Well, There's Your Problem

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I have to admit I am endlessly fascinated by engineering disasters; how and why they happened and how to avoid them. And fortunately, someone has gone ahead and made a podcast for them. I decided to start a thread on them so that the episodes of Well, There's Your Problem could be discussed on the board!
 
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I just really love this podcast for the way that they capture all the essential organised chaos of the engineering process and succinctly describe technical causes of disasters, but also make it perfectly approachable (at least it seems that way) to the layman.
 
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A related video they did on Elon Musk's tunnels and pneumatic tubes, illustrating just how ridiculous all the tech hype really is.
 

PsihoKekec

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Someone came with the term ''technological mysticism'' for the tendency to believe that technology will magically solve the problems, without understanding the limits of technology and the complexity of the problems.
I first encountered the term in some article about Vietnam War and hoe Pentagon bureaucrats believed throwing more shiny new tech will win the war, despite failed strategy.
 
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Someone came with the term ''technological mysticism'' for the tendency to believe that technology will magically solve the problems, without understanding the limits of technology and the complexity of the problems.
I first encountered the term in some article about Vietnam War and hoe Pentagon bureaucrats believed throwing more shiny new tech will win the war, despite failed strategy.

In an atheistic age for some people technology is a direct substitution for religion. However, if you actually have to work in heavy industry you end up with a much more cynical view, of kafkaesque barely-contained complicated systems nobody really understands which are held together by a mass of improvisational effort.
 
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The PatCo SkyBus remains the most amazing of those.
 
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Incidentally, as far as I can tell the author is a moderate republican; he makes fun of both democrats and Sargon of Akkad. This is quite common for white collar technocrats, most everyone I know at work for example holds democratic economic views in contempt but tends to be very moderate otherwise. But he is very pro-public transit.
 
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I wonder if he was being sarcastic. I need to find which part of the video that was in. Regardless, he’s hilarious.
 
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Episode Three! Yay!



The SEPTA Melt-Down, aka Well, There's Your Problem does operational / industrial engineering as a concept.
 
D

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<deleted content>, thank you. I suppose he is something of a socialist... But I don't much care because he's an amazing engineer, or at least the kind which effectively tells stories of engineering to the masses.
 
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To be honest, the commentary is getting a little irritating, so they might be losing their stride, but the lead guy is brilliant at putting engineering problems into plain speak, I want to make sure he gets credit where it's due.
 
D

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*sigh* Indeed it is not. I almost want to start my own, now!
 

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