[dfx/incl/99dfx.htm]
Thus began a year of Designfax doing everything we've always done plus more. In addition to our OEM market features, special Trilogy sections, product write-ups, changing technology updates and website enhancements, the "plus more" that counts the most to us is the dialogue that began and continues with our readers. Please keep on sharing your thoughts with us. My goal was (and still is) to provide a resource that one reader recently described as being "sui generis and a great forum for ideas that can change sparks into tinder." I'd like our vehicle to help you do your jobs and use your talents in our rapidly changing world. Achieving prosperity and success -- however this is defined -- in times of rapid change calls for great ideas. In Carl Sagan's final work, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he asks where all the Thomas Jeffersons are today. There were at least 10 great thinkers -- Jefferson among them -- who created the great democratic experiment called America. All were well-educated and products of the European Enlightenment. They knew what to think, were comfortable with long-range planning, and were interested in and, at least three of them, fluent in science. Benjamin Franklin had just founded the field of electrical physics, John Adams repeatedly referred to the analogy of mechanical balance in machines and William Harvey had just discovered the circulation of the blood, according to Sagan. "Science and its philosophical corollaries were perhaps the most important intellectual force shaping the destiny of 18th century America...Franklin was only one of a number of forward-looking colonists who recognized the kinship of scientific method and democratic procedure. Free inquiry, free exchange of information, optimism, self-criticism, pragmatism, objectivity -- all these ingredients of the coming republic were already active in the republic of science that flourished in the 18th century," American historian Clinton Rossiter writes in the book. So if there were 10 people of the caliber of Thomas Jefferson among a population of 2.5 million citizens at that time, there ought to be 10 x 100 or 1,000 Jeffersons today. "Where are they?" Sagan asks. While they're not in Congress, they certainly might be at the design show.
This month, our most recent development involves -- yet again -- the Internet. Our Online Reader Service Program featured throughout the issue lets you connect directly to each company's website via a "1RS number." Please use it. It will tell them "Designfax sent you." [dfx/incl/99dfx.htm] |
If you're interested in creation on any level, you'll certainly
enjoy the National Design Engineering Show, March 13-16, in Chicago. Yes, all the world's
indeed a stage and many of you have starring roles in what we've dubbed The Design Show
That Ate Chicago. At this annual show, one can feel the energy via the thousands of
ideas, creations and solutions packed under one roof. Last year, while walking the show
floor on St. Patrick's Day, I experienced an incredible insight in the form of the
question: "What can't these design engineers do?" Here you had 300,000
square-feet of very bright, creative people possessing the ability to solve just about any
design problem under the sun. Both attendees and exhibitors alike actually thought on
a daily basis. In a world where most people seem barely conscious, here they were -- the thinkers
who are also the doers. 