Luddites Rules

Long before computers went the way of desktops as we know it today, there was mainframe computers; maintained, managed and manufactured by engineers. With these ancient behemoths, we landed man on the moon, built power-stations and International Ballistic Missiles. Why change? It worked, right? Research companies were building the structural analysis programme to end all structural anlysis programmes; it was the equivalent of building the pyramid. There was no going back. Then Bill Gates vapid first product killed the beast. Mainframes were downsizing, Fortran was replaced with C+, BASIC was binned, ASCII was overtaken by true type fonts, and windows for workgroup was born.

Slowly, we realised the endless cycle of revisions that would characterise the Windows business and their associated applications. Engineers like to be experts and know everything first before they play around, so the constant changes and development by Windows, was viewed negatively. Some of the tricks I saw the old boys do on the Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packards in the early 90's were exceptionally well planned and professional effort; they inspired me. Unfortunately, the old boys froze in the glare of the headlights that was the future. The changes in upgrading applications of Word and Excel through the mid-90's was a tsunami of too much information and the old boys just wanted to survive. In succeeding generations, they went on to be the bosses and they had no hand-me down rules and wisdom. Collectively, engineers gave up on discovering how to improve computer competencies, what was the point?

The Research companies 'window'-dressed their structural analysis products. They added reporting features, international code-checking routines, interactive graphics and other user interfaces. I am still surprised how reports are still produced in the laughable ASCII formats. I still know many engineers locked only onto MathCAD, STAADPro and Visio and their hand calculations, churning out volumes of notes.

So for structural engineers with no need to interact with the outside world and relate to the general expectations of computer literacy, engineers became luddites. Luddite is a term given to people not accepting changes in technology. At the time of the Napoleonic wars (1812), workers in Nottingham UK protested the changes in their factories breaking loom machines. It occured over a brief period 1811 to 1813 with roots back to 1770. The government stood up to them and in a mass trial in 1813, it was over with people hanged, imprisoned or deported. Luddism never happened again.

Fifteen years on, we accept our work methods and computer literacy leaves a lot to be desired. It's great we can do 3D analysis and complex studies but we cannot do a simple final product calculation worthy of the quality of the analysis. Look around you at the visible products of your work and ask yourself, would a graduate like to work along side a master, or a Luddite?

One engineering graduate, talks of the culture shock of the drawing office as if they had entered the movie set of the Land before Time, surrounded by dinosaurs in cubicles. Tyrannosaurus Rex tapping on keyboards and thinking a lot. I don't believe we are scary, we are just Luddites, scared of the future but we will overcome and move on. For now, Luddites Rules.