The Losses That Come From Virtualizing

http://www.endofcyberspace.com/2008/08/rediscovering-t.html

Link: The End of Cyberspace: Rediscovering the virtues of the manual.

Gregg Zachary in last week's New York Times wrote a terrific little piece on "a little-noticed movement in the world of professional design and engineering: a renewed appreciation for manual labor, or innovating with the aid of human hands."

Using computers to model the physical world has become increasingly common; products as diverse as cars and planes, pharmaceuticals and cellphones are almost entirely conceived, specified and designed on a computer screen. Typically, only when these creations are nearly ready for mass manufacturing are prototypes made — and often not by the people who designed them.

However, some engineers and designers are realizing that there are losses that come from virtualizing.

There have long been stories of students who design things on CAD that are impossible to manufacture, or that are 10 or 100 times too large, because virtualizing the design process divorces it from actual things.

As one designer I know put it, learning to draw teaches common sense; doing things on a computer doesn't.

Or as Gregg puts it, "'A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation,' says Bill Burnett, executive director of the product design program at Stanford. 'You can’t simulate everything.'"

Creative designers and engineers are rebelling against their alienation from the physical world....

'"the importance of “skilled manual labor,” which he believes includes computer programming....'