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Strategies & Market Trends : The Financial Collapse of 2001 Unwinding
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To: elmatador who wrote (2175)3/24/2019 1:55:56 PM
From: Elroy Jetson1 Recommendation

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elmatador

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My view is automation is a tool like the fossil fuel engine is a tool.

These tools enable people to do far more work than they could without them. Over time we replace old tools with new better tools.
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I've always been a tech wonk addicted to reading. Probably my best skill is the ability to quickly take in prodigious amounts of information and communicate that or utilize that information myself.

I love the new touchscreen and cpu I installed to run our ceramic kiln. It has programs which can do a large number of different types of firings - and even the typical doped-up artist can carry this out.

But when we first bought it it was a new product and didn't work correctly. This required a technologist like myself to be able to work with the engineer who designed it to change to program to perform correctly. Fortunately the engineer built-in an error log system so I could download files into Excel to see exactly what the kiln knew and how it responded every 30 seconds during a firing. I could spot the problem and was able to communicate to the engineer how his programmer had not implemented his feedback control system correctly.
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Even now, the kiln will do something unexpected or some things sometimes won't fire correctly or a glaze interacts badly with a clay body and they need someone like myself who understands the chemistry to solve the problem and make things work again.

I've taught a lot of artists how to diagnose the kiln and the basics of chemistry, so my efforts can go further. doing this allows me to spend more of my time doing what I prefer, but it doesn't eliminate the need for someone like myself.
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One societal change I don't like is the shift away from reading, especially toward videos to communicate information or misinformation. I'm usually one of the few people who have read the contract or the instruction manual. Yes, it's a skill I'm better at, but like pilots watching a 50 minute video on the Boeing MCAS system, video is passive and people don't learn as much.
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