[kwlug disc.] KWIUG

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Sunday 17 June 2007 11:58 pm, Unsolicited wrote:
> Not electricity, though, but I would say "hydroelectric electricity
> generation". Or something like that.

I suspect that like most, you take AC generation and transmission for granted.  
Let me assure you that, despite looking stupidly simple, it is far from it.  
even the early AC motors were actually fairly complex rotary devices, and the 
international AC switching and transmission grids that have been around for 
quite some time are extraordinarily complex.

Even today, AC motors are a source of continual improvement and a subject of  
much high-technology research.  They're already 96-98% efficient (electric 
power in to mechanical power out) but due to their widespread use that's 
still not "good enough".  That spindle motor in every hard drive is actually 
a three-phase AC motor very closely related to the workhorse that's been 
around and more-or-less perfected at the time of its invention, and the 
control system that drives it has a counterpart in industrial motion and 
control which, if you were to dig into it, would be simply amazed at the 
technology behind it, and which is used in the manufacture of absolutely 
*everything* -- from roads and bridges to textiles and the food you eat.

Similarly, the telephone network is also a feat of engineering.  Automated 
circuit-switched technology was a technological wonder, and if you've ever 
seen the old SxS crossbars in action you'd feel just a little creeped out 
about how they seem to demonstrate some level of cognitive ability.  :-)   
However let's be fair: what kind of technology do you think you'd find in 
a "modern" 7ESS switch which can serve about a hundred thousand lines and 
route amongst 75k trunks?  With reliability measuring in at better than 5 
minutes down per year?  IIRC the telephone network was the first 
fully-automated fully-redundant highly available network *ever*.  That old 
Bell Telephone commercial where they rerouted hundreds of thousands of calls 
in under a millisecond due to a fiber cut with *NO* stoppage of service isn't 
a joke... that's not high tech?

Even the low-end modern automobiles are quite a technical wonder of hard 
real-time computation, not to mention the "complex and useful" high 
technology that has gone into the seriously advanced racing engines that we 
have.

I've always been fascinated with technology.  One of my all-time favourite 
television shows is "How it's Made" -- the kids and I will watch that and 
never get bored.  High technology is everywhere, it's pervasive and it's by 
and large accepted by consumers, whether they realize it or not.  The 
internet is an excellent communications network, and it's possibly the most 
easily recognized high technology, but I assert that most technologies were 
considered high when they were first massively deployed, and even after a 
hundred years (in the case of electricity) there is still a lot of work being 
done -- very highly technical work -- to make it more efficient and that 
*directly* affects everyday modern consumers.

Embedded technology -- the kind you don't even recognize as being 
technology -- is what I would consider the holy grail.  It becomes such a 
close part of your life and functions so naturally that you don't even 
recognize it as technology anymore.  I think that the items mentioned here in 
my response are exactly that.  They sneak up on you in how dependant you are 
on them, just like the internet has done in the last 10 years.

-A.