The Power of a Good Demo

While in Japan this last week I got the chance to look at a bunch of new technology currently in the research and development phase. Unfortunately I can't go into what innovations I think are exciting, due to non-disclosure agreements, but I can use examples from years ago to help illustrate the point I am trying to make.

There are some inventions that change the world yet can be difficult to understand without a compelling demo. Imagine being at Bell Labs in 1948 when William Shockley invented the bipolar junction transistor. At the time, it served as a replacement to vacuum tubes and some engineers saw it as an inferior replacement. Audiophiles or people who are looking for pure sound from their audio equipment still prefer tube amps to solid-state ones (those that use transistors). Yet look at how many inventions came out of something so small and simple as the transistor: calculators, mobile phones, computers, and pretty much every electronics device being sold today.

I think it took a lot of imagination for the early inventors to realized the importance of their discovery. I remember hearing about Google's acquisition of YouTube and laughed at the huge price they paid. At the time I didn't know how people would use this new online service. Now any time I go to work on a car, I check YouTube first to see if there are any helpful videos. I'm not alone as Thomas Watson, the president of IBM is claimed to have said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." We all can fail to see the greatness of certain innovations.

Going back to my trip to Japan, I got to see some really new technology and one of the things that made the trip so interesting was all of the compelling demos. While an introduction to a particular invention is good, seeing how it can be used really helped me understand how groundbreaking it is. This helped me with some of the projects I am working on as I can see that I need to create some compelling demos so other can catch the same vision I see. Now I just hope that I can write about some of the things in the near future.

Best Inventions of 2018

One thing about being in Tokyo is my hotel room always has the latest copy of the Asian version of Time Magazine. I used to read it in my youth but stopped as an adult as I didn't see the need to pay for a subscription. When I do see a copy in my hotel, I will go through it and this time found a number of interesting articles. The one that made me stop browsing and focus on the entire article is the one on the 50 best inventions of 2018.

I think Time has a tough job trying to come up with the top inventions for any given year. What may seem groundbreaking to some is ordinary to others. Therefore it is not surprising that I disagree with some of their winners. For instance, they awarded a bicycling helmet with built-in headlights and turn signals. While that is a cool-sounding idea, it is actually a bad one. Bicycling helmets are disposable items that are not meant to be kept for more than a year or two, depending upon frequency of use. Embedding lights in the helmet double the cost. That means people are going to be reluctant to replace their helmet at proper intervals. Now if the helmet lights could be removed and put in a new helmet shell, that would be an innovative idea and deserving of an invention-of-the-year award.

While I disagree with some, there are a few inventions that I agree should be listed in this year's awards. I think my favorite is the roofing from 3M that fights smog pollution. This is probably important to me because of the recent fires in California reducing air quality to extremely unhealthy levels. I also know that I create a lot of pollution driving my car and flying all over the world. Doing something to right that wrong should be high on my priority list. When it comes time to put a new roof on my house, I will definitely look into pollution reducing shingles.

Going through Time's list of inventions for 2018 has been insightful. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Reading about them may spark new ideas. I know I came away with some thoughts on how to improve some of the things I use every day. You may too.

Technology Innovation

This morning I met with the head of development for a large technology organization and we talked about some of the latest trends in software development. I work in a research and development group and so my team constantly looks at emerging products and how they can best be used to solve problems. The person I met with came with questions about how his organization can leverage some of these new tools to increase efficiencies and streamline software development.

I find it interesting that I found myself championing technology innovation. I am one of those people that resists change and that is one of the problems with the staff of the organization I met with. Software developers get comfortable with the tools and languages they know. The longer someone uses a technology, the more they resist moving to something else. While Java is a great software programming language, there are problems that can be solved quicker and with less effort simply by choosing Python or Erlang.

I have had to force myself to constantly ask if there is a better way of doing something. A simple example is when I had to cut up some old rags this past weekend. I had a dull pair of scissors and a large pile of rags to cut into smaller sizes. At first I tried to make a quick snip with the scissors and then rip the fabric. Things sped up when I simply just got another pair of sharp scissors. Taking 30 seconds to change my tool cut my project time in half.

Looking for a better way to do a task is not something I developed on my own. I have surrounded myself with people who are always looking for a better way of accomplishing things. I have tried to remember to ask for help but often times my coworkers volunteer better ideas for me. That takes a bit of humility but I find it also saves a lot of time. Sometimes if it wasn't for them, I would still be retyping everything instead of cutting and pasting.