Too much information

We encounter an example of a very modern problem.

Our tutoring consultant has become the tutor of last resort for difficult problems and higher-level help, whether or not the subject has actually appeared in his background.  Recently a senior has come to him with a semester project in engineering: his group has been assigned to construct a wind-powered DC generator, and this particular student’s task is to produce the electrical design.

Consulting his old Electrical Engineering textbook, our tutor finds mostly calculations based on given devices, with the unhelpful comment that almost no one actually designs generators (even engineers just use them).  Physics textbooks are no more useful, for though they are better at describing the physics behind the machines, applicable to new designs, there’s no discussion of why one might do things one way rather than another.  That’s quite appropriate for the context; designing the best machine for a given context is the essence of Engineering, a specialized field demanding its own skills and study.

The student, of course, did a Web search.  And was instantly deluged with articles and images on how to design the armature and windings, most requiring far more background than he had in order to begin to understand.  Minute details of design and discussion of materials were mixed with obscure terminology.  That is, in essence, the main challenge of modern life: out of all the information we can discover, how can we actually organize and make use of it?

Some of us can remember the opposite problem, common in the old days.  Then, a student faced with the same task would ransack the local library, only to find elementary books providing no details.  But–and this is significant–a hundred years ago kids were building radio sets at home, along with other examples of forefront technology.  How did they do it?  Not by being enormously more resourceful and intelligent than today’s teenagers.  There were sources of information, aimed at practical problems.  And our navigator found one this past weekend.

In a used-book store near his alma mater he was poking around on the shelves, seeking nothing in particular but ready to pick up anything interesting. (That’s the recommended way to go through such an establishment, and quite impossible in an on-line search.)  He found a series of books on practical engineering, including a slim volume entitled D. C. Motors and Generators.  It has clear drawings with as much detail as necessary, but no more; and step-by-step explanations, with as much theory as required, but no more.  Its copyright date is 1941.  That’s whole geologic ages ago, as far as most technology goes, but DC generators look remarkably the same now as then.

Maybe the best way to organize the flood of information now available is to find an old book.