Lucky Strikes...Again: (Feats and Foibles of Engineers)

0780304330......Page 1
Front Matter......Page 3
Contents......Page 7
Foreword......Page 11
Preface......Page 15
Part 1 About Engineers......Page 19
The Joy of Engineering......Page 29
The Image Cap......Page 32
The High-Tech Appeal......Page 35
Celebrities as Engineers......Page 38
Layers of Ability......Page 41
Engineers: Dearth or Glut?......Page 44
The Best and the Brightest......Page 47
Engineers: Born or Made?......Page 50
The Curriculum Dilemma......Page 53
Giving Away the Store......Page 56
Part 2 So What if Engineers Can't Talk or Write?......Page 59
The Gong Show......Page 71
Feedback......Page 74
The Banquet Speech......Page 77
Sliding By......Page 80
Not Ready for Prime Time......Page 83
Credentials: Who Needs Them?......Page 86
A Way with Words......Page 89
The Papermill......Page 92
Part 3 The Fickleness of Technology......Page 95
Rampant Technology......Page 111
The Incredible Shrinking Transistor......Page 114
What's Real Anymore?......Page 117
An Engineer in the Land of Lilliput......Page 120
Goodbye, Heathkit......Page 123
The Electronic Hobbyist......Page 126
The Paper Airplane......Page 129
A (Very Modern) Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court......Page 132
Coping with Complexity......Page 135
Software Productivity......Page 138
What's Bugging Us?......Page 141
Plugging In......Page 145
The Wisdom of the Net......Page 148
The Gigabit Network: Who Needs It?......Page 151
Part 4 Playing the Corporate Came......Page 155
The Bean Counters......Page 169
Corporate Communication......Page 172
Management Power......Page 175
Toward Dynamic Demos......Page 178
The Fashionable Thing......Page 181
Leapfrog a Generation!......Page 184
Proprietary Information......Page 187
Tahiti or O'Hare?......Page 190
Committees and Canines......Page 193
Turf......Page 196
That Dreaded NIH Syndrome......Page 199
Finger-Pointing......Page 202
Part 5 Looking at Life......Page 205
The Geniuses Among Us......Page 219
Diminishing Dinosaurs......Page 221
The Dreaded Test......Page 224
The Footsteps of Giants......Page 227
Faking It......Page 230
The Frenzied Life......Page 233
What's Going On?......Page 238
The Information Age......Page 241
Part 6 Fantasies of the Future......Page 245
Coding Is Dead......Page 261
Computer Aid......Page 264
The Information Filter......Page 267
The Phone Surrogate......Page 271
The Communications Millennium......Page 275
The Friendly Interface......Page 279
The Ambitious Word Processor......Page 282
The Grand Challenge......Page 285
Carwars......Page 288
Telepresence......Page 291
HDTV ... and Then?......Page 294