My Dream About Civil Technology

A bridge I used to walk over often (St Servaasbridge Maastricht)

 Since the start of my career I’ve been receiving all kind of stories about succesful people. Often they tell about how they had a dream, how they said when they were young: “That’s what I want to do”. I never had that. From a very young age on I had no idea what I wanted except for absorbing more and more (useless/useful) information. Since about 6 months I now know I want to be more creative in my job and create things. I am creating things, so that’s good, but the creativity as such is not impressive. I work according to rules of architecture and along guidelines.

Spring started and the sun is shining so I got an inject of extra energy that makes me want to do more than I am now. I am fairly busy already, but I know I can take on more. I have my regular work; several smaller projects creating new information/data flows, and one self started research to what my company offers in e-learning. Fairly interesting, but not outside my comfort zone, nor new. In these cases I’m working from experience and my expertise which I built up during the last 7 years. (My dear god! Has it really been that long?)

I had it this morning, as a matter of fact about two paragraphs and five minutes ago. I was reading about how the Netherlands was really good at civil technology and especially water management. That was not news, I’ve known that since I was a young child. I remember being taken to see the “Waterstormkering”; Holland’s biggest works to hold the water out. At the time I didn’t understand the greatness nor the size of the work, so it was not an everlasting impression. I was, however, always fascinated by how water always seemed to be able to get everywhere.

A pile of foundation

Anyway, this morning I was reading about civil technology for watermanagement and certain Dutch companies’ successes commercially in that area. I was reading about how they went about an assigment. First they send a Dutch expert to give advice for about two to four weeks. Then the local companies execute the work.

I don’t know what attracted me most, the many trips to foreign countries or the scale of the projects. During reading that article I thought: “I want to work in that area”.

Problem is, I know nothing about civil technology. Nor am I sure where I could fit in. Surely they need IT, but that doesn’t sound all that exciting. They need marketing to keep attracting the big assignments, maybe I could do something there. I’m not sure they’re looking. I will not be beaten just yet (probably within half a day) and I decided to take an earlier article as a sign. The earlier article was about how to write an application letter. What stood out to me was the including of an example of experience. Obviously, I have none in civil technology.

Not that I’ve never been anywhere close to any civil technology; I spend my days in buildings, I walk over bridges and I’m grateful for the waterworks that keep out the sea. No, I’ve been even closer. My second internship was at a technology factory, Flexion. I was responsible to collect all wishes and demands from customers for Flexion’s website. To do that I tagged along with some representers/salesmen to big companies, their customers. One of these customers was Caterpillar. Walking through the factory was cool and interesting, but it was what they had outside for display that made an everlasting impression on me: a pile for foundation. It was about two stories high and the height was so great, I couldn’t wrap my arms around it. That was really cool.

Should I do something with this gut feeling? If yes, what should I do? Giving up my day job doesn’t sound like the smartest thing. I would also need more training in marketing and I have to build my knowledge of civil technology. I’m not sure I’m up for it.

Source: Intermediair: Wereldwijd Nederlandse Dijken

Waterworks

Age of Technology

This was an old piece I wrote in September. I left it in my 'Work in Progress' document, because I thought it wasn't quite ready to go out. After having read it I decided it was actually good enough to see the light of day. So there ya go. Obviously, that piece in the paper you're not going to find; sorry for that.

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More and more I see articles about what the new technology, we’re speaking Information technology here, is doing to our brains. Everything goes faster; we’re offered the possibility to do more things at the same time while they keep flashing suggestions of other ways to turn into our faces. Even though our brains are processing faster than mankind’s grey mass ever has, we’re on the brink of overload. Our long term memory is deteriorating, our attention span is decreasing and privacy is something historical. (I made up the last one, but it is generally true.) Also we’re not as good at multi tasking as we thought, and the youth is performing worse than their seniors. Yet, the progressing technology is not bad; it’s the way we cope with it.

I remember being taught our ancestors wouldn’t be able to cope with our fast paced world. I still believe that’s true. However, now I’m wondering if the same doesn’t apply to us too. There’s so much possible and yet we don’t know how to deal with all these possibilities. We’re like little children in a candy shop with a pushy salesman. All the colours and promises to our palates make our eyes grow bigger and our fingers itching to grab. And we grab till our head starts to spin with a sugar rush and our stomachs are trying to rid itself of the overload of sugar and preservatives. In the end we go back home too sick to join for dinner and going straight to bed to nurse nausea and a pounding headache.

I work in IT. I know what’s possible (about everything) and I know how unproductive you can get with all these toys in your hands. These days you can do research in your bed with your laptop hooked up to the Internet. You don’t need to leave the house to find out your ancestor bought one of the first motor bikes. And if you don’t need to leave your bed it automatically means you don’t need to leave your office to do research. You can research, for instance, the perils of progression in your boss’ time. Or you can do that and work at the same time as well. It’s all possible.

I’m involved, side ways, in a large project called “het Nieuwe Werken” (the New Working; what a crap translation). The project mainly tries to implement even more electronic ways to work and offer employees possibilities. It might sound wonderful, but in the greater scheme you can see where this is going. Now we do know about these “perils” and I believe we should act upon it. We have to go from reactive working to proactive working. We have to learn to work again. We have to learn to cope with technology.

I read in the paper that only the notification of receiving an e-mail already costs us 3 seconds. That might not sound like much, but in the end it adds up. Firstly, I think I’m now mixing Charlie’s column up with that paper article. Never mind. Secondly, so what? Does the writer even consider the time lost when getting and drinking coffee and when chatting to colleagues? Even if we exclude all the external disturbances, the fact we do need taking breaks doesn’t seem very important. Of course it is. I think I lose more minutes drinking and chatting to people then I do noticing emails coming in. In the end when I look back, I often do think I had a productive day even though I received many mails and read them. It’s a point of variation that we need. Let’s not forget that.

Sources:
Dutch paper: de Pers, page 12 from Monday September 13th.
Charlie’s column