GLOBAL DECLINE

To the Editor: I don't give a bent bolt for your silly alligators and lions. How could you claim to focus an issue (January) on globalization without a word for the machinists and toolmakers who are stocking the marts with those imported goods, hmm? Even if we engineers are so damnably insular that we don't care what happens to the hourly people, we should at least be concerned with the triple lie of "Designed in Country A, Made in Country B, Quality Assured in Country A."

That's the lesson we need to learn from these recalls. Ideas, manufacturing, and quality need to be an integral whole.

Nowadays, though, it seems like the big money thinks we can ship out the manufacturing, handwave the quality, and collect the profits. We? No, I'm sorry. Only the big money will do that. The rest of us can stock shelves. What of the ideas? Well, the big money has decided that we can do without most of those.

I have a book, from the 1960s, that gives a decent summary of the state of alternative fuel or non-IC auto development. Forty-odd years later, there has been shockingly little real advancement. This is scandalous, but it's only one example of a theme we see everywhere. Our great forebears, in this country and elsewhere, pushed technology to astounding heights, and while it often made them fabulously wealthy, it also made life better for all of mankind. But no more. All we do now is live on our inheritance.

That, folks, is another rot-flavored center in the globalization chocolate. Why work to improve inferior goods? Just condition people to accept them. Put a good name on a piece of junk, and find someone to make it cheaply enough. Why work to develop new ideas? Put the money in stocks or something. It's less work. What if our forebears had thought that way?

So the jobs go, the ideas go, and the quality goes. What do we have left? The greed.

It is time we engineers stopped going along with this. We need to return to ideas, not greed, as the foundation of our industrial economy. The good of the many needs to be our inspiration, not the shortsighted avarice of the few. Even if all you make is trash cans, think: "How can we make a better trash can?"

Gerard Pawlowski
Erie, Pa.

Editor's Note: Several astute readers wrote to note that the South African alligators mentioned in last month's Editorial were most likely crocodiles. I stand corrected. J.F.

NO PREFERENCE

To the Editor: In response to the article "Widening the Pipeline" (January), I wish to take issue with the concept that active recruitment and promotion of females into the engineering field is necessary or even beneficial. Men and women are just different, with the aptitude and interest required for a successful career of technical innovation and problem solving residing heavily on the male side.

I enjoy diversity in all aspects of life, but from 35 years of engineering experience, where I've tracked female engineers' success in the field, all have become technical secretaries, departed early, or were spun off into management positions.

The article following the one under discussion illustrated this point. The featured woman was profusely stated to enjoy technical pursuits and not kids, yet her short technical career turned into teaching children technology.

Technology will advance despite the political games we play with it. Problem solving will be done either in our country or, if the engineering pipeline becomes too clogged with political correctness, it will be done by foreign engineers. I believe women should be given an equal opportunity to compete for education and jobs, but preferential treatment based upon gender is not beneficial, ethical, or even legal.

Robert Davis
Jackson, Miss.