Mind Over Matter

Technology Transfer

I’ve written lately about a new fusion reactor and how the scientific process should be applied to test it. Let me take those ideas a step further by saying that innovation is necessary in this complex world, but technology transfer is even more necessary.

Technology transfer is the passing of knowledge from one person or group to another. We can have the most innovative and useful technologies in the shop or the lab, but unless the word is spread about them they remain unknown. We often cannot count on the inventors to tell us about their creations. Their skills like in making the technology or the discovery, not in marketing or publicity. Besides, a publicity effort would take their valuable time away from further development of their ideas.

Economist Paul Zane Pilzer has written about the “technology gap”: a backlog of technologies in various stages of development that have not yet made it into widespread use. The technology gap exists because the public does not know about these inventions or discoveries. Another reason is because the need for them is not pressing enough; the problems they solve are not urgent problems. While many new products are interesting and even pretty cool, unless they meet a genuine need, they are likely to languish in the development stage. (more…)

New Reactor Promises Clean Energy

Andrea Rossi has convincingly demonstrated his E-Cat reactor that produces more energy from a reaction than from a purely chemical process. Nickel plus hydrogen, 80 watts in, 15,000 watts out and no radioactive residue to get rid of afterward, only a little copper.

Strangely, the scientific press are remaining silent on this discovery. Perhaps having been burned by previous “cold fusion” claims that remained unproven, they are twice shy. However, when scientific heavyweights no less than Nobel prize winner for Physics Brian Josephson of Cambridge University talk about an invention, we need to pay attention. Rossi is clearly on to something. Given the size of the reaction chamber, it can’t be other than…fusion.

I am surprised that the scientific media are declining to cover this story. It is their responsibility to publicize science news so that the broader scientific community can become aware, then question, probe, investigate and even validate any claims. If something attracts the attention and support of respected scientists such as Josephson it deserves its moment in the spotlight.

According to NASA Chief Scientist Dennis M. Bushnell, reactors of the Rossi type are already in production and may be capable of “completely changing geo-economics, geo-politics, and solving climate and energy.”

Video on UCAM site with transcript.

The Professional Gadfly

I often tell my students that as technical communicators, we are professional gadflies. It is our job to buzz persistently, and bite when necessary, to get certain things done. We cannot move forward with documentation on a product that is languishing, so we interact with the developers to see how things are going. We ask for prototypes and working versions. We query them about deadlines, especially “When’s code freeze?”.

We often become de facto project managers on the projects to which we’re assigned. In managing our documentation projects, we encourage, inspire, assist, and even require others to meet their production and development deadlines so we can take that deliverable and add its information to our documentation. Another rule of our craft is that a product never, never, never is delayed for release because of documentation. When that product is ready to go, so is the documentation, and often it’s that the docs are done and just waiting on the final touches to the product. (Cleanup, not changes.)  (more…)

Development Model for the Connected Age

Endorsed Development, a new way of attracting a market for products we want to create.

Since the Stone Age, products have been developed based on need. They were meant to solve problems and assist us in completing tasks. To begin with, it was survival tasks, soon followed by transportation tasks, trading tasks, and leisure tasks. In design, form closely followed function.

As we developed greater technical skills, we began to innovate. We refined designs to be more usable and more attractive. Occasionally, because of cost and demand for the products, designs were adjusted based on ease of manufacture. When we had to get something to market quickly, we concentrated on making it work and shipping it as soon as we could.

Design-Driven Development

With automation and the assembly line, speed of manufacture was handled so we concentrated once more on making things attractive as well as functional. We were still tied to the products-as-solution imperative, but we could add features that we thought were fun. Features became selling points, even though marketers kept reminding us that it was benefits, not features, that sold products.

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