Self-Importance

I don't like to brag, it makes me feel very guilty, but people should really be reading this blog. If things roll the way I feel they are going to roll, the Federal Government is going to head right into my neighborhood with billions and billions of dollars and there just aren't many good blogs by engineers out there.

Part of that is that most engineers are too damn busy. We work like dogs, mostly, and if you want to see an industry that has helped screw up the American work ethic of 40 hour weeks, just look to the engineers, who seem to pride themselves on 60-70 hour weeks. It's to a point where many of us start to worry about our job security if we aren't getting obscene amounts of overtime.

Another part of the problem is that you can't be a professional engineer and a professional blogger. The engineering industry is one that requires immersion for understanding, and unlike philosophy or politics, you simply can't make a career writing about it while being involved in it. Engineer blogs, like this, are for fun, not for a living. In my case, I do this partially out of egotism, and partially to fill a gaping whole in the blogosphere thought-base.

The other part of it is that engineers are not technical writers by trade. In college we have to take one, maybe two english classes, and usually we get average marks in them. We are taught to write on "engineering paper" which is essentially green graph paper where writing in a straight line is optional. Usually we write short bits of information, and then draw a figure that better illustrates our point.

Anyway, I don't mean to self-aggrandize, but the blogosphere needs unique voices from each sector in order to be a medium that can effectively analyze the issues. Just as people turn to Ross, Matt, Huffington, and others for political analysis, and TechCrunch and others for technology news, there should be leaders in the industry of engineering that can fact-find, and address the issues with sufficient eloquence to make them accessible to the layperson. In the case of engineering, this means boiling down a complicated process like why the Hyatt Regency disaster happened and explain that "the engineers didn't realize that the Hyatt would have a huge party on the skywalk and it got too heavy and collapsed" rather than talking about "shear modulus in all-thread hanging rods based on bolt location".

And as surely as comments are crucial to the success of blogs like McCardle and Yglesias, and the fuel for healthy modern debate, so too are they crucial here, and elsewhere.

Look for a roundup of good engineering blogs here, as soon as my obscene work schedule allows time.


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