Stats for nerds
4recommend
10mentions
9people
2013–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you liked this article, Henry Petroski's "The Book on the Bookshelf" is worth reading. He goes into great detail about the history, explaining why books were usually chained to their shelves, etc.
If you don't know the author, his most famous is probably "To Engineer is Human: the Role of Failure in Successful Design". I liked "The Evolution of Useful Things", because now I realize Americans use their forks wrong. The design of the fork follows function, and that curve is there for a reason.
- To answer your question, yes.
I really enjoyed this book, and it sounds you might too
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are Paperback – February 1, 1994 by Henry Petroski (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zip...
- For sure. AI is a marketing term.
But in some sense, so it "tech". The paperclip is a highly evolved technology, for example, [1], but working on those doesn't mean you work "in tech". Tech meant something like, "the new stuff that is impacting our lives but we don't know how to handle". So a CTO's job generally doesn't include the paperclips, the copiers, or the company cars, however technological they are.
And as with any shiny new marketing term, others will quickly rush in. There was the craze for radioactivity, which resulted in a bunch of radioactive patent medicines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery
But even more interesting to me is the extent to which it was used as a pure marketing term, with no radioactivity expected. E.g.: https://lucyjanesantos.com/a-batschari-radium-cigarettes/
So I'm sure we'll be seeing all sorts of things branded "AI" even when they don't use any of the technologies involved. With no trademark on the term or organization to defend it, it's open season for all the sketch marketers.
[1] For those who doubt, Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things" will set you straight: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zip...
- I think it's still a useful category, but we need to be careful with it, because "tech" is a moving target that only includes what's novel.
As an example, pencils are an excellent technology for writing. (Petroski's "The Pencil" and "The Evolution of Useful Things" are great reads on how much innovation it takes to make something mundane.) But Faber-Castell is definitely not a tech company. Similarly, ~100 years ago, electricity was novel. Fortunes were made starting and investing in electricity and electrical-adjacent companies. Now it's mundane.
Dealing with novel technology requires different skills. Both for the specific technology involved and for wrangling things that are less well understood and keep changing. A good example is the IT department and what they are and aren't responsible for. The breakroom toaster? Nope. The breakroom wifi? Yup. The breakroom TV? Well, that depends.
For me the useful dividing line for "tech company" is where novel, volatile technology is at the heart of their business and vital to their success. That doesn't last. And indeed, the markets have been too generous about pretending certain things are tech companies. Most notably, WeWork, but I'm sure here folks here can name plenty more.
- I've never read this book but of course now I have to.
I'll suggest reading Henry Petroski's stuff, too. "The Evolution of Useful Things", "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance", and "To Engineer is Human" all make the case that the design of things around us are shaped less by insight and more by evolution, incrementally building on the mistakes of the past.
If "The Design of Everyday Things" is half as interesting as Petroski's books, I can't wait to read it.
- This reminded me of The Evolution of Useful Things [1] by Henry Petroski, which in one chapter explores the incremental development of the paper clip from its origin as a straight pin that pierced the set of papers.
An aspect of paper clip design that’s easy to overlook is that you also need to be able to manufacture them at scale, so the machinery to produce them also needs to evolve with the overall form of the product.
[1] https://ia600104.us.archive.org/11/items/pdfy--rXmwRDB5uzq5M...
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