers? Logic much? Seems like a rational choice to avoid areas where there's not a lot of work on.
Why not look at how entrepreneurs are funded -- by VCs who fund almost exclusively men, even though businesses started by and run by women are twice as likely to succeed.
Why not look at the gross discrimination against women in engineering, science and mathematics at all levels -- we could easily double the pool of US engineering talent by simply developing more objective measures of success, or at least heeding them where available.
Many grow up in homes of faith, if only the good news story of Bill Gates, the evils of Linux and a warning about Google could be presented in a more clear way:
1 In the beginning was the DOS, and the DOS was THE OS, and it was good. And behold the Gates said, “Thou shalt not tinker with my disciple Paterson's design for it is good and it workith. For Paterson made the DOS, and lo of all of his OS work, from the designs which I, the Gates, paid him upon the street.”
2 “And shouldst thou hack with it, and crack all manner of foul improvements upon it, and profane its internal parts, thou shalt surely have malfunctions, and in the midst of important work thou shalt surely come to crash.”
3 And as the versions passed men in their ignorance and arrogance didst forget the word of the Gates and began to profane the DOS. The tribe of the gamesman did place 3d and extended memory upon the DOS and their texture artists didst expand the tolerances and alter colors to their liking, their clearness of mind being clouded by imagination.
4 Their hackers did compile all manner of foul code upon the DOS and did so alter it that it became expensive to use. For lo, the developers didst charge a great tax upon the purchasers of the DOS so that the lowly cubicle worker could not afford a license. And the profaning of the internal code didst render it unworkable when the connecting of the net fell upon it and didst try and fit more users of applications onto the network than the holy number of ten, appointed for the Intel.
5 And lo, they didst install cheap 3d cards, which are an abomination unto the Gates. For they doth break and lose their zero when thou dost need true math. And those who have upgraded so will be rebooted in great numbers by their errors in the games.
6 And it came to pass that the Gates didst see the abomination wrought by man and didst cause, as he had warned, fearful malfunctions to come upon the abominations and upon the developers who thought they could code no wrong.
7 Seeing the malfunctions and the confusion of men, the student of the underworld did see an opportunity to further ensnare man and didst bring forth an OS copyrighted for free, whose CLI was such that they looked and coded like a UNIX server, yet the eyes of man being clouded, they were consumed by the free servers and did install vast quantities of them.
8 And being a deceitful European the student of the underworld did make these free servers difficult to the gamers of earth and they were unable to tinker much with the design, and lo these free servers did appear to function.
9 And the European one also brought forth servers in which the cores didst both power manage and scale smoothly and which require a “guru” to make them appear stable.
10 But admins being stupid did not understand these new servers and didst proceed to code themselves with the free servers and with the packet pushing and pulling for lo their manual of Emacs required great intelligence which admins had long since forsaken. Yet admins continue to gloat over these free servers blaming evil corporations for the negligent reboots which they themselves had committed.
11 And when telco networks had been totally ensnared with the free servers, the student of the underworld didst cause a plague of the terrible Google to descend upon man and the free servers delivered their retribution upon men. And there was a great wailing and phishing of credit in the land.
12 Then seeing that the eyes of man were slowly being opened and that man was truly sorrowful for his sinful misdeeds, the Gates did send his marketers in the form of academics who did hear and obey the teachings of the prophet and who didst restore the profaned servers to their proper configuration, and lo, to the amazement of investors they didst begin to profit as the prophet had intended.
13 And the deans of the colleges didst remove tenure from the charlatans and socialists on the facilities, and there was joy and profit in the internet, except for the evil trolls which tried occasionally to prey on the men and women of the internet and who were sent to the place of eternal negative moderation by the followers of Ballmer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There is nothing to qualify the statement ,"In the US, almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics".
It is well known that the high level politicians in the U.S. are "Social Engineers","Social Scientists" and "Scientologists".
It must be so too. How else could we live our lives day to day without Republicrats to protect us from ourselves, raise and educate our children, use our individual value as labor to back the dollar, keep us fed, housed and healthy, decide our national morality, and utilize the full potential of the citizenry to drive their personal aspirations for wealth and power at the cost of the freedom we forgot we had ? Damn, as a nation of pinheads, we need our "political scientists and engineers" or we would surely languish in the pure hell of freedom,prosperity,life liberty and potential happiness the founding fathers tried to foist off on us.
Now just who the hell is Forbes trying to fool ?....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Of course, when the day comes that Indian and Chinese scientists and engineers prefer to stay home rather than be second-class aliens in the USA we'll have to make other plans. Sue them, maybe.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Wasnt that the whole point of the DMCA?? to stifle innovation?
Hey, then there are some in Politics! Social Engineers and Psuedo Scientists!
Is theology a (social) science? We have way the heck too many of that type in charge, here in the usa.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"Innovation" is thrown out to appeal to the young and the naive. Everyone wants to think they're doing something that is making the world a better place so our corporate overlords tap into that by turning every scientific and engineering innovation into something akin to the wheel or the light bulb. Let's face it, big-screen televisions and iPhones may bring pleasure to those who buy them but they don't meet any fundamental human need.
If you want to know why this country doesn't exalt engineers like other countries you just need to look around the U.S.. We may complain about our infrastructure but it far exceeds the infrastructure of most countries. We have well designed homes, roads, water distribution, and sewer systems. The really important areas have already been engineered, so what is left? The need to "green-up" some of these areas will keep some engineers busy but for the most part engineers are really working on luxury items. We don't really NEED a space program, genetically modified seeds, or a slew of other items. They are just adding to an already phenomenally complex world that is exceeding our ability to understand and react to in a rational way. We are trying to solve problems created by technology with more technology which, IMHO, is insane.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Being of British origin, working in continental Europe for 5+ years as a research scientist and having a Canadian GF instrument engineer jetlagged from her flying back from Japan I note the bemoaning of some 'Innovation / Tech Tx' course presenters during my University career that summarises as:
"Invented in the UK, developed / marketed in the US and mass produced in the Far East."
Guess the Far-East have decided to cut out the middle[wo]man...
Not that our situation in the UK is peachy with the only worse career than a Scientist or Engineer being a Teacher (as in 'school Teacher') - the recent government recruitment slogan being turned into:
"Those who can['t*], teach."
[* - delete the negative for the official government version.]
I don't think that most parents dream of their children being professional sport players. But rather realize that participating in sports teaches their children how to work together in a team. For "single" sports, like tennis or golf, the child learns how to bring out the best in him or herself. That drive to do the best they can also is valid for academic work: "Are you satisfied with a B in math, or if you really try hard, you could get a A?"
Plus the health benefits, which don't need to be elaborated.
However, it is pretty sad that heroes for most kids are professional athletes or gangsta rappers. Not a scientist or engineer to be seen.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The funny thing is, the moment I pressed submit on that one, I realized I had been brainwashed by too much Colbert, and ashamed for having no original thought of my own.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
The rampant abuse of patents of course has nothing to do with losing the edge in innovation, because new ideas happen to magically manifest, without being based upon earlier ideas (that aren't many decades old)
I am not going for flames, I am being honest here. I teach at what would be called a "rich kids" school (in a medium sized metro area of 1.2 million), even though the real rich kids schools are even higher up the tuition scale than my school. I bring this up to point out what seems to be most important to a vast majority of "elite" families: playing, starting and excelling on sports teams. Science club? What kind of dork does that!? Focus most time on studies? Loser! I fear much of our nation is stuck in a trap where parents are reliving their lives and the kids are feeding like crack addicts off of this behavior. What the hell kind of future do we have when the "top" young people of the future will sit around at board meetings talking about the time they caught the game winning touchdown in a flag football game played in 8th grade?
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
That flat tax POS who inherited his wealth from Daddy can move to Bejing that useless piece of pond scum. He couldn't innovate out of a paper bag.
The Arabic countries led by the Muslims were the most advanced scientists and engineers in the world, until they let the religious crazies take over. Just sayin', America...
... management is greatly to blame on this. If they truly respected people with STEM skills, they would start paying them what they are worth, as well as giving them freedom to innovate, come up with ideas, and solve problems. A few companies already do this. More need to. Good jobs for people with STEM skills are lacking.
And yes, there is also a shortage of people with STEM skills, too. These problems are a vicious cycle. When there are fewer jobs, with less pay, and less opportunity to do great things, many people will find somewhere else to go.
Supposedly executive management has MBA skills. They should understand concepts like supply and demand. What they are trying to do is use supply and demand to cut costs. Increasing the supply by opening up access to more people in other countries does cut costs. But it also triggers the feedback mechanism, which is a slow and pervasive one due to the time frames involved in the long career incentive to education to employment cycle. That feedback mechanism reduces the supply to match the demand.
Supply and demand is elastic. But they probably learned this only in product marketing terms, where the elasticity is measured only in a year or two. The career incentive, education, and employment cycle is longer, from ten to twenty years or more, depending on where the career incentive phase is looking is getting feedback from the employment phase (e.g. seeing 40 year old engineers being mothballed and out of work makes this elasticity cycle even longer).
If management wants Americans with STEM skills, as opposed to just any Earthling with STEM skills, then they need make it happen. I suspect the reality is, they just don't care. They made their bed. They can sleep in it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In America leaders get leader training (business degree, law degree, public speaking classes, etc) and the engineers get engineer training. Engineers consult lawyers when they have law problems. Leaders consult engineers when they have engineering problems. It is a little backwards to get engineering training in stead of legal education to become a politician. Maybe what the summary is posting about is why America is ahead rather than behind?
As for nerds... In my experience, 'smart kids' (and later, well-educated adults) are respected in America if they dont act like they are better than everyone else because they are smarter or completely ignore social norms or have overt mental illness. That pretty much applies to all walks of life, so 'nerds' aren't unique in this.
Think of that!
American probes that launched decades ago are entering interstellar space. It would take us that long to design a smiliar probe. (I am sure the blueprints for the Mariner (aka Voyager) spacecraft are sitting right next to the blueprints for the Saturn B.
China "boasts" that they might make it to the Moon by 2020. And this is somehow heralded as a major achievement. US did it with no computers, no prior art, and no research base to draw from.... in far less time than the Chinese MIGHT do it in. (Hey atleast they might make it unlike the Russians who just managed to kill a bunch of cosmonaughts).
It isn't just Americans getting stupid - it is all of humanity.
I go back to the same set of problems being responsible for this; and they're especially obvious having lived in Asia for several years.
1) An excessive and irrational fixation on "being yourself". American culture is obsessed with stressing the supposed significance of being a special little snowflake. I can't count the number of children's shows that harp on about this nonsense. The irony is that Americans end up conforming themselves to pre-defined pigeon holes anyway way worse that I've seen in other countries.
And with this comes the idiocy that you're not going to be told what to do. You're going to live your life your own way. And that brings me to number 2:
2) A fixation on pleasure. American culture portrays this unrealistic image of what life should be. Basically, if we're not mountain climbing, or doing some other extreme activity, by day and not actively participating in the bar/club scene at night we're not living life. So what does that mean? We're supposed to devote our lives to pleasure and not work. We're suckers if we work for a living.
There's also this tendency to "do what you love" as opposed to doing what will ensure success. Along with this comes the compulsive desire to make science and math fun. I think that's great but in the right context. The fact is that science and math usually isn't fun; it's a lot of hard work. So stop instilling unrealistic expectations in the youth that they can grow up to do fun things.
3) A crap work ethic. Too many Americans have an awful work ethic. They do just enough to get by but somehow think they're entitled to that job. Far too often I seen people rationalize that mentality by arguing that they deserve better, that they could do what management does. Maybe they can, but given that they can barely do their own jobs right, I wouldn't bet on it. There's too much self-righteousness going around.
Not that Asia is this wonderland of success. There are a lot of people who end up going nowhere in life and get just as screwed as anyone you might find in the states. A common problem I encountered was that a lot of men were so obsessed with having their own business, despite lacking the skills or resources to accomplish this, that they refused to get a job and work for someone else. Some would get some low-wage job like driving taxis but most lived off their parents and, if married, their wives. I'd say a lot of that is due to the excessive positive reinforcement and generally spoiled lives a lot of boys there have encountered growing up. And in general, I've been seeing the same cultural attitudes we have in the US cropping up there.
But the fact is that by and large hard work is still valued. Parents instill the importance of education and hardwork in their kids. They engage them in activities they're convinced will ensure academic success. They aren't fixated on raising athletes, celebrities or kids who are socially popular. And people tend choose careers based on what will provide the best living, not what will make them happiest. And they work their asses off, putting in long hours on a regular basis.
I know quite a few couples where the father barely sees their kids. And while not happy about the situation their perspective is that it's better to work hard now and ensure a good education and better life for their kids. Some of them probably don't even think that far, this is simply how life is.
My point has meandered a bit here, but the gist of what I'm saying is that Americans, and Europeans, don't value hard work like Asians do, but they're sure convinced they're entitled to success.
Many of the early political leaders of this country were surveyors, such as George Washington. Others were political philosophers or scientific farmers such as Franklin. Still others, like Lincoln, were amateur engineers.
A shift occurred near the end of the 19th century, but definitely by the late 20th century America lost its ability to elect a non-politician. Hoover was a mining engineer, but that is not what his claim to fame was. For a better example, there is no way Dwight D. Eisenhower could be elected today. It seems to me that only the career politician and not the technocrat has any possibility of being elected to high political office in the United States.
Certainly on the right there is a push against intellectualism. This is due to the (correct) perception of correlation between education and atheism. A well educated man would recognize that (1) God cannot be proven to exist and (2) humans have spent most of the non-agriculturally occupied time of the past 12000 years trying to prove that God exists therefore (3) God likely does not exist. An non-well uneducated man would think that Glenn Beck's chalkboard makes some sense.
I believe that this movement in the United States away from intellectualism is conscious. The embrace in the last election of "Joe Six-Pack" and the concern of the opinion of "Joe the Plumber" would seem to validate this belief. Who on earth would want to categorize themselves as "Joe Six-Pack"?
The premise of America in the past has been that the common man is inherently uncommon. He can make himself great through industry and intelligence. Instead, there is a embrace of the common anti-virtue. It's almost as an emergence of a permanent lower class. Typically, this change was multi-generational, but it could occur with one man.
Today, there are now people in the United States who cannot, for purely cultural reasons, cannot move up. They will not be able to attend college or find a job that pays well. There will be exceptions, but these will be few and far between; the sort of likelihood of a boy playing basketball and making it to the NBA.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
A winning football team brings back alumni to fill the stadium. These proud alumni donate money to the university. That probably easily covers the costs of any sports scholarships, and there is probably plenty left over to help finance the university. And it's good for the university image, and keeps it in the limelight.
However, to kill my own argument, do we really want a system where students choose a university based on winning sports teams?
Admissions Officer: "Son, why do you want to attend the University of Texas?"
Potential Student: "Uh, the football team is good? Is that the right answer?"
I'd rather see a system where universities were well known for academic departments, instead of sports:
Sports Commentator: "Well, Princeton seems to be fielding an excellent physics faculty this year! Anything to add to that John Madden?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
pseudoscience pays better, The popular ones in US are against science, so still is being debated that we will have a second sun next year, tv shows teach that aliens invade us to extract our soul and that global warming is an evil lie to steal our money. Study science and the most you will get is to be misquoted out of context in the future to support someone's agenda, or being ridiculed in TV shows like Big Bang Theory. And add to that that thanks to indiscriminate patenting trying to do anything is walking in a minefield, and you could see no good future going in that direction. Generating market bubbles pay better and seem to have no risks for you.
Yep in the good ol USA our heroes are on American Idol and our faith is in Lawyers. No wonder we are screwed up.
Salesman & marketing pukes run my company that was founded & ran for it's first 50 years by engineers. Now we do nothing unless it's chasing the competition. At that point our leaders point & claim how our engineers dropped the ball & did not come through with the innovative product. All the while outsourcing more & more tech work to India & China. & we wonder why kids don't want to go into engineering.
We get no respect. We get little resources. None of them ask for our will listen to our opinions. All we can do it work more hours (to keep our jobs) while looking for work elsewhere. From what I read in my user groups, marketing pukes running the company is becoming quite common.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
There is an old joke in the UK, at a dinner party tell your host you are an engineer and he will show you his washing machine. Do the same in Germany and he will introduce you to his daughter.
There's a similar film called "Meet John Doe", starring Gary Cooper and directed by Frank Capra. Basically, a bumpkin-type becomes famous and amasses a huge grassroots following. As his following increases in the film, I was struck with the similarity between that - from 1941- with today's tea party movement.
Thing is - I'd take the uneducated John Doe from the film over at least 2/3 of the politicians in the US today. His platform was based on solid principles, and wasn't willing to give in to business interests or be corrupted in any way.
My point is that these kinds of politicians aren't necessarily bad. Although I guess it's much easier for the Face in the Crowd type to gain power than the honest type, as evidenced by those that actually come to power (including people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who hold considerable sway amounting to actual power).
That said - it wasn't until fairly recently that I fully understood how anti-intellectual and, ultimately, uneducated most of the population in the US is. In grad school I taught intro geology lab classes to mostly non-science-majors. Granted, it wasn't a particularly prestigious university, but the general attitude of some of the students astounded me - why they were even going to university is beyond me. Also at that time I started being exposed to more people who didn't attend a prestigious university for an undergrad degree, as all of my high school friends and most other people I knew had. After I got to know several people like that well, I began to notice that most random people I saw out and about were like that. Call me imperceptive and naive, but I guess I gave people the benefit of the doubt before that time that at the very least they weren't anti-intellectual.
As an engineer I work on things everyday that have direct and immediate consequences in the physical world. Hence my errors of judgment or bias have a direct feedback to me. The physical world is a hard unforgiving taskmaster.
A politician is buffered from any consequences or feedbacks to his actions by distance; the bureaucracy surrounding him as well as the physical disconnect.
As an engineer I must compromise between contradictory and opposite qualities and find practical combinations that satisfy a multitude of specifications and demands. I must accommodate as well as critically evaluate the demands of users, marketing and design and architecture people, and come up with a mutual understanding of what they actually want within the means of what is possible.
A politician is defined only by what that supports him in power - those who fund and elect him for the next term.
The limits with my work are the laws of physics - both direct resources: money, time, people - as well as all kinds of non-intuitive ones: scaling, flow rate, logistic function, probability distribution. Hence my sense for the 'truth' is not based on passion but experimentation, and I appear unsure and as having no confidence in my 'opinions' - which I don't really have at all, as most people understand them. An opinion for me is always something I can explain - at least to myself - and most of the time to others. It is this process that both helps me understand my own reasoning better (keeps me honest to myself), as well as provides a further insight into my cognition as well as to some extent of those of others.
A politician swims in the superficial memes of popular sentiment. He maybe an ideologue but a successful one is also a pragmatist: he shapes truth into what is most convenient for the occasion and in doing so may actually benefit from self-delusion, even intentional and conscious.
It maybe be argued that in this way a politician is more 'human' than an engineer and thus is more suited to lead us. And that my friends is the conclusion that cost me my mod points.
Burn baby burn!
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
...and the perpetual 20%+ timestrial growth is what is killing us. That short-term vision in which only ubber large corporation can save enough cash to have a longer term R&D plan in place (oh and don't miss your target by 1 day else your stock crashes) is what is killing north america.
Unfortunately, as you become older, you realize that humanity always needs to hit a wall to learn.. so it will hit at some point in time and 90% of the people won't see it coming, 10% will just have tried to do their best to mitigate the $$ impact this will bring.
What an uneducated observation. If you actually believe that TV reflects reality, perhaps you also think that all Americans are either detectives or murderers, with a few bystanders?
If you think that the US is "losing its edge" because its becoming MORE God/mysticism-oriented, you're deluded. The "good old days" that so many talk about here, when our heroes were astronauts and scientists, were the good old 1950's when it was de rigeur to attend church, and the 1960's when sex-n-drugs-n-rock-n-roll replaced religion for an entire generation. Our news media likes to make a lot of ignorant religious folks (Christians and New Ager's, not Buddhists or Muslims, of course), and bad or controversial news sells, I guess.
No, I don't think you can get much information on this trend from TV shows.
Sure you can. But it will actually take some scientific analysis - a top of the head list of shows and your opinions won't give much of an answer. Some examples of what you would have to:
And you would have to take care not to let your perception of the situation bias it. For example, just because you think a given show was popular does not mean that it actually was.
-WolvesOfTheNight
Engineers understand facts. Facts get in the way of political and corporate goals.
Here in the USA where we worship at the altar of profits it is in the best interests of the powers-that-be to marginalize those pesky engineers, facts, and science.
At least for this quarter.
Long term, of course, we are all fighting for our piece of a shrinking pie.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The consensus seems to be that more people are going into finance and business because it pays better than science and engineering. That's incredibly sad. Shouldn't one go into science for the science? Since when was money more important that a fun job and fulfilling career?
only treats the symptoms, not the cause.
First unjustified assumption:
"Because if American students have a negative impression – or no impression at all – of science and engineering, then they’re hardly likely to choose them as professions."
Really? The author, Norm Augustine, provides zero evidence that this is true. I didn't choose my job because of other people's impression of it. I chose it because I enjoy and I get paid good money to do it.
He then goes on to say the usual things about lack of investment, bad teachers, bad parents, etc. I'm not sure how those exactly relate to his above thesis but presumably he means that if we paid more attention to Engineering people would have a positive impression of it. Maybe so. But none of these explain why parents are not directing their children to be Engineers and children are not interested in Engineering.
If you want parents to direct their children to be Engineers, tell them how much Engineers make per year. If it's not enough, they won't care. Also, that means that Engineers must grow the market for Engineers through innovation otherwise flooding the market with Engineers will just drive down salaries and thus would be counter-productive. So, it's not just any old kind of Engineers we want but entrepreneurial Engineers and, for the most part, that means a change in the way educate Engineers (i.e. Engineering needs to be more than computation). Which leads me to my next point.
If you want children to become interested in Engineering, then the curriculum needs to be reformed. Science and math curriculum for the most part sucks. Mathematics is often taught by the TERC method which is better than the axiomatic method of rote memorization that preceeded it (i.e. math curriculum from the 60's to the 90's) but doesn't spend enough time showing kids why the short-cuts we normally use in mathematics actually work. For those that are unfamiliar with TERC, TERC emphasizes process and making mathematics intuitive. To grossly simplify, where as most people would just say there are five blocks on the floor in the case where there are five blocks on the floor but TERC would require you to count each block. That's a horrible example but if you are interested wikipedia is your friend. Anyhow, the point is that there is no way to make math and science easy, they are hard, but we don't have to make them easy to make them interesting. We must make them inspire wonder and excitement.
How do we do that? That's a good question and if I had the answer I'd write a book but I do know it's possible because I've found it on my own while studying mathematics and science. I can't count the number of times I've said to myself: "Wow, that's so cool!". So it can be done. Can it be done consistently at scale? I have no idea.
1. Pop the debt bubble. Throw everything back to the dark ages.
2. Send in Baron Wulfenbach.
On the other hand, in the Middle East, engineering is a high status profession (comparable to doctors and lawyers), but since there aren't many jobs, disaffected engineers wind up a fertile recruiting ground for extremist organizations. The notional engineer tends to be rational, so they say, I put in the work, I got qualified, now, where's my high paying job that the system is supposed to give me. The Al Qaedas of the world say, "come with us, and we'll give you the respect you deserve, we have a framework, we work in that framework to achieve the greater good". The lawyer types tend to be more philosophical about society not living up to the implied promise, I suppose (or maybe, there's a bigger demand for lawyers)
See the famous paper by Gambetta and Hettog, "Engineers of Jihad", Sociology Working Papers, Paper 2007-10, Dept of Sociology, Oxford University.
www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/engineers%20of%20jihad.pdf
political engineers have to toe the party line.
And china? there top engineers are communist ones.
germany had top engineers that engineered ways to kill people.
Put aside our horrible primary/secondary education system that doesn't adequately prepare them for the curriculum. I'm an engineer for a Dow component corporation and they are more interested sourcing their engineering work to low cost centers (read India) than staffing to appropriate levels here in the states. That's not to say that we don't hire US engineers, just not in the numbers required to do all of the work that needs to be done. Most engineers that I know spend more time managing/supporting outsource efforts or other company initiative stuff than doing actual engineering work.
We are having a huge problem of lack of engineers here in Brazil. People are leaving universities already hired even if you have zero experience. If you want a good life outside the financial market you should consider move to another country.
Brazil has some bureaucracy to get residence permission to work here but I am sure you will get a good salary and a nice quality of life. And yes, people here care more about engineers, medical doctors (one exception would be famous soccer players).
This is just an expample. I don't know the situation of India, China and others. But an experienced engineer here can get about US120k a year but you are going to pay half of the price for food and house and other things. Cars is an exception, it is more expensive than america and internet connection i pay about US$50 for 30Mbps FTTH connection.
This is just an example, there are more need for example in Africa. One of my friends a few years ago saved some money and decided to try bulding some houses in Angola. He opened a company with only him as an engineer and hired local people to build. He's fucking rich now and offered me to work there for US250k a year. If I wasn't coward because Angola had a civil war 10 years ago I would probably go. You can make huge savings for your retirement in places you probably never considered going. Take a time and look for the oportunities.
So anybody at all can be an engineer if they just decide so?
Yes! exactly. Engineering is about a state of mind. You can sit in a school all you like but you'll never become an engineer.
An engineer is someone who makes things, makes things better, as is passionate about it. The questions is: when did I become an engineer?
When I took apart my first machine and put it back together?
When I designed my first circuit, programmed my first code?
When I sold my first design, setup and registered my own business?
You can cry into your pillow all you like about formal qualifications - the most successful and inspiring engineers I know never benefited from or cared much for the education they went through - they were already engineers.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
How about a sculpture of Jesus with HUGE KNOCKERS and hundred dollar bills in his both hands. Think it will sell?
You can't handle the truth.
An engineer is someone who drives a train.
chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga CHOO CHOO!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I'm a corporate finance analyst (like an accountant) who got into this gig because my math skills were good but not strong enough to be a good engineer. I love science and engineering and I've always wanted to get involved somehow. I've tried to focus on engineering or manufacturing-based firms for hiring (I'm an MBA student at the moment), and in interviews I mention one of my strengths is my respect for science and my ability to effectively communicate financial concepts to scientists and engineers. But what else can I do?
Typical bullshit stereotypes.
Engineers can't be sporty. Athletic people don't have brains.
Think wearing big rim glasses makes you a good programmer ? Maybe hard work and ability should influence the perception people have... not the feckless moronic stereotypes.
Also, you'll find that China has no less abundance of idots who aspire to be "ideas men" letting geeks sort out the technical details. Stop complaining... start a company based around your superior technical skills and let the ideas men, go back to selling sand to Arabs
That's definitely in the "Mad Scientist" category.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
An engineer is a guy who works with engines. The guy on the train works with train engines. Scotty works with starship engines. Myself, I work with difference engines and the like.
It's all well and good that you have certified, chartered engineers and the like putting together bridges and the like, but honestly, you don't have a god-given right to ownership of the title, so when someone uses it who just doesn't quite need that level of rigor for their website, chill out, mmmk? :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Well, for most of my life, I've been knee deep in the 'American engineer shortage'. The fact is that there is an oversupply of engineers in much of the western world and a shortage elsewhere. Currently, I'm living in the Middle East and enjoying a 100% pay raise compared to America.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I think this is reasonable. The economists have been generally aware of a diminishing marginal return for each dollar you get for a while now.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
An MBA can show profit in this quarter. Engineers more than one quarter. How many companies look beyond the next quarter?
Most insightful comment in this discussion.
"I've been a jock and a nerd my entire life and I probably don't need to tell anyone what activities and accomplishments got audiences, rewards, cheerleaders, public acknowledgement, and respect . . . and which didn't." - by Seumas (6865) on Sunday January 23, @08:37AM (#34972334)
You're being awfully "general", & what you said's NOT always the case... To wit: I've been, like yourself, a "dual persona" through a large portion of my life (jock &/or "brainy type"). I miss it in fact, but I have gotten old, lol, but here are my "proofs" of that from NCAA records:
---
http://lemoynedolphins.com/sports/mlax/history/1985.HTM
&/or
http://lemoynedolphins.com/sports/mlax/history/mlaxletterwinners ("K" letter-winner section, 1985 section)
---
I did alright @ both sports & moreso @ academia, especially in the LONG HAUL. The team also did well over time, with MANY NCAA championships or final appearances too!
Yes, & it gave me what I wanted out of "jockdom", via the hard work it entails physically (and yes, believe it or not, mentally too), & that was these 2 things:
---
1.) Cheaper road to better higher education (plus, fun from a game I truly loved - though I played football as well in highschool, I loved Lacrosse more (just like the great Jim Brown did, even though he became a professional NFL star))
&
2.) Staying "physically fit" (this matters the MOST when you're a young lad, lol, because at that time (let's say, your early teens thru your early 30's), this is a VERY IMPORTANT thing (to get women, of course, & to be blunt about it)).
---
In the end? Yes - I got what I wanted, which was, for the MOST part (i.e.-> A decent enough life with my own home/car, etc.)
Everything's FINALLY "paid-up in full" here, at least as far as the largest things a person obtains in a home & nice vehicle etc. (& all the things that go inside of them too).
It happened, but it took me decades...
So - Where did MOST of the monies for that come from, for ME? Well - Academic pursuits, that ended up in a career in the computer sciences since 1994 professionally here that I did fairly OK in, & here are some results on that note:
---
Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61
(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).
WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)
PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there
WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there
PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there
CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there
GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it
HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!
Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...
Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here ->
The reason we don't pay science and math nerds highly here is the same reason you want to be a science and math nerd elsewhere for more pay.
Confused?? You live in india, and want to make over 60 thousand a year, what are you options. Well you can get hired by a large company in a rich nation somewhere on earth providing a service either remotely or on location (Visa workers) that they find valuable. Or you can ... get trained in something in which you are realistically only going to be working in your local economy such as business management etc?
When was the last time your manager was a visa worker from india with a degree? Or working from a remote location in Asia? The language and culture barriers that stop that from taking place are not nearly as strong in the math and physics field. However if you get that same local economy business management degree in the rich nation you will get the local pay for that service, with no watering down effect of global high trained high competency options for your employer to pick from.
It is as simple as that. The End.
Ps. Same reason I own a Rv dealership and never used my math degree.
I do not have an axe to grind. In 70's & 80's during my growing up years, I always admired you guys. You made things "Built to last", you made things that were interesting and useful. I took pride in owning American made stuff. There was element of "truth" in American made stuff and technology.
What went wrong?
Here in Slashdot, I hope there are Americans who acknowledge this. What can be corrected?
My pet theory is, this MBA stuff is destroying what made America proud. Companies need to be run by Technocrats (Engineers who are passionate about their ideas) not someone who is playing tunes to numbers (Wall Street, Venture Capital Funds etc).
and more about a lack of respect for any sort of intellect. At least here in the US.
Turn on Fox News.. at least once during every host's shift you'll see a casting of all things liberal and intellectual as evil and bad for america. 'My politics are right. Yours just aren't wrong, they're evil.' (Jon Stewart comment iirc)
It's an inferiority complex. Dumb people are just smart enough to know they are dumber than intellectuals. And like every insecure bully ever, they lash out.
President Barack Obama - Law
Vice President Joe Biden - Law
Speaker of House John Boehner - Business
President pro tempore Daniel Inouye - Law
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - Law
Secretary of the Treasury (Timothy Geithner) - Asian Studies/Economics
Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates) - History
Attorney General (Eric Holder) - Law
Secretary of the Interior (Ken Salazar) - Law
Secretary of Agriculture (Tom Vilsack) - Law
Secretary of Commerce (Gary Locke) - Law
Secretary of Labor (Hilda Solis) - Public Policy
Secretary of Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius) - Public Policy
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Shaun Donovan) - Public Policy
Secretary of Transportation (Ray LaHood) - Education/Sociology
Secretary of Energy (Steven Chu) - Physics
Secretary of Education (Arne Duncan) - Sociology
Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Eric Shinseki) - Science/Literature
Secretary of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) - Law
The top posts are held by those who have been educated in law, and Cabinet members mostly educated in fields related to their positions.
You want to talk about the decay of culture and values? That's nothing new, every aging generation in every society in the history of humanity has fretted, writhed, and screamed about it.
The fact that American media prefers a self-deprecating sense of humor doesn't mean we embody those caricatures of ourselves.
"In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers"
Well, those politicians, like my father, were born, raised, and educated in a system that made that decision for them - they were assigned to study engineering by the government to fulfill quotas demanded by the planned economy. It was only in the 80's when the planned economy was abolished and economic reforms were instituted that this practice came to an end. Scientists at the time were indeed looked up to for their intelligence and social contributions, but so too were they looked up to because graduating from a top science school and joining the Communist Party was the only path to political power and thus wealth in those days. Nowadays in China, people no longer have such respect for scientists because they see that even middle school drop-outs can start factories or businesses and strike immense fortunes. They have greater respect (and disgust) for those who wield guile and personal connections, like everyone else in the world.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Indeed. Even worse - politicians (office) who take their instructions from politicians (governmental).
You end up implementing the worse possible solution for the problem because it was rejected by the sysadmins for being too complex to manage, the developers for being of low quality, the users for being unusable, the security team for being insecure, but because the manager concerned got an award for purchasing it (yes, you get awards just for buying stuff now, it would seem), it's politically unacceptable to even discuss any of it's multiple shortcomings.
Then you win the contract for supporting it. And start refreshing your CV.
No more do we look up, listen to and expect people with expertise to give us the benefit of their experience. Rather we shun 'experts' with their 'facts', since surely that sort of commitment to their field has made them biased and unreliable sources. Only the truly uneducated and ignorant are 'pure' in their innocence, only the most intuitive, simplistic and superficial description of the world maybe be considered honest. Anyone with an explanation longer than a sound bite, let alone a formula, is a charlatan, using his book-knowledge to fool us!
Trust your gut feelings, your most primitive prejudice, that which you share with those who are the loudest. Because they are the ones in charge now, they are the ones who get what they want in this world. Who gives a toss about the laws of physics, logic or math, when the truth is determined by everyone - with mod points.
You mean like the urban planning experts who bulldozed neighbourhoods and built highways everywhere, hollowing out American cities for decades? The experts that amateurs like Jane Jacobs fought to preserve urbanism?
The experts who said Agent Orange and DDT were safe? The experts who put asbestos fibers in buildings for decades? Those experts?
Experts can be wrong too.
No shortage of morons (and/or parasites) defending the American system, which is clearly in precipitous decline (these folks need to take correspondence calculus and understand the concept of rate of change).
We don't necessarily need science types in leadership positions, what is more troubling is most of our "leaders" are total candy asses, and the type that you would have beaten up in high school.
Android, iPhone, LINUX (may have started out in Europe, but it seems like most of the code contribution is US), SpaceX, etc.
If we are talking innovation, that has more to do with freedom to create and the ability to get rich doing it. The West, and America, still is the best place for doing that. China may MAKE the iPhone, but they didn't design it. Innovation is creating the new things people want and being able to martial the capital and talent from a global pool to make that happen. America still has that in s---loads compared to the rest of the world, and especially China.
Articles like this seems like engineers wishing they were as valued as lawyers and MBAs. While noble, it has little bearing on innovation. A lawyer and MBA can be taught why an innovation is important and they can support it. Teaching an engineer how to be charismastic and to lead people takes longer.
Having said all that, the creeping corporatism that is once again retaking American government will undo that--again. The second handers are gaining more and more power. Aided & abetted, ironically, by Ayn Rand followers like Ron Paul. For example, net neutrality is about making sure the conditions that allowed competition to happen on an even playing field to identify the true innovators like Google. Now, if the entrenched money can buy better access, you can be damn sure they will use that money to buy poorer access for new start-ups. That's how innovation gets stifled: not a lack of engineers, but confusing whats-good-for-corporations with freedom.
I said this happened before. Several times in fact. Each time, there was a "sputnik" moment that woke America up and shook things up. The last example I can think of is the automative industry in the 1970s. The big three had used their power to effectively shut out American start-ups and reduce the market to four players: themselves and AMC. They spent their R&D on styling & marketing rather than fuel economy and innovation. Thus the only innovation came from OUTSIDE the United States, and after the shot across their bow in the 1973 oil shock, they were still in denial and the Federal government had to kick them in the butt with CAFE to even get them thinking about real engineering innovation. Then the 1979 oil shock was the sputnik moment when foreign car companies and their innovation began to eclipse them.
Supporting corporations over freedom to innovate is the real problem. Not so much the lack of respect of engineers and scientists, IMHO.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
I have been trying to get Shea in Highlands Ranch to name new streets after top teachers, scientists, and engineers. I have written and suggested that 'I live at the corner of Watson and Crick' has a cool sounds to it. How about I live on Einstein Way? Or how about "Hawkin's String"?
Not a thing from them.
America needs to start small and work back up to regain this. But by naming roads after scientist and Engineers, we do not just honor these ppl. Instead, we will see children looking up the meaning of the roads on the net and finding out about these legendary individuals.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Think of all those lucrative Intelligent Design research positions that American students can fill upon graduation.
I think the author of the article makes an astoundingly poor conclusion. In reality, America is losing its technical prowess, not due to engineers being labeled as geeks/outsiders, but because engineering jobs are being shipped overseas. Engineering jobs are being given to India, China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. Since government has rewarded industry in terms of tax breaks for offshoring jobs and other travesties, there is little or no incentive to go through the hard work and schooling to become an engineer when there is a dearth of jobs available. America is a service economy and a service economy is essentially third world stagnation.
Any engineer or scientist who doesn't want the responsibility can easily duck it, and usually does. They know doing an honest job of it is hard work. They know leaders are targets. And there is an unending supply of loudmouthed suckers who will leap at a chance to be The Man because they think "it's good to be the king", think they'd enjoy calling the shots. They think the ones doing it now are a bunch of idiots and doing better than them will be easy. Or they don't give a damn, and just want the bigger paycheck. All the engineers have to do is be quiet, and the loudmouth will look proactive, "can do", and energetic. The higher ups or customers will fall for it almost every time. Once in a leadership position, they find it very convenient to blame problems on the "incompetent" engineers, as if they could do any better. Everyone else sees the bosses slanging the engineers, so what to they do? Pile on of course. Galling to work under someone who has no clue how hard or easy the work is, and who has caused many of the problems being blamed on the engineers. As if mere technical problems aren't plenty hard enough, have to deal with all the politicking too.
The opinionated loudmouths are the ones who shouldn't be leading, but they end up in a disproportionate number of leadership positions. Even when the engineer wants to take on the responsibility, it's tough to compete with the flashy, smooth-talking, boot licking Man with a Plan who understands the Realities of Business. And if the quiet engineer somehow wins the job anyway, then this guy is a constant thorn in the side. He's angry, and he's looking for any chance to take the engineer down. And being the sort of fool he is, he may well do it even if that leads to disaster, and gets everyone fired or causes the company to tank.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Critics of its education system deplore divisive schooling oblivious to science and technology as well as business and economy:
The left-wing agenda behind proposed solutions does not take the truth out of the deficiencies identified in their argument.
As a matter of fact much of Europe has long suffered from a "brain drain" to the U.S. perceived to promise more recognition (and reward) in scientific careers.
just look how China's political system has benefited.
Just look at how China's economy has benefited.
The popular belief these days is that everyone is allowed to a have 'democratic' opinion on any subject regardless if they have any clue as to what they are talking about
These links may also be enlightening:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/12/confident-dumb-peopl.html
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_Effect
I don't understand the problem - if engineers were so useful, entrepreneurs would pay a premium for them, increasing the pay of engineers& making them more respected in our materialistic society.
So lemme see, the engineers do all the work, get none of the credit, are paid almost nothing in relative terms, all while working massive overtime in the process. Hell yeah! Sign me up!
AC because I haven't retired yet.
Here in Quebec there is an order of engineers and laws that say any design data (i.e. "drawings") that specify how to build something that affects public safety has to be signed by a member of the order. Problem is, huge swaths of industry don't follow the law. Aerospace, for example, my industry. I have no idea how they get away with it legally.
If engineers really wanted to force the issue they would have to make it political. I'm pretty sure that public opinion would support an argument that says only qualified people should design airplanes (for example) the same way only qualified people can be your doctor. It's not really that simple, but it could be simplified as such to achieve public support.
People don't know what engineers do. What they should think when they hear the term is "someone who designs stuff that will kill you if it doesn't work right". Again, oversimplification, but it's what could be done if the will existed to do it.
The problem is the engineering community contains a lot of people who wouldn't qualify to be professional engineers in the legal sense. And industry has lot's of counter-incentive to it. And engineering schools feed off tuition of the not-so-well-qualified. But at the end of the day, reality is that engineers could wield a big stick should they ever choose to do so as a community.
When you sit on your ass all day consuming media and iGizmos and outsource everything you don't want to do to third world countries.
What era exactly are you talking about, because back when the arabs mattered, Mohammed had not yet been born. For that matter, mass migrations over the centuries make it pretty sure that whatever groups lived in region X, doesn't live there anymore.
You are familiar with for instance with Alexander the Great? A greek. Well sorta, from the bad side of greece. So to what racial group do you attribute the results of his conquests? Who are his true descendants? He roamed around the mediterenian to India, spreading a different way of thinking that mixed with the local ways. Global trade happened a LOT earlier then most people assume.
Islam is a fate that not only came later but was preceded by mass genocide and mass migration. The persians? They were destroyed. It is as idiotic to claim that Muslims == Persians as it is to link the average fat American with the original indian tribes.
Before you try learning from history, make sure you are reading the adult version, not the sing along version from Animaniacs.
If the US wants to study history, look to England and how it tore itself apart post WW2, unable to accept the new realities of the modern world were socialism and capitalism constantly interact not to create the perfect society but the society that never goes to far down anyone single path at the cost of everything else.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Overall, the US mechanisms for innovation... CHINA!! BE AFRAID! ... demand based economies and access to capital... CHINA!! CHINA CHINA CHINA! ... centers of excellence like Silicon Valley that show no signs of slowing... CHINA! CHINA HAS PEOPLE THAT CAN USE COMPUTERS! OH NOES!
If I wanted to listen to Fox News, I'd listen to Fox News.
The IEEE tracks salaries in electrical engineering. Around 1970, engineers and lawyers made about the same amount of money. Real estate agents were down at the level of used car salespeople.
The US does not need more scientists and engineers. If it did, salaries would go up.
Fact is that a lot of western core techonolgy did NOT come from the US but from Europe especially England. The US just funded the nazi's long enough so that britain had to give up all its tech for free to buy expensive support. Oh that is a bit paranoid but the fact is that countless technology the US used to build their post WW2 empire did not come from the US.
Neither did pardoning nazi war criminals and setting them up with a life of luxury as a reward for working not just Jews and such but US soldiers to death help the US get into space first.
So what really is this lead this article is talking about? Japan has long been the place for the latest gadgets. They laugh at our mobile phones as being hoplessly out of date. American cars have never been thought of as high tech by anyone.
Trolling?A bit perhaps BUT there is a reason: How can you judge yourself if your self image is warped. And god knows the US self image is warped. Part of the reason is that the US is incredible self-centered. It is not just ego, it is practical things. As a dutch citizen I grew up in a world where if you wanted to watch a 2nd tv station you watched a foreign channel. Being exposed to different cultures was the norm even for mass media. This is ACTUALLY changing right now, more and more TV is dubbed in a nation that always used subtitles even for children.
But surely watching Magnum P.I. is not the same as truly experiencing another culture? No but it is the closest most of us will ever get. It helps the tiniest bit to get your head around the idea that there is more then one way that leads to rome and that for someone else, that other road might be faster. Think of it, what is the best way to get from Amsterdam to Rome? We can measure this and come up with pefect road. Now is that also the perfect road for someone in Berlin? No? How can that be? We found the perfect road, how can anything else possibly come close or even be better for you?
Americans believe that American Way Of Life is perfect not just for them but for everyone and they get very suprised when they find out other people disagree. Que countless wars to liberate people that then went about killing their liberators.
If Americans want to do some soul searching, they first need to stop reading their own history books and read some foreign ones. The more they upsetting the better. Just to get a different perspective. Only the can you start to look at your changing world. And realize, that it really hasn't been changing all that much.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Salesman & marketing pukes run my company that was founded & ran for it's first 50 years by engineers. Now we do nothing unless it's chasing the competition. At that point our leaders point & claim how our engineers dropped the ball & did not come through with the innovative product. All the while outsourcing more & more tech work to India & China. & we wonder why kids don't want to go into engineering.
We get no respect. We get little resources. None of them ask for our will listen to our opinions. All we can do it work more hours (to keep our jobs) while looking for work elsewhere. From what I read in my user groups, marketing pukes running the company is becoming quite common.
But you are only telling one side of the story. Somewhere else, your competitors are posting about how they are in a small company dominated by engineers that is making tons of money by being innovative and picking off the customers of their dim-witted competition. The engineers at that company are happy and having fun and loving their job.
In other words, you are working for the wrong company.
Being called geeks/nerds is the result of America's obsessive compulsive need to label and tag each and everything, every action and every person if they remotely exhibit certain commonly shared characteristics. If you ride a bike, you must follow the biker culture. If you go to grad school, you must know what Star Trek is all about.
If I buy Promised Land milk, it's not because I'm making a strong religious statement. It's not because I'm contemplating embracing Jesus and the Christian way. It's because it fucking tastes good.
US is losing a lot more than its edge in innovation by ostracizing "geeks" and "nerds". The sad part is, there won't be enough of the geeks and nerds left to predict what US will end up losing.
Theology is like a weird Non-Euclidian Axiom that morphs everything around it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Never in my life has engineering been seen as a glamorous profession, or a road to riches. Back in the early 80s when I was in school, if you told someone you were an engineer at best you'd get a little respect for being able to do something not everyone could. But you didn't get the kind of personal interest you' get if you said you were pre-med. Even if you were *pre-law*, people assumed you might be headed for great things, maybe even fabulous wealth and prestige, although that was highly unlikely. If you were an engineering student, people would assume that you were headed for a comfortable, middle-class suburban lifestyle with well above median income, but nothing like riches.
And that assumption was not only accurate, it was good for engineering as a profession.
Engineering was something you did because you had an affinity for it. You weren't persuaded to take it up, you must needed to know the effort you put into learning it would be repaid with a career. Now there's a lot more effort put into teaching elementary student about what engineering is like, which is a good thing, but no effort like that will ever do as much as the prospect of a steady career with plenty of good jobs.
Up until the 70s it was common to spend one's entire career in a single company, or perhaps no more than three or four. Now it's as common to change careers as it was once to change jobs.
Until the end of the Cold War, the engineering job market (and physics job market as well) was supported by projects undertaken for national prestige. After the Cold War, we looked for a "peace dividend" -- in other words we wanted to cash out of our investments in our national future. Free trade was part of that. The ideology of free trade is anti-nationalistic. The global system works better, produces more wealth, when trade barriers are removed. But if you are a country that had amassed as much wealth as the US, there was nothing that you could do that couldn't be done more cheaply elsewhere.
That includes innovation.
Innovation is a type of labor that can be purchased like any other kind of labor. So really there is at present no more reason for America to be a center of innovation than there is for America to be a center of manufacturing. There is no reason for young Americans to train themselves in disciplines that won't offer them careers.
The only reason to intervene in this natural course of events is nationalistic, the desire to make Americans as a people better paid than their counterparts elsewhere.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They are the last people to touch a product, and it's typically Marketting + Sales that runs the company, not just marketting pukes. Sales people know what customers are asking for (not what they need) and will "align the business to consumer demand" it takes a visionary to see what people need and create it.
IBM owns the patents on Innovations in US
The slashdot story comes from this article in Forbes. As expected, the forbes article is just another cookie-cutter pro-H1B propaganda article. Same old "arguments." Basically, they are saying "because of the desperate shortages of US tech workers, we need to temporarily allow more H1Bs, just until US schools get up to speed."
This corporate propaganda has been fully disproved many times, but the flood of these cookie-cutter articles, continues. Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.
From Forbes:
Jan 20, 2011
Danger: America Is Losing Its Edge In Innovation
* Improve K-12 science and math education.
* Invest in long-term basic research.
* Attract and retain the best and brightest students, scientists and engineers in the U.S. and around the world.
* Create and sustain incentives for innovation and research investment.
http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/01/20/danger-america-is-losing-its-edge-in-innovation/
Here is the real situation:
Duke University study reporting no shortage of US Engineers:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Study-There-Is-No-Shortage-of-US-Engineers/
PISA Scores Show Demography Is Destiny In Education Too—But Washington Doesn’t Want You To Know
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm
After reading the Forbes article, I feel only half the story is being told. The author speaks about shortcomings in science & engineering education & lack of respect for those who work in those fields. Little is said about conditions of employment within those fields.
After 40 years working in science & engineering, I see the technically talented being treated as commodity workers, easily replaced. I see project lead positions requiring one to spend 99% of time wrestling with Microsoft Project [or worse] administrative tools. I see fewer senior science & technology positions which earn wage on a par with even the lowest administrative positions. When those positions exist, they are filled by the business-politics astute speakers of buzzwords who are rarely good practitioners of technology. The Dilbert cartoon is real for way too many of us yet the article mentions none of this.
America's best & brightest students realize early on that doing the hard work of science & technology isn't the road fame & fortune. Until American corporations figure that out & correct it, we'll continue our innovationless ways. Unless you count "sub-prime mortgages" as innovation...
I'd have liked to post this over at the Forbes comments page, only I have no interest in creating yet another stupid "account" just to leave an obvious comment!
Regulatory capture on steroids.
In an important way I think you are right, "government" is the problem.
The problem though is the fact that what we have now is a fake "government" rather than the real thing.
(having read your comments) Could it be said that you don't favor *any* entity having influence over the direction of society, and the attendant economic impacts?
You seem like a smart guy, so I have to believe that you already know a sad truth: Nature abhors a vacuum, and a power vacuum is the most abhorrent of all.
Somebody or a group WILL wield that power. The only question is whether it will be managed inadequately, and with much error, by people whose names are known and can be fired at the next election, or whether the power will be wielded by those who have absolutely zero accountability.
Lately, we're headed down the "zero accountability" path way too fast. I am 54, and I had hoped the fall wouldn't come until a bit later in my life. Unfortunately it's thundering down upon us way faster than I expected. My wife and I are wondering whether our lifetime of savings will be stolen by the plutocrats who have grabbed the power when we will most need those resources as our competitive strength wanes through the natural effects of our aging.
For worse or better, we're no longer "Dagny Taggart" or "John Galt". Sometime in the next 10-30 years, we will need to depend on the services of others, paid for by our savings. And the way things seems to be headed, just when we won't have the strength to fight back, we won't even be able to fall back on the resources that we've saved. My wife and I have never saved less than 40% of our incomes as an engineer (me) and clinical psychologist (her), and the last few years have been *brutal* for people who don't have government support (meaning, for example, the favorable tax treatment given to people who don't make a goddamned thing).
Regulatory capture carried to an extreme.
I've been to the Bay Area, Hong Kong various cities in China (e.g. Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc.) before. I'm in Hong Kong right now but I'm going back to the Bay Area next month.
Bay Area: Engineers are rather well respected from what I can see. My sample may be biased though since I've been working with the upper layer of the valley so far (VCs, CxOs, Stanford PhDs, etc.) But hey, if your company just exited for a few million dollars, the local media and TechCrunch cares. You open a party and your friends love you.
Hong Kong: If you're an engineer (even a CTO "engineer"), you're a loser, period. Nobody ever heard of a VC or angel investor here - these things takes time to pay off, all people want is fast money. I can go rant about HK's economic environment until my face turns blue but suffice to say, innovation, technology, entrepreneurship are thinly veiled insult words here meaning you can't make fast and easy money. Some of my friends got funding of >$100M HKD and the media never paid any attention. Someone else just exited for $1B HKD last week and the mainstream media just don't care.
China: Yes there're many high tech firms in Beijing and Shenzhen and engineers do get much higher salaries (5x - 100x, depending on who you're comparing to) compared to the average uneducated worker (China has high literacy level but very low education level). Things is.. that's only for the lucky people who attended the top Chinese universities (e.g. Tsinghua) and succeeded in getting a job and work permit in the high tech cities only. If you aren't one of those 1-in-a-1000 lucky guys... sorry man but your life is gonna suck. Even if you are one of the lucky engineers - the top of the food chain in China is being a government official, not a C-Suite executive, and 100% not an engineer. The real elites in China aren't looking to become an engineer, but rather join the government and make a few really fast million bucks there.
So, from what I can tell... US's fear on losing its tech edge to Asia is highly overrated. If you really want the top tech companies, engineers and scientists in the world, the people have to love doing it and are financially allowed to keep doing it out of love (not every engineer is a tech company CxO or got hired by Google, you see...). That's simply not happening in China nor Hong Kong. The thing about Chinese engineers being ultra competitive is way overblown - if you're constantly under threat of being evicted from your ultra-expensive (compared to your tiny salary) flat, and your flat sucks - you'd be aggressive too. But it also makes you very short sighted because all you can think of is how to get a nicer house to live in, but not how to make the next Google or figure out how to build rockets cheap. So you're surely not gonna be doing better scientific research, opening a novel tech startup, or doing an open source project. Copying and cutting corners, on the other hand, works short term, but that's doesn't get China any edge ahead of the US.
Horrible like the Jews and the Christians, or for other, secular reasons? In my view, any non-science cult is horrible.
"Theology is little more than a branch of literary criticism. The first difference is that the former's range of books is far narrower. The second is that among the works in its syllabus are precisely none that would ever be read for enjoyment - whereas its secular cousin includes almost a dozen, by some reckonings."
-- Oscar Wilde
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can make more money and be happier raising pigs than I can in the tech or science industries. All without even dealing with government subsidies or the like. I like providing customer support to our livestock - they're much easier to deal with. And if they get intractable, there's always the trip to butcher.
...what about the fact that US kids are way too stupid to become engineers ?
Based on your very loose definition, a painter would be considered an engineer.
"The profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind"
Most of those tasks don't even count as engineering. Even designing your circuit may not be considered engineering if it was simply a bunch of parts connected to meet some desired functionality. It would be considered engineering if you designed it to meet a set of specifications, such as perform with a given failure rate under an expected set of environmental parameters.
I'm a software developer for a living, but most of my coding doesn't even come close to being considered engineering. I write code to specifications based on experience only. I don't use math to determine how the code should be written, and there are not statistics involved in the QA process.
These problems will never stop as long as there's pointless discussions about whether "more or less government" is needed, or whether "government is good or bad."
Government can be good or bad, in different situations, depending on how it functions.
Asking whether we need more or less government is like asking whether you need more or less brain function--it's the wrong question.
The problem today is not that there is too little government, or too much, but that the government is regulating too much where it shouldn't be, and not regulating enough where it should be.
For example, the government really should be instituting more regulations that encourage competition--e.g., not approving mergers that will result in vertical monopolies, insisting on net neutrality to encourage competition over infrastructure that had large amounts of public funding to institute anyway, reinstitute laws that reduce financial risk structurally (by preventing banks from gambling your funds away), etc.
They also need to deregulate in other ways. They need to eliminate or sharply restrict patents, copyright, etc. back to levels where it historically was, and they also need to reduce corporate taxes.
The problem is that large corporations are too immune from competition, and it's too difficult for new businesses to start. There's also too little economic incentive to start manufacturing in the US.
None of these things will get done as long as we continue to have these stupid discussions about whether government is all bad or all good--it's not government, its how it functions.
FWIW, I also think some of this all is inevitable, and the US is partially a victim of its own success. Economists have been saying for years that many areas of the world were temporarily impaired simply because of WWII, and the US was enjoying success largely as a result of everyone else's problems. As they've recovered, the US has had to compete more.
Also, I do think the US has been very successful in planting the seeds of capitalism and democracy elsewhere. Now we're reaping what we sowed--we asked for more competition, and we have it (I'm not saying this is a bad thing, mind you--just that to me it strikes me as odd that some people have been asking for decades for greater prosperity elsewhere, and now we have it).
Don't you have to be at the gym in 26 minutes?
I believe all the thinkers have joined the strike
Where are they? The last time we had a scientific media darling who was worth his salt was the 80's. Now we're left with *shudder* Neil Degrasse Tyson.
Perhaps it is the other way around. Engineers aren't entering politics because they don't respect politicians.
America is losing it's edge in innovation, but it has nothing to do with engineers and scientists not getting any respect. There are two sources of research dollars -- government and private sector. Government has been cutting back, except in key areas. It is hard to get government funding for research, particularly with such a huge deficit.
On the other hand, private funding of research has all but dried up. This has been going on for a number of years. Why? Because business, today, is all about making a quick buck. Research may or may not pay off. Why invest millions in something that may or may not prove profitable, when for the same amount of money, you can purchase another business, carve it up and sell the pieces for a profit.
With calls for smaller government, it doesn't look likely that research dollars will be increasing any time soon. In the current business climate, it also doesn't look like the private sector will step up to the plate and risk anything.
This isn't something new, it's been going on since the 1980s.
In the UK, we elected a scientifically trained leader. They did more harm to industry, art, science and education than any since - until now anyway.
Who was that? Margeret Thatcher. You may love her on your side of the Atlantic, it was not so much fun here!
Definitely, we all need artists and engineers in government. Just be very careful when you choose!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The only reason to intervene in this natural course of events is nationalistic, the desire to make Americans as a people better paid than their counterparts elsewhere.
Not quite. The only reason to intervene in this unnatural course of events is to keep American and it's citizens from becoming a third world country. America has already lost it's manufacturing base, it has lost or is losing it's research and technology base and there aren't enough agricultural jobs to support it's citizenry.
Look at Japan after WWII. It rebuilt its economy from the ground up. Japanese businesses were willing to forgo short term profits for long term prosperity. During the same time period, US businesses started to maximize short term profits erroneously thinking they were the only players in town.
A lot of people got rich in the 80s and 90s following this thought process. They didn't do it by producing anything, not even research. They did it by buying up profitable companies, splitting them up and selling the pieces for more than the whole.
Choose to invest in the long term and the board of directors will find somebody else to run the company.
To sum it up, short term greed won out over long term prosperity.
Seriously, start your own and run it the way that it SHOULD be ran. That is the only solution for this nightmare that has us in a vice. Basically, between politicians, sales, Marketing, and Accounting, we are witnessing the wholesale destruction of America. The way out, is to fire up our own companies and get Americans to buy those products while re-building manufacturing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lawyers and accountants are in charge. Science schmiance. If it was worth anything, it would pay better. We have found that you can be a so-so attorney with a patent protfolio, and sue the crap out of the super-smart innovative scientist-engineer type (see NTP vs RIM), and even if you have no real idea what to do with the patents you have on paper, and have no means or desire to actually build anything with them, you can sue and make hundreds of millions of dollars from the geeky-science-engineer, and while they slave away making you a fortune, you can sit on the beach, and threaten to take their entire business. Its even easier than getting a government contract if your name is Halliburton (and shock-and-awe! pays better!). White collar means never having to get your hands dirty, and never touch anything other than paper. Engineering and science are what servants and those people who wear blue colored shirts do. If something doesn't work, pick up the phone and yell at them. If its a bad decision on the people who wear the white shirts, then yell at them and make them put up with it. If you think someone in a 3rd world country can do it for less money, fire them all and give the 3rd world people the job. Its the American way. America has its patent portfolio to keep the rest of the world in line. The only hard part is enforcement.
That's stupid. "Engineer", like "doctor" is a reserved title in many societies. In Quebec you can't call yourself an engineer unless you have a degree.
This is simply not true. Quebec is just about the only place in the world where the word engineer by itself is protected, otherwise, Microsoft would not be able to get away with certifying monkeys as MSCEs (the E stands for Engineer).
The word engineer as the spelling implies denotes someone who operates an engine. It used to mean train driver. Stop trying to redefine & protect an existing word. Set up a standards body & go with chartered engineer, professional engineers, etc.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
8 of the top 9... blah blah blah. More bullshit statistics. What they don't tell you about is the hundreds of thousands of people denigrated into nothing because they failed to get 100% on a test at the age of 8 or 12 or whatever. These people have no say in what they do for a living, just as the people that got the 100% correct have no say in what they do for a living. Oppression, slavery in a brutal sense. You would be surprised if you give someone a choice of living or dying, what they are capable of. Oh... suddenly little Johnny is really good at math. Imagine that. The funny thing about the whip cracking tactics they use on their people is that it destroys everything else including their culture.
FYI, it is only the media that makes men out of slaves lately, namely China. China is a slave nation, slaves to their communist masters. Chinese media pretends they offer men and women of the highest caliber. But all they offer is slaves to a trade. I can tell you 8 out of 9 slaves want to be free, not a product of a communist regime. The other slave has only been brainwashed as a new communist leader. Why don't you tell us the real reason the "8 of the top 9" people statistic is bullshit? It's because you don't go anywhere in China unless you are a devote member of the communist party. Who gets to be members? People who got 100% correct.
Maybe the competition isn't in the US.
32nd? such a powerful economy and shitty rating , guess that means hte way your doing it works....KEEP up the good ( LOL ) work.
To be honest, I think US has actually advantage in leadership that there only few engineers. Engineers rarely make good leaders or can understand what customers want.
But I also agree that lack of the is a bad thing. It can be partly because its 'hard' field of expertise. You need to do math and actually be precise.
Compare that to many business degrees. In all respect to many business people, their degrees are too often very abstract things you can pull off with good overall knowledge and minimal math.
Its ridicuously easy to get business degrees compared to many technical or nature science degress. So what I am saying, is that since people can get good salary with finance and business degrees quite easily, few care to go to more technical fields. In developing countries and some export oriented countries(like Germany, Japan, Finland or China) the case is bit diffrent. There are more engineers because there is more need for them more and less people with fancy business degrees because there are less jobs for them.
In overall I think its good if country needs engineers, it tells there is manufacturing and development in country. But I dont want them to be leaders.
Leaders have to be flexible, understand other humans well and be creative, and thats not many times what engineers are about.
Many engineers don't make good business or people leaders in my experience. Much better chance with those flimsy business degrees.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Excellent post and excellent article reference. I hope they find a way to mod you to 6.
Table-ized A.I.
It's 2011. We're not doing bad. I know I've heard the same thing through the nineties and eighties, and could probably find examples from the seventies and sixties.
It was clear that when the opinions of engineers were not even worth considering at NASA that they were considered worthless just about everywhere in the USA. In that case it was people from a finance or politics background instead of marketing but with the same outcome.
America: increasingly second rate power, peopled by third rate people (from the 3rd world) with a 25th rate education (that's where America is on the education league table).
As the third worlders rush in and the first worlders stop having kids the whole thing is a done deal. Working for China is America's fate.
A Hispanic America is likely to become number one in drug production however. So there is some positive news.
What a bunch of drivel. There is no reason to believe that engineers or scientists are any good as politicians, so I don't know why the author brings it up. Actually, I would assume that engineers and scientists probably aren't any good at politics in general.
His article is full of weak arguments based on unsubstantiated claims like "many of those teaching math and science [in public education] have never taken a university-level course in those subjects." Pure B.S. Yet, somehow he, an aerospace engineer, is found to be unqualified to teach 8th grade math in his state. Well, maybe that's because K-12 requires an education certificate. Is he incapable of completing a credential program? Who would've thought that just knowing a subject matter doesn't mean you'll know the first thing about teaching it to others?
I also like the irrelevant statistics such as this gem, "U.S. consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than the U.S. government devotes to energy R&D." So, what? That comparison does not help us determine whether or not the government is spending enough money on energy research or whether where it is spending money is a good use. (BTW: you can have my potato chips when you pry them from my cold dead hands!)
And that is just what Corporate America did: Shipped the plant floor overseas, so designers and engineers here in America are now living in a fictional universe with a significant delay before their ideas meet the harsh realities of production.
Likewise ideas that come from the plant floor? lollll...why would they come back to America, especially from a nation like China where neither the state's nor the people's goals have anything at all to do with making America or American corporations...well, American CEOs and major shareholders...any better/wealthier, but rather consist solely of having America bankroll their climb to global supremacy or wealth, respectively?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
In India and some other countries, any college graduate is often called an "engineer". By this definition, all our politicians are engineers. Similarly, the definition of an "intellectual" is often very broad in non-Western nations, encompassing businessmen, plumbers, or nurses.
But going by the narrow definition of "engineer", do we really want geeks with no people skills, no training in humanities or social science, to become our nation's leaders?
"Any answers?"
That all these deeds have been perpetrated by Jews and Christians too. And, Buddhists and people of other faiths too for that matter. Simply put, thou shalt not have faith in faiths.
As an American with an engineering degree who has been living abroad for more than 10 years, I wholeheartedly agree. It's one of the prime reasons I left in the first place, engineers are just not respected... or rather valued enough, in the US. I lay part of the blame on the religious right-wing mentality of many in the US, where religion, or merely saying you are religious, irregardless of actually going to church, holds a far more important role in society than fact-based fields of science and engineering. The separation of church and state, as intended by the founding fathers, practically no longer exists. The broken two-party political system and corruption of politics and business (lobbies have far too much control and influence) are also big turn-offs in the US. In every measure of quality of life, I am happier and more content that when I was living in the US. I am treated fairer by my employer and have more rights as an employee, I work fewer hours per week than my American counterparts and have far more time off and paid vacation each year.
Bottom line, I live to work, rather than work to live. The US is falling behind and is rapidly losing competitiveness with the rest of the world. I only hope things will turn around, but I have seen no signs of it recently.
I guess Atlas shrugged..!
The article states : "These nations and many others have rightly concluded that the way to win in the world economy is by doing a better job of educating and innovating. And America? We’re losing our edge. Innovation is something we’ve always been good at. Until now, we’ve been the undisputed leaders when it comes to finding new ideas through basic research, translating those ideas into products through world-class engineering, and getting to market first through aggressive entrepreneurship."
This seems incredibly short sighted to me. I mean yeah we are losing our high-technology jobs, but isn't this the same as losing our low-tech manufacturing jobs. Do we still need to be the worlds largest exporter of technology? Honestly I don't know, but this article takes for granted that these things are necessary for America to leader of the world. There is a good chance to do damage here if we get it wrong, what if for the sake of having a "strong and powerful industrial base" we started focusing on massive amounts of low tech manufacturing again. I mean America could be self-sufficient again! Of course that stupid but it sounds logical right?
If I had to bet money I would say America is right on course for remaining world leader. By focusing on finance we can control the worlds economy and just buy all the high tech shit we need, just like we have been buying all the low tech shit we need for decades. Finance pays better than engineering in America for a reason. And if in the future finance in no longer king we can just shed our skin again.
This should come as no surprise, I think. I can spot three reasons without even trying:
1. In the West (not just the US) people with a high education are regarded with something only just short of barefaced contempt. At best you are a nerd or boffin, at worst some sad wanker that has studied something idiotic and wasted taxpayers' money.
2. The celebrity culture: we see all the time that in order to be successful, you have to be "a celebrity" - ie someone too stupid to make much of their life except appear on "I'm a sad egomaniac, get me out of here"
3. Objectively speaking, you can go to university for 5 - 10 years, study hard under unfavourable conditions, work in your spare time to make enough money and still end up have a huge debt, which you then spend the next decade paying off on while holding a so-so job. Or you can learn something fairly easy and useful, like repairing cars, get paid while you are an apprentice, and then after 3 years work in job that pays as much or more. Plus: no debt, so you can buy house, car etc straight away.
Based on these circumstances, which would a sensible young person choose?
Just a quick question, and this is for everyone not just Americans (The same attitude is prevalent in Africa)
Why is being Elitist or intellectual considered a bad thing?
When I visited the US last year I was SHOCKED about the totally broken infrastructure. Telefones, streets, public security, schools, this is all at a level I would have expected in a third world country. A poor one. Greed, corruption and indifference everywhere. Yes, there are some active people trying to make things better. But those few do it on their own, without help and backing and are not even a drip on a hot stone.
The OSCE estimates that the US would have to pay 130 billion dollars every year for 40 years to get the same infrastructure most euopean and asians countries have.
Or like a friend from russia said: The streets in the US look pretty much like in the sowjet union a year before collaps of the system.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
We are making breakthroughs all the time in America, a lack of foreign secret stealing, PC spouting 'espionage specialist' so called scientists and engineers
is only effective in the wholesale robbery of our IP and Research-development..
The chinese just built the J-20, the russians built a PAC-FA and people are slow to see that both are similar to an F-22 because
of our governments lax protection of our IP and R&D!!!
WE DO NOT NEED foreigners involved in our research and sciences!!! We need more protection over IP
and research\development that is paid for by the American taxpayer.. I'm tired of seeing our IP and R&D leaving
the country because of scumbags and criminals placed in strategic spots, all the while protected by PC morons!!
I don't understand why the PC media keeps spinning this
lie that we need scientists to be imported and our secrets stolen..
It is totally idiotic and wreckless!
Here's a hint! why don't our media centers pay attention to the topic of why foreign countries
like 'china-russia and others' do not need imported engineers and scientists?
Why aren't American scientists and engineers accepted to work with a foreign country's secretive IP and R&D!! Where is that story!!!!
Please MSM get a life!!
This is UNIX!
It seems that the article's author leaps to the conclusion that a lack of engineers and scientists in politics is a bad thing for innovation. I would like to see evidence of that.
Engineers and scientists are trained to work within reality and provable fact. In other words truth. Most people in politics are lawyers and businessmen. A lawyers business is based on lies and deceit. A businessman's business is based on profit at any cost including screwing your customers and your competition. Now would you like laws and government based on reality and fact or what we got a government based on lies, deceit, and screwing the people?
Engineers and scientists never turn theory into laws or standards until the theory is 100% provable. Look at the "Laws of Physics" all are 100% provable and work. Lies and deceit have no place in Science. Engineers are trained to freely share ideas among themselves and to come up with safe and reliable standards. Not to hide the facts for a buck.
Now who would you want to make the laws of the land?
There ya go I used the scientific method of cause and effect to support this argument.
And I think it's the same in all Europe...
We are not well paid, we work a lot, we had to study a lot... and taking this into consideration it's normal that kids prefer to live an easier life.
Who is to blame here?
Amen - most CEO's nowdays do not come from science or engineering they come from sales and marketing - since they are associated with "revenue" they claim huge commisions (engineer orginizations are "cost centers") and leverage the P&L to promote themselves. Ironically my CEO says good products made sales easy - his background is marketing/sales yet he is the CEO - the scientist/engineer(s) who made the good products which allowed him to get his CEO job were outsourced to china...
Keep your innovation I don't want to spend the next decade in court for a piece of something that might appear to be similar to something else. So until the US pulls its own head out of its gaping ass I will continue to innovate in private and keep it to myself.
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
I guess people like to make bald statements ("Eight of nine top political posts (in the PRC) are held by engineers.
Sheesh; that was easy to check; and wrong. Even the "nine" is problematic. What's real is:
Hu JinTao - Gen secy of CPC, Pres of PRC; hydraulic eng. ...Wen JiaBao - premier of PRC; PhD in geology
Xi JinPing - first secy of CPC, VP of PRC; chem eng.
Not bad. But from there on, they're business-school degrees (albeit one from LSE) plus the minEd has a history degree.
A long way down the list (way past "nine") is Chen Zhu - minHealth; PhDs in microbiology and medicine from Shanghai and Université Paris. Curiously, not a CPC member.
The link that Tablizer posted: Web of Trust (WOT FireFox addon) flags it as a KNOWN BAD SITE with a POOR REPUTATION.
APK
"Don't you have to be at the gym in 26 minutes?" - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 23, @04:26PM (#34975884)
Per my subject-line above, no, & where did you get THAT idea from? Heh - My days of being a "jock"? Man - They are truly long, Long, LONG over & for MANY years now, more than 2 decades++ ago (@ least in organized sport)!
(However/Also - When I work-out, it's done here @ home (steel free-weights)).
APK
P.S.=> Still: Overall? Again - The future's not in your body though folks, as I said in conclusion earlier: I feel, that for MOST folks? That's in their heads... not their torso & limbs etc./et al! apk
Oh, I'm sorry, in general, neither companies nor the government want to put *real* *money*, and *real* agendas, into R&D, the Republicans and Tea Partiers claim that business will do it, and business, run by MBA's, are thinking this quarter, period, and r&d is *such* a waste of money, I mean, it may not produce results for years, and basic research, why, what ROI is there on that, I mean, really....
Meanwhile, the US is utterly dependent on RUSSIA to get people into orbit....
mark
When stupid crap like Survivor, "Jerseylicious" and other MTV pap get on television, that's what kids want to be. They want to be sassy reality TV show stars with glamorous jobs like "hair dresser" and "image-consultant". It's garbage.
Back in the day we had good science fiction. Now science fiction on television is a rarity. The Scifi channel decided it didn't want to be 'nerdy' anymore. It's entertainment that fosters ambition, and today our kids want to marry rich and act like baffoons for millions. Using technology isn't a joy or privelege for them, it's something as dry as making toast.
With a few very notable exceptions, engineers employed in big corporate jobs are not driving serious, world-changing innovation. That's especially true for jobs that are at risk for being outsourced. By definition, if your job can be outsourced, you are not driving innovation.
True innovation is almost always driven by engineers and scientists starting their own companies and creating something new. Andy Grove is right that job creation only comes with the "scaling up" phase, but before a business can scale up it needs to seriously innovate.
From the perspective of innovation it could be argued that it is *good* that entry level engineers are having trouble finding caretaker or straightforward jobs. Perhaps some of them will decide to try that crazy idea they've had for a while, instead of perfecting the rear rocker arm on the latest SUV.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The entire public education structure is broken
Not really. And I say this as a former would-be teacher who bailed because of weaknesses in the system, and of course, as a grown-up student who can now see many flaws in my the education I received.
On the other hand, of course, I actually got a pretty great public education, at the end of which I knew basic Calculus, electronic circuits, Pascal & C, how to use UNIX, basic writing and argument skills, an appreciation for poetry and literature, a little bit about the Spanish language, and college credit for a lot of this (never had to take freshman comp, general biology, american history, and I also had two semesters of Computer Science down). I can come up with examples of holes in my education too, but honestly, with a bit of better counseling from somebody or a better internal compass, I could have *easily* gotten a lot more out of the whole thing -- there was simply a lot stuff on the table that I just left there. All from a state (Utah) that tends to lag in per pupil spending.
The school I did my student teaching had at least that much to offer. Problems, yes, not necessarily the apogee, but pretty good.
Yes, of course there are districts and schools and individuals out there in deeper trouble than I'm describing... enough that reform is a worthy problem. But this idea that it's all broken top to bottom seems fishy to me, and I think it's driven more by a subtle antipathy than actual analysis.
A HS teacher should have at least an MS in the field they teach and not in education.
Credentialism isn't going to save us from any of our current problems. In fact, we probably need less of it: slightly lower barriers to getting into the profession, better evaluation of those already involved.
But even if we were talking about more subtle solutions, a subject-and-practice focused undegrad (augmented with some light pedagogical theory) is going to be as helpful as tacking on an extra two years of study, particularly for the better candidates.
On the teaching side HS should be more like college and less like grade school
Oh, certainly. Probably most importantly in having more time for teachers to refine and practice their subject matter and less time on per-se prep and teaching. Of course, that's going to cost us, particularly if we're also increasing the professionalization of teachers (and compensating accordingly).
Tweet, tweet.
Bah! Our people haven't been the source of our success for over 100 years now. It's the resources and our emphasis on money=success that lets us -- an otherwise largely anti-intellectual, isolationist and jingoistic gathering of rednecks -- think we are the best at everything.
Uh oh, APK is off his meds again.
"Uh oh, APK is off his meds again." - by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, @05:46PM (#34987816)
When you get your PHD in Psychiatry, as well as a license to practice (and a formal examination of myself under professional conditions & settings)? Then, you can dispense your "snap prognosis", there, directed MY way, Dr. Quack (you're the "sidewalk psychoanalyst wannabe" of /.)...
Otherwise? You're, as per your usual, off topic.
APK
Why would anyone be surprised?
The country got to be as successful as it is because the government/corporate plutocracy didn't have the power to fuck things up.
Now, we have the biggest government on the planet, all controlled by corporations, and they're fucking everything up. Why the hell would anybody want to attempt to "innovate" in a sea of regulation, bureaucracy, and corporate BS?
As long as Americans continue to worship their corporate and federal mythology, we're all doomed.
Spelling