[sdiy] OT: Screw oBScurity

[Metrophage]

--- Rainer Buchty <rainer at buchty.net> wrote:

> >Excuse me, I must run to the garage and weld the hood of my car
shut! 
> 
> You are, of course, aware that indeed concepts exist for such 
> non-serviceable cars... (Not that a modern car crammed with
> electronics everywhere is especially user-serviceable.)

Yes, that was the joke. I believe that only an economy based on real
science and engineering has any future. The mass-production paradigm of
"make as many of whatever and sell as many of them as possible to
anybody" is overly simplistic, and leads to IMO inept management and
direction of people, institutions, and resources. I know it sounds
quaint to suggest that economics needs to be based on real tangible
values, but unless somebody patents the magic wand - this is not
looking back, but forward. 

> OTOH, if they just leave openings for oil/water/brake fluid check and
> intake, then why else would the average car driver open the hood.
> 
> Same goes for operating systems.

Because this is based on the fundamental assumption that the cars are
made by a small class of people called "producers", and they are
purchased by a larger class of people called "consumers". I am more
interested in making my own cars (Bauhaus rUl3z!!) than purchasing
pre-made ones, so they are not going to cater to me, and they become
irrelevant. Also, who is the average driver? The average driver is a
statistical model. Personally, I am not interested in such averages,
because I prefer endless customization. It comes down to this: the goal
of a business is usually either going to be 1. to offer a useful
product or service - or - 2. to accumulate money and resources. The
(over)engineering processes tending towards modularity addresses #1.
Tending towards obscurity addresses #2. The ironic thing is that
profits are a natural result of #1, the money is compensation in
exchange for desired goods and/or services rendered. The business
models based on #2 still haven't gotten over the Industrial Revolution
novelty of using machines to make other machines. It was kind of neat
until the early 20th century, but it's old now. The only reason money
hasn't been reinvented like the other technologies is because it will
completely redistribute and decentralize currency-based wealth
everywhere, which some families and business are not so eager about. So
we get to enjoy a protracted 1870-1950 style approach to wealth.
Producing huge quantities of something at a lesser price does not
necessarily improve its other qualities, or even usefulness. This
quantitative approach does though result in some new features by
changing the scales on which new technology is applied, but those are
typically few and largely unintentional.

The shorter answer is that homogeniety in design paints us into
corners. Biology and other self-organizing systems are robust because
of the built-in redundancy, and an increasing amount of learned
experience and general capabilities. A trend of continuous homogeny and
streamlining is easy to get drawn into, but very dangerous. This tends
to lobotomize cultures and wreck their gene-pools, I extrapolate. Your
cars and your operating systems will develop much more slowly, and
people will be forced to adapt to the quirks of the obscure designs
rather than the other way around. These generalizations are obvious
when considering what we have learned from information/systems theory
and biology over the past 80 years, but these trends were not
formalized during the time of the intial movement of industrialization,
which was not fundamentally a product of science, but science in the
service of business. Any exponential growth in a closed system has the
potential to destroy the whole thing. 

To address my needs, I need to play with real-time operating systems
which are more economically coded. And cars which run off of hydrogen
PEMs. Fast computers which are unresponsive and obscure fuels are going
nowhere. And yes, my sketchy OS ideas *are* for SDIY, so this is on
topic, just in an obtuse way.

YMMV!
With humble acknowledgement that many here are certainly better
engineers than I - 
CJ


		
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