Empty-handed Technology
　　　
The selection of such an unusual title for this paper is not because the author is a former
sports freak. It is because of a desire to emphasize his belief that engineers should constantly
train themselves to be able to tackle problems empty-handed when necessary, i.e., without the
aid of technical tools.
Lately this author has found himself frequently forgetting people's names. This is because he
is definitely gaining the strength of age. But, this is not the only reason. He is also forgetting
how to write certain Chinese "Kanji" characters and gradually losing the ability to do calculations
in his head.
Quite a while ago, when cheap electronic calculators first became available there was an
episode of the popular comic series Sazae-san that had the following scene: An elementary school
teacher asked one of her students to solve a math problem. The student did the calculation on
a calculator he had hidden under his desk and when he computed the answer, he told it to the
teacher with an innocent face. Meanwhile, the teacher had been calculating the answer on her
calculator hidden behind her desk. When she saw that the answer was correct, she told the
student, "Very good." It is believed that the author of Sazaesan, Machiko Hasegawa, already had
an awareness at the time that due to the invention and use of such convenient devices, people
were actually becoming less intelligent.
Today's personal computers have amazing performance. It seems that today's PCs have
already surpassed the performance of yesterday's super computers. As long as you are running
the right software, today anyone can make complex technical calculations or run high-level
simulations with relative ease. These are truly convenient times we live in. On the other hand,
the complexity we have developed is so hard to understand that when problems occur they are
very difficult to repair. Also, no matter how sophisticated a simulation may be, it usually will not
be of much use unless the engineers also have the ability to apply their intuition to the problem.
It is interesting to note that if one is able to simplify these complicated system simulations down
to a small number of degrees of freedom, so that one is able to use intuition, then it is often
possible to calculate things manually without using a computer at all.
In the engineering world, you never know what is going to happen next. It is often the case that
things one has worked scrupulously to prepare suddenly become useless or irrelevant. These
are the moments when intuition and gut feelings become important. The intuition referred to
here is, of course, not simple guesswork. It must be a feeling resulting from mature knowledge
and sound judgments. These judgments must be based on a thorough understanding of physical
principles and realities, and on having a good grasp upon and daily practice in the use of these
principles. The author believes that an engineer must at least have the skills to design something
based only on Newton's second law（ F=ma） and Hooke's Law（ F=kx） and must be able to apply
the least-squares method to the results of experimental tests. These are the skills that this author
takes the liberty of calling "Empty-handed Technology."
To prevent the aging of one's mind, a person should prepare for crisis management at times
when there are no computers available, and also be able to use a computer with true skill. In
other words, there is a need to always polish one's "Empty-handed Technology" skills.

Home