Design Addict

Cart

Why We Reinvent the...
 

Why We Reinvent the Wheel...  

Page 2 / 2
  RSS

NULL NULL
(@tpetersonneb-rr-com)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 6 years ago
Posts: 522
07/01/2008 1:19 am  

Well, I think if I'm hearing...
Well, I think if I'm hearing you right SDR, that was/is kind of my point. As usual, I am obviously having trouble making it. Thanks for the plastic wrap, but I really wasn't looking for solutions to the windshield problem. It's not a big problem, as problems go.
There are some things we can probably afford to live with (e.g. frosty windshields) and some things we probably need to try harder to figure out how to live well without (fuel burning cars).
Do we waste knowledge as much as we ignore it, or is this all part of the same subdivision? To my mind, there is but one baby.
Good planets, I've heard, are hard to find.


ReplyQuote
dcwilson
(@dcwilson)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 2358
07/01/2008 3:52 am  

hudson...
Your argument that this just may be the human condition is always partly valid.
Reinventing the wheel has to be apart of the human condition, or it would not exist in the first place.
But there are facets of the human condition that are so painful to forget that we have learned to systematically accumulate much of what we learn.
We keep making airplanes safer by incremental advances.
We have finally accumulated enough knowledge to offset the entrenched money power interests in tobacco to reduce smoking.
And so on.
And there are activities where the incentives to accrue knowledge are so huge that we do it.
Nano technology is in a masssive race to accrue technical knowledge.
I'm sure you can make a case for others.
So: if I dare put words in your mouth, in certain activities the net benefits of accruing knowledge are too small to trigger accrual.
I think that model should be part of the explanation, too.


ReplyQuote
dcwilson
(@dcwilson)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 2358
07/01/2008 3:56 am  

SDR...
As usual, I am learning more from you than I am giving to start the discussion. Like Koen, you are often able to ground my remarks in ways that make their meaning far more apparent. Your comment about architects is a case in point.


ReplyQuote
SDR
 SDR
(@sdr)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 6462
07/01/2008 4:12 am  

You're
too kind.
I'm puzzling over "painful to forget."


ReplyQuote
dcwilson
(@dcwilson)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 2358
07/01/2008 4:52 am  

SDR,
I just meant that if we dare to forget what we have learned about making a plane fly, the plane may crash and kill a couple hundred persons, where as if we forget to put the lip on the coffee cup, I just get a few drips on my clean shirts--irritating, but not death-triggering.


ReplyQuote
Page 2 / 2
Share:

If you need any help, please contact us at – info@designaddict.com

  
Working

Please Login or Register