What was that nerd?

As I have gotten older, yes a whopping 32 now, I find myself interested in a great many things. I believe it stems from my never ending thirst for more knowledge and how as I have grown, more things are of interest now. One fascinating aspect of this is I find myself watching television shows that when I was younger, I rankled against as boring. The Discovery Channel and The History Channel are regularly checked now, when years ago; I would roll my eyes at watching something so boooooring! Now, I almost cannot get enough of them. Oh, some days I still need some mindless and stupid entertainment after a long day. Thank you Spike TV! But some days, nothing beats a little documentary. And these channels and many more, have hours of programming that can keep a mind occupied and attention rapt.

So the other day, I was indulging in one of these programs, an interesting one on The History Channel regarding engineering through time. The specific subject was on moving buildings. Most of us have heard this, and I am sure more than a few of us have actually seen this process. A building, perhaps one of historical note, must change location due to safety concerns, building preservation or urban renewal. Companies will come in and basically lift the building off the foundation and transport it to its new location. The processes they go through to do this and the equipment used are amazing. The precision and planning involved show great minds at work, being able to engineer these feats. I was at rapt attention for the entire program. They spanned the science of building moving for hundreds of years, and documented the changes in science, technology, methods and abilities throughout. One instance showed how a company moved a building, keeping intact their water, power and telephone services so those in the building could continue their business days while the building was being moved! And this took place in the 30’s. They showed how people in the 17th centuries and earlier would use pulley and capstan systems with manpower to move monuments and stone that weighed in excess of several hundred tons to move and place these behemoths with dead on precision. How they did it is almost unbelievable. And as I watched, I began to wonder. Are we really as advanced as a society and species as we like to believe?

What brought this to mind was the first part of the show, regarding moving buildings and monuments in the 16th centuries and earlier. It was not so much that they did not have the same equipment as we have nowadays; it is that they did not have the volumes of engineering principles to rely upon. These movers did not go through mounds of materials looking for information to assist in their efforts, they wrote them! These men were the ones who discovered the principles of pulleys and fulcrums and capstans. They experimented and showed how you can move something with hydraulic fluid. They did not have hundreds of years of information to glean through and improve upon, all they had were their minds and an understanding of mathematics, and even that they were writing and rewriting with each new discovery. The one move that stuck out in my head was the move of the monument of St. Peter to its current location outside of the basilica in the Vatican. The gentleman who made the move, largely unknown to us today, pulled off a feat that I doubt most could nowadays. He engineered the move using capstans, steel protectors, ropes and pulleys, wooden carts and a frame work and succeeded in moving this stone monolith several hundred feet and placing it atop a new base with pin point accuracy. No machines, pistons, hydraulics or motors, just the power of the mind and muscle. His plans even showed precise locations for each capstan, and how many men or horses were needed on each for the move to be successful. His plan was so well thought out, that even when one of the metal framework protectors sheathing the monument failed, the rest held and they were able to continue work. All of this was accomplished without the benefit of an MIT education.

Now I wonder, if we were able to accomplish so much then, without the benefits of the machines and computers we have created and only with our minds, can we accomplish as much now? Should we not be able to accomplish more? I know we have advanced quite far in the technological realm in the last century. The computer on which I write this piece tells me as much. But would we be able to understand how it was made and works without it? How dependant have we become on our machines? Technology proponents always say it helps make the little tasks faster, allowing people to be more productive. True, I do feel more productive. But is it also softening us, weakening our own computer in our noggin with our ever growing dependence on the ones on our desks?

I fear it might, although it is not the only culprit. A society that lauds pedestrian accomplishments and lionizes entertainment figures certainly plays a huge part. We basically ignore, ridicule and marginalize those who use their minds as opposed to those who use their bodies or minor talents. Many are jealous of Bill Gates and his wealth and power, but they ignore the fact that all of that came from using his mind. Well, and some business savvy of course. But he had an idea and worked and experimented and then brought in like minded individuals to improve and grow said ideas and add fresh ones to the mix. People will bemoan all he has, and then deride him and say, pfff he’s just a nerd. Why is that a bad thing? Here is someone who has accomplished more than most people could even dream, and there are those who still just marginalize him as a nerd. In his day, Einstein was feted for his knowledge and intellectual prowess. Now someone of that stature, if their even known to most, is ridiculed. The only exception seems to be Stephen Hawking, and I get a feeling that most do not ridicule mostly because of his debilitating physical condition. Now, if you were a fairly intelligent person, which path would you take? On one hand, years of hard work, study, learning and experimentation where after working so hard, learning, adding to the knowledge base of the world and potentially receiving success and looked upon as a leader in your area of expertise, you are still looked upon as a nerd and basically ignored and ridiculed. Or, on the other hand, you can achieve fame, fortune, celebrity and a comfortable life doing nothing more than parroting a silly catchphrase or show a willingness to marry a total stranger on TV. Now, which would you pick? I thought so too. And we cannot understand how our quality of education keeps plummeting. I think it’s pretty obvious, if no one is willing to do the work and learn, then no one is left to teach and instruct others. It is a vicious cycle that starts at the highest halls of academia and shifts in ever lowering standards and expectations all the way down to the first levels of education. No one wants to do the work. It is hard work, and involves a level of dedication and no major riches at the end of the tunnel. And to be looked upon derisively by following this path, who would want that?

The level of work involved, no major monetary gain, the butt of jokes, too much dependence on existing technology, it is pretty easy to see why the talent pool for science and technology keeps dwindling. And it keeps showing up more and more. Not long ago, when the president announced a renewed effort to travel to the moon, and then Mars and beyond, they spoke of the undertaking it would be to put together this kind of program. Daunting I am sure. But I heard and read more than once that they would need to start from scratch, and I wondered why? If I remember my history books, did we not do this once or twice already? I know the Mars aspect is new, but I know we have gone to the moon. Even stopped and had a coffee there. While I understand that many things have changed in the 30 plus years since last we trundled on the lunar surface, should not all the notes, records and information from that time provide a reliable basis for resurrecting the lunar program? Did nothing those men and women did, with not much more than slide rules, provide us with working templates and ideas for future travels? Or are we just that much dumber now, that everything they created, we cannot understand and must create new, with the help of our faster and more powerful computers? I am confused by this to say the least. Maybe I have become too dumb to understand.

I know it is easy to make fun of or ridicule things we do not understand. It allows us to have a certain level of power we feel is lacking in our lives. I know many of us feel we have no power or voice, that the world moves without us and does not need us. Plus, it is much easier to tear down something to gain this power than it is to learn and study to try to understand concepts foreign to us. We see this dynamic constantly in play with national relations, between religions and within our own social cliques. But that is the easy, and lazy, way out. We should not take the easy path; we should be striving for the more difficult one. We should strive for the path that will raise us into higher planes of thought, that helps advance all of us, opens our minds and shows us new and exciting things and allows us to advance further than even those at the top of the intellectual chain now never dared to imagine.

What I fear is that our priorities as a society are so far out of whack, that we may start regressing instead of advancing. With people focused on fashion, entertainment and a multitude of pointless, and mindless, distractions, we are not doing much to advance ourselves as a species. At some point, the balance will shift, and we will begin to focus solely on these pointless pursuits, eventually stagnating in our easy chairs covered in chip crumbs and wondering what is on next, instead of what is out there.