
Are We Losing the Secrets of the Masters? - damian2000
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1319119&
======
forgottenpaswrd
Of course not.

I contribute with some time and money to a local maker movement, and we guide
young people to make things.

What this article does not say is that in the past manufacturing was a pain in
the ass. Drills or rivets had to be done by hand only 60 years ago, with
automatic machines extremely expensive and inconvenient (big, noisy and
poisonous to you).

Metal workers will have health problems with the fumes, and lose one or two
fingers over their life when they put their hand when they should not.

Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge.

Now, the 507 movements book is online, and animated so it is way easier to
understand, we have computers that let us simulate or do the most complex
operation.

You can get any book, ever written, in the world, online!! (Impossible just 10
years ago!!)

Not only that but you can see videos showing you actually how they do what
they do.

We have 3d design on computers, we have 3d printing on plastic, metal or
ceramic(with EDM, FMD, STA, sintering incredible machines). We have cartesian,
delta robots, we have powerful and cheap automatic tools like dremel or
drills, or lathes. We have laser and plasma cutters that cut 20mm steel like
butter.

We have $100 webcam microscopes and spectrometers.

We have the Internet and we could collaborate designs over the world just
sending a file.

Sorry but the "any past was better" makes me sick.

~~~
artificialidiot
> ... the downside is that it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone who
> is capable of doing this sort of thing without having access to these tools
> and machines.

The whole point of the article was nobody can feel that pain even if
deliberately, not pointless nostalgia. He's not telling you to start from
stone age. He's telling lack of popularity threatens the existence much of the
history which was just recently available for the interested parties. Let me
put is this way:

> On the other hand, some things do tend to niggle at me. One of these things
> is the sneaking suspicion that we are in danger of losing track of how to do
> things at the most fundamental levels. If you go back to 1970, for example,
> there were legions of programmers who could create the most wondrous
> software out of 8 bit assembler by hand. These days, by comparison, we have
> incredibly sophisticated compilers, editing environments and runtimes that
> can do a lot of the "thinking" and the code generation for us -- the
> downside is that it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone who is
> capable of doing this sort of thing without having access to these tools and
> machines.

We are poised to lose the experience, history and other trivia that makes us
what we are now if not preserved and is easily accessible.

~~~
VLM
"If you go back to 1970, for example, there were legions of programmers who
could create the most wondrous software out of 8 bit assembler by hand."

No, first of all he describes what we called writing machine code and calls it
"assembler by hand" which is kind of funny. Trust me, on CP/M and TRSDOS and
all that on microcomputers we had perfectly good advanced multipass macro
assemblers, even (K+R) C compilers, pascal, forth, basic, even some fortran
and cobol implementations. In the 60s there were people toggling in the RIM
boot loader on their PDP-8 in machine language but not understanding any of it
other than an exercise in manual dexterity, to use RIM to load BASIC to
actually do stuff in BASIC. For actual machine coders I think you have to go a
step or two earlier... IBMs peculiar BCD mainframes in the transistor era and
stuff like that. Of course even they had autocoder and RPG for "real" work...

Secondly he calls them legions as a turn of phrase but even that is unlikely.
Tens of thousands sounds about an order of magnitude too high for the 70s and
early 80s. A thousand is probably about right and most of them were debugging
assemblers and/or debugging debuggers and symbolic disassemblers and/or
cracking copy protection, hand machine coding as an annoyance rather than by
choice as the best tool for the job.

Finally to this very day you can find people perfectly content to toggle in
PDP-8 machine language on a real front panel or 1802 or 8080 code in octal on
a H-8 or look at and understand a hex dump about to be slipstreamed into a
FPGA's memory for a soft core processor. And guess how many of us there are
today... maybe ten thousand... The fact that the percentage has dropped
because since then there were added 1M ruby programming CRUD app writing devs
in the denominator of the percentage means very little WRT the quantity of the
numerator of the percentage or even its growth rate.

And we know each other, and we talk with each other, and work on projects
together. Not on HN. You want to talk about manual metal lathes and milling
machines you go to the HSM BBS online not reddit. You want to look at a repo
of FPGA code you go to opencores.org not github. You want to build a machine
language front panel for a 1802 in late 2013 you google for lee harts 1802
membership card kit (I have one and it works quite well) not by searching at
best buy. The inability of outsiders to successfully very casually google a
group does not in any way imply a problem inside a group.

"becoming almost impossible to find anyone who is capable"

This is an echo of the H1B argument / STEM crisis claiming we are in immanent
danger because we can't find any capable coders (willing to work for $7.25/hr
or equivalent less on salary). You want someone to write a BIOS or write an
ethernet driver, we're here. Its not our problem that you can't find anyone to
work for $25K/yr, put up a reasonable offer and we'll come out of the
woodwork. Some MBA's inability to provide a reasonable salary hardly proves
our non-existence. It would be hilarious to settle religious arguments about
the existence or non-existence of ... that way. I find there is an extreme
shortage of MBAs willing to work for $7.25/hr in the mail room, so we need to
import a couple million to maintain economic dominance, otherwise we'll run
out of MBAs and have no one left to screw stuff up or whatever.

I would imagine for an english speaker its pretty hard to google for people
speaking German. That does not imply no one speaks German anymore or German is
dying out and in immediate short term danger of disappearing.

Its sort of a dystopian anti-nostalgia which clouds accurate observation.

~~~
artificialidiot
Demoscene is a fine example where people already continue a tradition as the
article suggests, even if not gushing but still trickling. I don't claim
computing tech faces such a danger yet. I only tried to put a more familiar
spin on what the article says for mechanics.

You went on a tangent and were overly pedantic for some reason. I won't
address every single thing I think you are wrong about but I agree with your
depiction of our tech bubble and I disagree with your sentiment that nobody
who is not american and willing to work for 25K can write BIOS/driver level
software.

Your bubble is a threat itself. Pop it or face irrelevance by extinction.

~~~
VLM
"I disagree with your sentiment that nobody who is not american and willing to
work for 25K can write BIOS/driver level software."

Ah that is a good point. The problem is businessmen wanting to import H1Bs to
maltreat them because they want to pay locals non-local (low) salaries.

If I could live somewhere that $25K was a reasonable local wage, I wouldn't
mind writing code for $25K. I don't, so I'm not amused at the argument that
there are no coders available because there are none willing to live far below
the local poverty level.

------
chaffneue
I'm one of those people that answers this question, "absolutely not!" Even
though it's not in the news or on everyone's Facebook timeline, there are
amazing craftsmen still roaming the earth and passing their craft down to
beginners. My evidence? I run a website that's dedicated to a traditional art
called Pinstriping
[http://www.pinheadlounge.com/](http://www.pinheadlounge.com/) . Even though
the legendary masters may not be directly connected to the site, you can
clearly see their influences on the craft. I think it's careless to assume
just because someone isn't tweeting their entire life or making huge waves,
that they're not training the next apprentice. A lot of this work has always
been a little behind the scenes, offline and a definitely has its share of
trade secrets. I see many young people on this site doing killer work and this
is only one, tiny sampling of the niche.

Take one of the most well regarded users on the site and an aging craftsman
(almost 40 years of experience):

[http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868....](http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868.JPG)

And compare it with a upcoming novice, who's just doing killer work (and is a
woman, I might add):

[http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233...](http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233425_716503191697820_1910565040_n.jpg)

I've also worked with metal smiths, letterheads,
prepress/letterpress/typesetting/lead pros, hot rod enthusiasts and all kinds
of other "lost arts" that are readily being passed to anyone who wants to
learn.

There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger
people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be
digital any time soon.

~~~
vanderZwan
> There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger
> people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be
> digital any time soon.

I'm convinced the internet is a huge boon to traditional arts and crafts - the
more "niche" a topic becomes, the bigger the risk of the communities
fragmenting and dying off in isolation. The internet fixes that, because it's
easier to maintain a core of enthusiasts, even if they are spread out over
long distances.

It's not unlike how the internet has done amazing things for programming.
Maybe you need a bit of extra help for other crafts, like adding video
tutorials for the things that require a more "monkey see, monkey do" than a
written approach. However, I'd say that in general it's easier than ever to
keep a core community of masters of a craft alive, or revive it for that
matter.

~~~
candydance
>The internet fixes that, because it's easier to maintain a core of
enthusiasts, even if they are spread out over long distances.

The internet also fixes the problem of sourcing supplies for a niche craft. It
wasn't that long ago that you had to use giant mail order catalogs to get
stuff shipped to you, and it'd be rare to get stuff sent internationally
unless you happened to know a friend in the desired country who'd act as a
middleman.

------
ryanackley
Here is a practical concern: What if there was some kind of collapse of
society or catastrophic scenario where it wasn't possible to run power plants,
internet, and/or phone service on a large scale anymore. Choose your favorite
doomsday scenario: Comet hits the earth, nuclear holocaust, or even an all-out
conventional global war.

How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to
our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge? Many
fundamental things would have to be re-learned.

~~~
nekopa
This is the idea behind a site I've always wanted to create:

The A.R.K. Project (Apocalypse Reboot Kit)

The basic idea is to categorize different apocalyptic scenarios (zombies, ww3,
comet, biohazard wipe-out, etc) and develop 'kits' to bring back civilization.
Some kits could be quite small, maybe a collection of books on how to get
power stations back up and running, etc (for scenarios where basically only
people got wiped out)to full on room sized kits which may have to go back to
the very basics, - teaching people how to read, how to extract ore from the
ground and so on.

I thought it could make for an interesting forum based site, with discussions
about what would go into each kit, finding old books like the one mentioned in
the fine article all the way up to philosophical discussions regarding would
you want to reintroduce religion to a primitive society, if not, how would you
deal with man's instinct to inquire to the unknown?

I may still try to get it up and running one day...

~~~
npx
This reminds me of the Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) from Neal
Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (which I highly recommend reading).

I've always loved the idea. If you could somehow finance it with Bitcoin, it
would be a perfect homage to Stephenson :)

~~~
nekopa
Second the reading of Cryptonomicon, great book. My idea was originally
inspired by reading his Diamond Age many moons ago. I loved the idea of the
primer, especially as it started from scratch and worked up to more complex
ideas.

The bitcoin idea is great, may have to add that

------
droithomme
The 507 mechanical movements book he references is fairly well known and has
been discussed in various places before. There is a website dedicated to each
movement from the book, with animations for many of the motions.

[http://507movements.com/](http://507movements.com/)

------
timmaxw
This is only tangentially related to the article, but 507 Mechanical Movements
is available as a website:
[http://507movements.com/](http://507movements.com/) Some of the movements
have been animated as well.

------
marshray
I completely agree that as a culture we are losing a lot of our traditional
skill and craftsmanship.

But still, I can't shake the feeling like this is one of those "kids these
days...get off my lawn" moments.

~~~
aimhb
How is this at all annoyance with a younger generation? There's a lot of
knowledge, such as of music, that's only passed on through oral or hands-on
teaching. This knowledge lives on by mere virtue of the continued survival of
the people who know it.

If enough of these kinds of "masters" die, some if not most of that knowledge
will be lost forever.

~~~
marshray
I'm just saying that this viewpoint is typically a common concern of older
generations - and this makes _me_ feel old.

~~~
vanderZwan
Are you sure that old skills becoming irrelevant isn't just uncomfortable
because it reminds us of our own mortality?

~~~
aimhb
Pretty sure.

Also "irrelevant" isn't really the right word as much as "lost". Examining the
word completely myopically, things like ability to play piano might seem
relatively useless. However, science has recently been revealing that music is
a lot more important — to the brain, moods, and the body, even — than we would
have guessed it was 50 years ago.

If we allow our knowledge of music to be lost in between the era of musicians
and some future rebirth of classical music, then what good have we done?

A good example of the waste that can occur is that of Roman formulations for
concrete. Because the information about how the concrete was formulated has
been lost, we have spent a tremendous amount of effort just trying to reverse
engineer Roman structures like the Colosseum to figure out how they achieve
the unique properties that they do. Also consider that the Romans had no way
of imagining how important concrete formulations would be in the future. To
them, after the fall of Rome, concrete formulations were probably just as
"irrelevant" in their minds as well.

I am not so much afraid of my own death as I am that we'll lose knowledge and
skill that we as a species have spent so long refining.

------
npx
I thought this was interesting, but I disagree with the premise. In the
software world, the equivalent of building a machine shop from scratch is
called bootstrapping. The first programs are written in an assembly language
which is difficult for humans to read or write. These first programs generally
facilitate a higher level of abstraction; a compiler or interpreter for a more
human readable programming language.

This second generation of tools allows for quicker development cycles, leading
to even better tools. For instance, the C language led to Unix[1] which led to
the Internet which led to a combinatorial explosion of software. It works the
same way in physical reality - with each generation of development, the act of
creation inches closer to pure thought. It's called progress. If you can't
keep up, I don't care.

A similar phenomenon happens to human beings. Societal developments insulate
us from the hardship of actually being self-sufficient. It's easier to be
prosperous now than ever before in history, and it's made us all incredibly
soft. Grab a kitchen knife and try to kill a squirrel before you start
planning your post-apocalyptic charcoal forge.

1\. I realize that Unix sort of begat C, but that doesn't really change
anything.

------
eksith
Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these
crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather
than centuries past, is the exceptional amount of documentation and
preservation of technique in text (and recently video).

There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so
this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's
carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future.

Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are
books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great
deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to
scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications
would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of
these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the
next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation.

I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a
massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to
get access to all these treasures.

~~~
Amadou
_It 's a massive job to rebuild a library,_

Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets
exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most
worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright,
at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for
archiving.

But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal
system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback
machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need
AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes
obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to
read today because the hardware is so rare.

The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on
the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically
impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be
a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything
we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels.

We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the
knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically
meaningless "metadata."

------
jwr
For a good take on this kind of thinking, I'd recommend reading Larry Niven
and Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer's_Hammer)).

From the wikipedia page: "Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by
the means of the preservation of the book The Way Things Work, which had been
wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank prior to
Hammerfall and later retrieved by a resourceful character who realized its
potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world."

I found myself inspired by this book — now I often think about what I could
build all by myself in a post-apocalyptic world.

------
retrogradeorbit
I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube
amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer
study it (for obvious reasons... its all been replaced with solid state) but
it is still important in audio recording. Companies still make tube gear (like
for example Universal Audio in California) but I have heard that it is
becoming basically impossible to hire an electrical engineer with tube circuit
design skills.

~~~
mng2
Tubes aren't all that terribly different from transistors; the characteristic
curves are slightly different but the circuit topologies are basically the
same as those of transistor circuits.

