A Waste of Times to Come

O.k, so exactly what is the point of this video clip, you may ask.
It would appear that someone put together a robot with the sole purpose of playing a video game.
More importantly, someone obviously invested a great deal of money and time to build a sophisticated machine with no meaningful purpose whatsoever. I mean, it’s not exactly feeding the orphans of the world, is it?

Allow me to step back in time, for a moment. Back to the dawn of the computer age. Technology emerging from behind the fortified walls of high tech, military, and industry. It started with the geeks, the high tech do-it-yourselfers that built thier own machines on the kitchen table. The troopers that soldered diodes ad nauseum, wrapped wires onto tiny fragile terminals, and singed their knuckle hair with their soldering irons. They glared at green monochrome monitors, and programmed in BASIC. There was no Internet, and no real communication link. They embraced the technology because there was something yet to come. The first computers were a novelty, but they ushered in a new generation of technology. The first users were outcast, because no one understood what they were trying to accomplish. They believed that computers had a place in the future, and had no idea as to the extent in which computers would ultimately affect all of our lives.

Personal computers first entered the mainstream market late in the 1970’s, and became more prevalent into the 80’s. Eventually we saved up our cash, and forked over $2500 for an Apple II of our own. The bright advertisements showed happy families doing the taxes together, or typing a letter to grandma. We brought them into our homes, sold on the idea of a new way of doing things. And what did we do with them?

We played games.

We sat for hours under the radioactive green glow and typed commands to navigate the fantasy world of a text adventure. We pounded on the arrow keys to control the ever growing worm, and shook our fists in fury when the worm finally devoured itself and ended the game. We blasted away space invaders that looked almost as good as the ones in the video arcade, only for free, and for hours on end. It was a pointless waste of time, but it signified the transition of computer technology from work and industry into our personal lives.

And in a sense, it wasn’t a waste of time. What these games were doing was engaging us with the new technology. It engaged our brains in how to communicate with the computer. It engaged our fingers to the keyboard. It got kids using them in schools, and established a legion of programmers who thrived on the idea of creating their own software tools. It was warming us up to the expansion of computer technology, and it did by giving us a reason to use them, no matter how mundane that reason.

Which is exactly what this game playing robot signifies. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a keen observer of new technologies, is convinced that robotics stands to take the world by storm today, much as the personal computer took the world in the early 80’s. The computer didn’t take the world because of some leap in technology, but rather, because of some change in public perception and behavior. Robotics, and mechanized electronic devices, it would seem, are coming into this new public perception, and it starts with games.

Or in this case, a game playing robot.

The robot is really an assembly of established technology. A machine vision camera, often used in industry for identifying objects on an assembly line (in this case, looking for colored dots moving down the video screen) is placed in front of the game screen. The images picked up by the camera are collected and analyzed on the computer next to it. The computer looks for patterns, such as a red dot, or a green dot. If the pattern is distinctive enough (such as a BIG red dot) the computer will trigger the correct button on the guitar robot to press the corresponding red button on the guitar. This is more or less what our brain should be doing to move our fingers, but as we are all human and prone to mistakes, we can never achieve 100% accuracy. Neither can the computer, but the results are significantly better than any human player would hope to achieve. This is all standard technology in industry, but an example such as this shows just how soon we may be bringing robotics into our homes.

Don’t want a game playing robot? What about a car that perceives the road and drives for you? Robotic controls don’t drink lattes and fall victim to fits of road rage; machine vision could make safer decisions with the same visual input to get you safely to your destination. What about cooking? Couldn’t this same vision technology soon be making us dinner at home? It is a lot to forecast, but really, who would have envisioned a global phenomenon such as the Internet while assembling blocks in a game of Tetris?

I share these innovative bits of technology because they represent the shape of times to come. Even if it may look like a waste of time.

Quality and Consumerism

My computer mouse broke.

That little plastic wheel stopped wheeling. Maybe a minor inconvenience for some, but the 3D modeling software I use every day uses the little wheel to zoom in and out of 3D views. It is as vital to navigating the 3D world as a keypad is to dialing a phone. I was stranded and irritated.

I immediately took the thing apart, believing that it could be fixed, and I could get back to work. What I found was of no surprise. The little axle for the little wheel had sheared off close to the hub, and no longer engaged the encoder. The tiny plastic axle, no more than 2mm in diameter had broken under normal operation. This was especially compelling when I took apart a 10 year old mouse of similar design, and found a steel axle, and an indestructible design. It was obviously designed to last forever, and worked flawlessly despite my best efforts to destroy it.

This mouse failure, I felt, was a design flaw; a complete lack of proper design with no testing to ensure safe and reliable operation. It was completely and absolutely the fault of the manufacturer.

Or was it?

I paid $15.00 for the wireless mouse at a large electronics retailer. I purchased it new, and picked it out from among 50 or more similar devices of varying price. The price of this mouse was on the low side for the features it offered. It was cheap and appealing, and I bought it under the assumption that it would work as advertised. I ignored other brand names and fancy features. It was a tool that I needed, and I spent the least amount of dollars to fill that need.

Subconsciously, I made the following assumptions.

1. The mouse was properly designed and tested to operate under normal use.

2. If the mouse failed, I could return it for a refund or replacement.

3. The manufacturer had resolved any design issues in response to consumer returns and complaints.

O.k., so here is where things aren’t what they used to be. For (1), the mouse was not properly designed and tested in the first place. It didn’t need to be, because (2) it would never be returned for replacement because it was too cheap to bother the effort, and (3) the manufacturer would never be informed of any design issues because nobody would bother to return it or complain. Things look sunny in Mouse Manufactoryville, so they keep churning out faulty mice.

The truth is, I tossed the faulty mouse in my garbage. I couldn’t be bothered the hour it would take me to return for a refund and replacement, and I needed to get back to work. I went to the local Goodwill and picked up an old indestructible replacement, and got on with my life.

By doing this, I had personally contributed to the erosion of product quality in our marketplace.

In my role as an engineer, my primary goal was to deliver parts at the lowest possible cost. For all of the hype about quality and design, my single most important design target was to provide additional revenue for the company in which I worked. I was also responsible for reducing cost on existing designs. This is not entirely bad, and if done properly, many cost reductions can improve the quality as well. But without accountability and feedback from the costumer, the trend is to continue trimming away until there is no cost left. If there were no customers, I would eventually reduce my cost to the bare minimum. I would build parts out of paper mache so long as they survived long enough to taken off the showroom floor. But since customers do complain on occasion, and vote for their product preference with their dollars, I was held accountable to deliver a minimum level of quality to meet the customers needs, and as such, chose to build my parts out of more durable materials.

What I realized with this mouse incident, was my own contribution to the erosion of quality in consumer products. The mouse didn’t break because it was made in China. The mouse broke because no one bothered to complain about the faulted design. The truth is, if EVERY broken mouse were returned to the store, the American company that imports the mouse would be held accountable, suffer financially, and quickly be compelled to resolve the problem in order to stop the financial bleeding. That notion of accountability is what defines the quality of American goods. But if a company remains profitable with a poor quality product, and no accountability, there is no incentive to change.

This cycle is partly to blame for the nasty and wasteful consumerist culture that we know today. We buy goods because they are cheap. We throw them away because they are cheap. Cheap is cheap, but quality never factors in to the equation. This really is a wasteful way to live.

As a consumer, I am an odd one. For every new item I purchase that breaks (which I find to be far too often), I replace it with something old or second hand. Old because I find many goods manufactured before 1980 to better quality (this is especially true of tools and appliances), or second hand because the sting of paying $5 for a drill that eventually breaks is much less than the sting of paying $50 for a drill that breaks. Occasionally I build things myself, with mixed results.  Strange, I know, but you would be surprised at just how much traditional, well built goods out perform poorly designed ones, and how often we are mislead to believe that new technology is a guaranteed improvement.

Odd consumer that I am,  I throw away fewer and fewer faulty products, and I save money in the process. My house is more or less free from plastic clutter, and what I no longer need can be sold or used by someone else rather than tossed in the garbage. I share with friends and neighbors, and I find myself more and more willing to pay for high quality goods, even if that means purchasing less stuff.

So that is what this is all about. My own contribution to the society in which I live, and the behaviors I need to change in order to shape the world for the better. In order to stop consuming resources, we all need to consider our own behaviors, and consider a new way of behaving. It starts with what we buy.

Daniel Ferguson