What Sticks Are For

"Boys with Sticks" was a great article, thanks for sharing.

My rant was going to be about tools in general, and how the more useful, complex tools are less common than they were even half a generation ago. I had in mind "planned obsolescence" as one major culprit, and how it turned entire cities into ghost towns as customers moved to those who planned further than five years ahead.

"The only place that can manufacture anything nowadays is China," is how some people speak of it in disgust, but it may be worse than that, because factories retool quicker in China as well, there may not be a general plan to make anything last much longer than it takes to get paid for selling it, or 90 days to 18 months depending on the sector.

The comments on the article made me think of something else, though: how can people create a space for multi-role individuals?

The military, from a superficial view, has only one role, but from even a casual glance, lots of people learned non-military skills which benefited themselves and thus society. It would vary with place and era, I hear the "golden era" of the military-educational path is long over the U.S., from someone who went through it and got several doctorates (I think, "only" three), but moving from military to industry was more a matter of creating a place that couldn't be found otherwise, I think.

Sticks, and weapons in general, have their place. Even the "Lord of War" said: "I'd rather my guns fire and miss, once they fire." (since he sold the bullets as well). I do think that some weapons, like land mines, maybe shouldn't be manufactured in the first place, as they cause more damage to civilians, long after the fact, than anyone else.

To get back to the point, if I can remember it... tools which are too expensive by orders of magnitude, than the market can bear... planning to replace something only because it was old, not because it is broken in design, are all some of the consequences of the paranoia of some conglomerates who were afraid of competition.

Over time, it created a different breed of business, although I think this evolution of business and ethics, esp. of businesses based on generating not just financial profits, but social prosperity, is something which has been constrained by narrow-minded entities for at least the last several decades, in general.

In the worse case, making effective tools to prosper humanity becomes impossible.

I haven't researched to what degree this is a major problem, but I get the sense that progress is stagnant or regressive, in the general case, because of a general drive to make people conform to types, all of whom work in factories, none of which will exist in five years. (Something better might exist, it depends on whether the firm reforms or falls under the sword of a transient CEO who moves onto the next thing after cooking the books with his sharp object, an expert Certified Accountant).

In Japan, thus, I was very happy to see Shinto-Buddhist well-maintained shrines bordered by skyscrapers and shops selling PlayStation gear, and although the culture has a reputation for being insular, I found it open and friendly, because I am myself, friendly.... try getting venture capital without being from Standford, sometime, and you'll see what an insular culture really is.

So sticks are good, and I think complex tools are even better... I wish they were more of the real, fun, complex tools, at a cost-effective price, meaning... time to learn them, and access to marketplaces to fund getting more of them and gauge quality more objectively. It is a solved problem from some people, but only if they have the right superficial type and sub-geographical location.

Not so much for me, although lower cost Mindstorms and Tecnhics would be great, but for people who have no choice but to develop based on toys, many of the things I learned on don't have widespread equivalents nowadays.

About super-powers, yes, that is an awesome one we all have... humankind has human kindness.

Thanks again, made me smile!