The purpose behind our Technology in Construction Department
in every issue.
I don’t know about
you, but given a choice between putting my ignorance on display or side-stepping
issues, my temptation has always been spring-loaded toward the latter. It’s what
I refer to as my Mach-Zero (out of airspeed) tendency that has on occasion
allowed me to cry out, “Lord, I don’t mind dying, only don’t let me look stupid
in the process.”
Nor did this lunacy
go away after I retired from combat flying. Indeed it got a whole new lease on
life when I was surveying a piece of land I had bought while I was in the
service. It was well after I had heard from others about the wonders of lasers,
yet there I was out there dragging a chain and pounding tons of intermediate
stakes. I mean, “what the heck,” I humored myself, “lasers are
dangerous.
“Besides, they’re
expensive,” I pressed on with the litany of excuses to justify trudging up and
down hills, whacking away at brush, in order to come up with numbers rarely
consistent with those from before.
The truth was I
didn’t understand lasers, how they worked, what made them superior to the way I
was doing things, why they could make my like a lot easier, and most of all how
they could make me a lot more productive. So rather than take the time to gain
an understanding, I ignored them…a sort of, “I’ll show them,” attitude that
while it didn’t make me more productive, at least made me feel
better.
The same was true
with GPS…ditto computer programs of a variety of stripes.
Well, it’s this kind
of thinking our Technology in Construction department is here to
change…thus I and those like me are the people for whom it is written. The
column is designed to focus on various topics where change has reared its ugly
head and show what has changed, how it affects the way things are done, and why
any of us should care.