- Joined
- Nov 12, 2017
- Messages
- 391
Fascinating story, TM, thanks for sharing. You seemed to have found your passion early in life and have clearly maintained it. Around here, you're preaching to the choir because we'll just about all agree with you.
I would raise one point, however, and that is that the world has changed. Nowadays, kids DO need tech to succeed. You do not need to know how a phone or computer is made in order to use it and modern kids in today's job market are at a disadvantage if they can't use them. How something is made is of no concern to many of them as long as it works. If you want to work for Google or Facebook or somewhere in the tech industry then you best know how to work with tech or you cannot compete. And you're right. A factory had to build those phones or computers but it took a geek with a computer to design the thing that had to be made by that factory so ...
I recently visited the NASA campus and met some amazing young people there. These are the ultimate tech geeks who not only fully utilize tech stuff but they also use it to build some of the most amazing devices - lunar and Mars rovers, etc. Their 3-D lab has a Bridgeport sitting right next to two 3-D printers. One of their engineers designed and built, BUILT, the miniature lithium batteries that go into a GPS tracker that is strapped to the back of an endangered bird to better understand their movements. I saw so many examples of amazing tech that they built that I can't remember them all. And it was mostly done by young tech heads with a passion for innovation that left me almost speechless.
The way I see it, manufacturing and tech go hand in hand. One builds what the other designs and innovates. Neither can do without the other, and the world is what it is because of this.
Tech and manufacturing must depend on each other, not make one subjugate as demeaning, coarse or common. With say, Garmin as example, both those parties are incredibly successful. STEM education channels too many where they'll not be fulfilled, satisfied as employees.
It's not that they all need know how something is made.
The economy isn't protected by endless developers, and they aren't all going to be hired into tech straight out. Hands on captivates a portion, generating durable goods; battalions of developers can't deliver product.
That way, far more people are employed. I'd say world hasn't changed in reality.
What has happened though; a couple desks, PC's and printers in a rented office pass for an operative business.
Real business is capital investment, real estate, buying materials, shipping products, holding patents, inventory, subcontractors etc.
The income and dispersal of one is very short, the other entirely circular nigh impossible to detect how long it is.