Dear Bikram,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I was on a vacation.

Your mail was quite enlightening.

Thank you.

Regards,

Paul Sandip

LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd.

NID - Product Design 2002-05
 

--------------------------------------------

Dear Sandip,

I am assuming that you didn't understand what I was trying to say. If
you had read my previous email, I had specifically stated that "I am
certainly NOT SAYING that simple solutions are bad, but in THIS
PARTICULAR EXAMPLE, 'taking the hard way' has greater learning and
worth to me."

Coming from a design background it is but obvious to us that the user
is interested in the solution and not the designer's/engineer's
process. Again if you interpreted my previous emails correctly, what
I intended to say was that: the scientific and technological learning
that could have resulted from the process of developing a pen (that
could work in space), must contribute in a greater way to the overall
growth of human technological and scientific understanding. 

Its certainly not that after the pen was made, the scientific and
technological learning that resulted from it was thrown into the
dustbin and forgotten!

And I was also fundamentally implying, that: it is this spirit of
trying to solve a difficult problem that has shaped our world and
given us most of the technological advances we have today and in the
past.

Just to make it clear, I not commenting in this case on the
ethical/financial/budgetary/time-related concerns of the Americans
when they were developing the pen. I am only commenting on the
process of making a pen work in space rather than using the `simple-
solution' of a pencil. 

Now to respond directly to your question:

"'It is this process of 'trying to solve a problem the difficult way'
that has given us most of the inventions/technologies that we have
today.':Could you please site a few such examples?"

Luckily Sandip I don't have to do too much thinking to answer this,
so here goes:

1.Galileo spent his whole life trying to prove that the Earth was
round. In fact he had to counter the Roman Catholic Church (blasphemy
in those days), make his own telescopes and invent the pendulum clock
in the process (wonder if we wear a watch?). Galileo is often called
the `Father of Modern Physics' by the way, and his work laid the
foundation for Newton; the rest is history.

2.The Wright brothers tried the crazy idea of making a machine fly.
Their design for the first plane wasn't a `simple solution' by any
standards. It was the result of a process of development, failure and
they endangered their own lives in the process.

3.The internet was developed as a communication device for the US
Army to control its weapons. It took 10 years to become of any use
and billions of dollars were spent on it. Today, 45 years after it
was first initiated, a lot of the world depends on the internet.

4.Asprin has been known to man since the times of the Greeks. It was
only developed into a drug in the mid 1800s after it was accidentally
prepared. We finally only understood how it works in the 1970s. Just
imagine how many people and how much effort was put into this tablet.
Why didn't everyone just forget about it and use the `simple
solution' of sleeping off a headache?

5.Bucky Fuller spent 20 years perfecting a sphere made out of
geometric tessellating members, called the `geodesic dome', Sandip.
Why didn't he just save himself all the bother and just propose
the `simple solution' of using a flat roof supported by beams and
columns? After all the function of a roof is to only protect against
sunlight and rain isn't it? 

6.James Dyson (the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner) spent 5
years making 5000 prototypes in his barn for his vacuum cleaner. He
didn't start selling jhadus instead just because they were a `simpler
solution' to cleaning floors.


With best wishes,

Bikram Mittra
1st Yr, MA Design Products, Royal College of Art
NID Exhibition Design 1998-2004




--- In designindia@..., paul sandip
<dreamer_worldin@y...> wrote:
> hi bikram,
> sounds interesting -  "It is this process of 'trying to solve a
problem the difficult way' that has given us most of the
inventions/technologies that we have today."
> 
> could you please site a few such examples?
> 
> well, as an end-customer/user i would be more interested in
the "solution" provided by the designer rather than the "difficult
process" which he/she might have gone through.
> 
> what say you ?
> 
> regards,
> paul sandip
> LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd.
> NID - Product Design 2002-05
> 
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>
>            
> ---------------------------------
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