Learn, Do, Make...

 

Happy Yuletide to one and all: both to those who celebrate tonight, and to those of us who go mad with the food and drink tomorrow. OK, just one last pre-festivity thought. I've just been watching a couple of YouTube posts, which while centring around two completely different spheres of human activity - chess vs heavy engineering - had in common the Indian subcontinent and intrinsically the same narrative.

The key to this tale is YouTube and its comments feature, where, as I'm sure you're well aware, allows all and sundry - on a publicly accessible post - to, well, comment on the content of the video in question. All well and good in theory. Except that, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, &etc., the breadth of opinion expressed stretches from the informed to the dangerous via the asinine.

I've written many times about technology, learning about stuff, and the fundamental need for people to understand the basics of using tools to not only repair broken stuff, but to make stuff, and indeed to make tools that they don't have, in order to do the above. The two videos I mentioned absolutely exemplify the reasons for that need.

The first piece was about an Indian foundry producing pistons for some manner of industrial compressor; from the pattern and mould making through the smelting, casting and machining stages, to the finished article. These pistons are complex, chunky pieces of work, some fifteen inches by eight. The foundry, by modern standards, was crude, but employed the same methods that would have been recognizable, back to the dawn of the birth of the Industrial Age, not as one idiot in the comments stream claimed '... millions of years...': as we've only existed as modern humans for 300,000 years, that's a bit of a tall order.

The end result of the considerable labours of the guys in the video, was some pretty impressive pieces of engineering, given the tools and plant available to them, and the zero health and safety regulations in place. All I could see in the comments, apart from the oohs and ahhs about how marvellous it is to see such obviously poor and backward(!) people get on so well (again !), was one which tut-tutted about obvious casting flaws in the finished pistons, the quality of their smelting and the resultant obvious poor quality of the steel, blah, blah blah: totally missing just about every salient and relevant engineering point at issue. Story cut short. Yes, the steel would be shit. Yes, there were casting voids evident. Point(s) missed by idiot commentator? These were very large pistons for a type of compressor, hence intended for a very low-velocity use-case: casting voids and steel quality in a lump of metal this big, moving that slowly? Not a problem. Also, the eejit bemoaned the - to his mind [and it will almost certainly have been a he] - low tolerances the machinists were working to.  Sorry, an engineer working with measuring calipers, machining an 8" diameter piston to a very few thousandths of an inch, albeit on an ancient lathe (trust me, I know what I'm looking at), cutting the piston-ring grooves to precisely the correct depth, using measurement, eye and touch: knowing exactly what the fuck they are doing? I'd trust these guys any day over the brainless consumer making the comments.

The second video was from one of the chess channels I like to follow. The episode in question, reviewed someone else's post on the manufacture of (World) championship chess sets, which cost hundreds of dollars retail. These, it turns out, are also manufactured in India, by skilled artisans, using basic lathe and grinding/sanding techniques to produce exquisite pieces for play at the highest levels of the game. The process is highly labour-intensive, and some of the skills involved take up to seven years to learn. Needless to say, the narrative was that these skills are in danger of dying out for a variety of reasons, but it was a comment from some plonker in the stream that stood out for me: '...make them with robots...'  Duh, yes, you can engineer practically everything via CNC, 3D printing, laser cutting, &etc., but what if the infrastructure that feeds the robots falls over(?): an increasingly likely prospect, given the fragility of the world economy, politics, and most importantly, climate.

My point is that both examples highlight the frankly terrifying disconnect between most people and the things they use, their reliance on third party technology and corporations, and more importantly, their utter dependence and dogmatic certainty in enjoying reliable sources of energy, and the resources to actually purchase that energy. Which has surely never been better demonstrated than where we are now. Given our current parlous, nay, perilous situation vis-à-vis all of the above, a lack of knowledge of basic engineering and woodworking, coupled with an almost ubiquitous inability to even wield a hammer or saw in the service of either; we are sleepwalking closer and closer to the edge. Somehow, I think that most in the first world will be the first victims of the inevitable when the time comes. Preppers: stockpiling guns and ammo won't count for much if you're starving and freezing/boiling (delete as appropriate, according to prevailing crisis). Better build shelter, learn to make fire and find/grow food before killing your neighbours. Merry Xmas!