Expertise in the Technology Age

摘要

Men Out. The boy was a fan in disbelief that one of his heroes could have sold out the game he loved in exchange for a quick payday. Baseball is one of my passions; another is the engineering profession. Unfortunately, I can make a direct connection between one of baseball's saddest moments and today's engineering. Now, I know I'm getting "professionally old" when I start sounding like the mentors I was fortunate enough to have as a young professional. Not that there is anything wrong with getting professionally old; It allows you to develop interesting insights into the profession. I completed my undergraduate studies using a 99c plastic slide ruler and the university's mainframe computer. I lugged around large quantities of punch cards, hoping I would never be clumsy enough to drop them or dumb enough not to number them. With today's laptop computers, incredible software platforms, networks and wireless communication devices, the life of a bridge engineer has gotten much better...or has it? If technology has improved our profession, how do we explain our propensity to accept the concept of "instantaneous expertise" when we also see increases in questionable design quality?