Engineering at Dordt College

Esther and Mordecai
“Called to the Kingdom for a time such as this.”

One of the privileges of being at a Christian College is the opportunity to worship together at Chapel. Recently Professor Adams spoke in Chapel on the topic of “Stewardship of Technology and Natural Resources.” Maybe by reading this blog entry you can experience a brief moment of meditation and worship.

Call to Worship
Based on Psalm 8, we sang with organ accompaniment the hymn,
“Lord our Lord, Thy Glorious Name.”

Message (summary)
Mordecai’s words to Esther were that she was, “called to the kingdom for a time such as this.” These words apply to all of us down through the ages. In our era when pollution and limited resources are becoming ever more difficult to manage it is fitting that we consider how Christians might respond. Let’s see if we can glean some insights from scripture.

Opening Scripture

The LORD exists forever; your word is firmly fixed in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand today, for all things are your servants. –Psalm 119:89-91

Our first basic theme: All things and creatures exist to serve God. When we think about technology, we think of certain types of things people make, like bridges and computers. These things are to exist first of all to serve God. We need to exercise our stewardship responsibilities over these things first of all with respect to God. Where better to hear about our responsibilities with respect to technology than from the scriptures. Psalm 8, which we sang at the opening of this chapel says:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. –Psalm 8:3-8

Our second basic theme: We may be obedient or disobedient stewards, but we cannot avoid being stewards. And stewardship is more than being frugal. There are all kinds of aspects to stewardship, such as acting from an educated understanding of the creation, a sense of ethics, and recognizing historical perspective, and so forth. As “rulers” we should not interpret our stewardship as merely being frugal (as with money).

But we are up against a challenge. We have sinned.

Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying. –Hosea 4:1-3

Our third basic theme: The fall is radical. All things are corrupted by sin and the curse. But God is grieved by this. He loves us AND he loves his creation which we are to steward. Listen to the way God speaks to “the land” in Ezekiel:

…prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I speak in my jealous wrath because you have suffered the scorn of the nations. Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I swear with uplifted hand that the nations around you will also suffer scorn. “ ‘But you, O mountains of Israel, will produce branches and fruit for my people Israel, for they will soon come home. I am concerned for you and will look on you with favor; you will be plowed and sown, and I will multiply the number of people upon you, even the whole house of Israel. The towns will be inhabited and the ruins rebuilt. I will increase the number of people and animals living on you, and they will be fruitful and become numerous. I will settle people on you as in the past and will make you prosper more than before. Then you will know that I am the LORD. I will cause people, my people Israel, to live on you. They will possess you, and you will be their inheritance;…’ ” –Ezekiel 36:7-12

Fourth basic theme: Although the non-human creation suffers under the curse because of human sin, it is through its relationship with us, God’s image bearers, that the non-human creation will be healed and become fruitful in the way the Lord has planned. That relationship is bidirectional. We steward, and thereby shape the non-human creation. But the non-human creation, in turn, shapes us. In Ezekiel’s time, God’s people farmed the hills and built towns in the valleys. And those hills and valleys with their farms and towns sustained the people, but also shaped, and reinforced the shape that Israel’s culture was taking.

Today, in the 21st century, we build cell-phones, high definition TV’s, and jet airliners. But those cell-phones, high definition TV’s and jet airliners, in turn, shape us according to the values that led us to build them in the first place. This bi-directional relationship between the human and non-human creation—particularly technology—requires that our stewardship be a discerning stewardship. A stewardship that is prophetically critical of disobedience and a stewardship that points in the direction of obedient technology.

All the more reason why we need to know the ground of our stewardship activities, which is, of course, the redemption of the whole of creation—human and non-human—that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. Listen as Paul tells us about Christ and creation, where he says:

…by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. –Colossians 1:16-20

What? “To reconcile all things?” Yes, by his atoning death. “All things” includes humans, of course. It includes as well stars and galaxies, lions and dandelions, hills and valleys. But it also includes computers, telecommunication technology, medical technology, and transportation technology. And just in case you remain a wee bit skeptical about the significance of Easter for modern technology, I will close this chapel by reading to you from the prophet Isaiah. Would you believe it, in Isaiah 60, the Lord is speaking to a technological artifact? That technological artifact is the city of Jerusalem. And, of course, in this prophecy that great city—that which will become The New Jerusalem when Christ returns—represents God’s redeemed creation: his called out people as well as the healed and made-new non-human creation. Which means the prophet is speaking to you, to Dordt College, and to all that we are studying and working toward while we are here. Listen to what he says:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

“Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come.

“Who are these that fly along like clouds, like doves to their nests? Surely the islands look to me; in the lead are the ships of Tarshish, bringing your children from afar, with their silver and gold, to the honor of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.” –Isaiah 60:1-3, 5, 8-9.

We—if we are faithful in our stewardship task—we are those children coming from afar, with the good technological things of the twenty-first century. So let’s accept our role as discerning stewards of the non-human creation and shape obediently that bit of history the Lord has called us to.

Closing Prayer
Our father in heaven when we consider the beauty of the mountains, and valleys, the quantity of the galaxies, the energy you have provided for us in fossil fuels, uranium, wind, waterfalls and sunshine, and when we think of living things, microscopic and macroscopic–all of what you have entrusted to our care–when we think of our responsibilities to care for these as your good servants, we are humbled. Send your Spirit that we may be discerning stewards, “for such a time as this.” Forgive us for our failures to understand what we should be doing. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Closing Hymn “Let All Creation Bless the Lord“

____________________
(Painting by Alrent de Gelder (1645-1727), “Esther and Mordechai Writing the First Purim Missive,” Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires.)

Thursday evening, August 23, I had the privilege of listening to Dordt’s Professor Schaap give a rehearsal of a multimedia presentation, “What about a Bicentennial?” [Of the Christian Reformed Church Denomination.]

He got me thinking. . . How will the issues he discussed impinge on Dordt College and in particular, the engineering department where I find fulfilling work? Dordt’s May 2007 graduates were our 25th graduating class. Will there be a 50th class of engineering students graduating from Dordt College?

I for one, appreciated what he had to say, but it’s impossible to summarize Professor Schaap’s multimedia presentation here in a paragraph or so. You can read a draft of his presentation on his homepage. If you get a chance to hear his multimedia presentation at the Christian Reformed Church’s 150th Anniversary Conference, that would be even better. (Friday, September 14, 8:00 - 9:30 PM at Calvin College’s Prince Conference Center. Complete conference schedule here.)

So will there be a 50th class of engineering graduates from Dordt College? I’ve concluded that “it depends.”

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise up early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat–
for while they sleep he provides for those he loves.
(Psalm 127: 1-2)

May we be found faithful.

As we approach the end of the summer I’m reminded of the number of our students who are returning from internship experiences. Internships have become an important part of any engineering student’s learning experience. Here at Dordt College most of our students take an internship during the summer between their third and fourth years. Longer internships are also possible, although they require commeasurably more planning. My observation is that these experiences invariably improve our student’s understanding of engineering leading to higher grades and importantly, a sense of how fulfilling and worthwhile engineering work can be. Industry is also stepping up to the challenge by offering better internship opportunities each year and greater support for internships. A best case example is Jesse Van Essen’s experience this summer. You can read more here about his particular experience at Pella Corporation

Consider plain old telephone service (POTS). The telephone sets (that which you fasten to the wall or place on your desk) connected to the telephone network are simple electromechanical contraptions. There need be no computing power at all in a telephone set in order to place any type of telephone call–local, long distance, conference call, etc. Although a telephone set might offer some minor features such as speed dialing (press one button to place a call to a stored number), the real power of the system is in the network. Have you ever felt compelled to “upgrade” your telephone set in order to get some new feature offered via the network? Maybe, (adding caller ID might be an example) but it does not happen very often. The telephone company does all the hard work such as maintaining and updating the numbering system (area codes for example) and assigning telephone numbers, routing and connecting the calls, billing, etc. This is what I call a smart network. The devices connected to this network can be dumb. A telephone made in 1950 will work just fine on today’s telephone network. Even sophisticated telephone sets (cordless, answering machine etc.) are pretty dumb compared to the smarts built into the network.

At one time the Bell Telephone System had a monopoly on telephone service in the United States. In response to widespread dissatisfaction with service and pricing, the government broke that monpoly in 1984.

In contrast, consider the Internet. The computers connected to the Internet are not simple at all. In order exploit all of the content, or even a minority of the content, you need a rather powerful and up-to-date computer. A fifteen-year-old IBM-386 class computer running some old version of Windows will be frustratingly slow, probably will not be able to access much content, if it even works at all. Yet there was a time when that same computer was considered the best for using the Internet of it’s day. Users need to keep updating their hardware just in order to keep doing things they have always done, even simple things like e-mail. Most of the complexity of the Internet is at its edges, in the hardware and software users connect to it. The heart of the internet is just a rather simple method of routing packets of bits toward the intended recipient. The network itself is oblivious of what the data means and does a minimum of processing on the data. This is what I call a dumb network. The devices connected to it must be smart.

So what does it matter? The original premise of the Internet was to deliberately make it dumb so that it would be robust in war. A smart network presents the enemy with targets to attack in order to disable the network. If a dumb network is attacked, little is lost. The system will probably keep functioning at some level, and it can be easily rebuilt. Coincidentally, a dumb network empowers users since they control the smart computers connected to it–so long as the smarts remain in their computers.

Now a new trend is emerging. Some call it “Web 2.0.” I’ll define this as the offering of hosted services. I’m writing this blog entry on a hosted service (WordPress on a Dordt College server). If instead I wrote this blog on my own computer in raw html code and operated my own sever to dish this up to you, that would be consistent with the original idea behind the Internet. Now most of us are using hosted services with hardly a thought about where the smarts are. Some other examples of hosted services are Hotmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, You Tube, Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and so forth. Suppose for a minute that each of these services demanded a monthly fee in order to keep hosting your content. That would be quite a change for some of us!

Web 2.0 is moving the smarts of the Internet back toward the network and away from the users. The warehouse of Googles’ many disk drives which contain who-knows-how-much now becomes a critical factor in the usefulness of the network. The loss of Google for example would be hard to replace.

We used to talk about, even joke about, the ability of “Ma Bell” to watch over our communications. I find it fascinating that companies like Google, Yahoo, and many others are working hard to corner various hosted services that can be offered on the Internet. They are striving for dominance, maybe even monopoly power. As more of the smarts of the network move toward these hosted services, the possibility for generating revenue and establishing monopolies grows. The Internet is starting to look a little (just a little at this time) like the old Bell System.

(It has been about a month since my last blog entry. I got a bit busy with senior projects, final exams, and the end-of-semester meetings to wrap up business. I hope to provide about two blog entries per month during the summer.)

In a previous blog entry I advocated use of government regulated micro-payments for the suppression of spam e-mail. In the comments, Jim asked why I assume that the government has to step in. Why can’t free market forces manage the problem of spam? In this blog entry I intend to show that the government is unavoidably involved in the consumer electronics business to a larger extent than most people realize. My assumption that it will take government action to suppress spam is based in part on past history. I’ll do this by way of example—the story of RCA.

Once upon a time there was a company that meant as much to the business of selling radios and televisions as Microsoft means to the business of selling computer software and hardware today. That company was the Radio Corporation of America. which later changed its official name to its initialism, RCA.

With the onset of World War I the use of radio for war-time communication was an obvious necessity in order to maintain military superiority in command and control. With that goal in mind, the US government passed laws which in effect gave the government free access to all wireless and radio-related patents. These rights were purchased and turned over to a new publicly held corporation, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). With the U.S. patent rights of all earlier radio companies at its disposal, including such famous (at the time) names as Marconi, Westinghouse, and General Electric, RCA got a financial boost that it played out for more than 50 years.

With the near monopoly power that RCA had, it developed new standards with practically absolute veto power over the proposals of others. For example Edwin Armstrong developed an FM radio system prior to RCA’s effort. After World War II RCA proposed new standards for FM broadcasting, managed to get them approved by the FCC, and ran Armstrong out of the business. (Armstrong committed suicide, probably in despair over the usurpation of his FM work by RCA.) For another example, the Columbia Broadcasting System developed a color TV standard and had it fully approved by the FCC. Just a short time later, RCA came up with a new standard, had the old standard retracted by the FCC and asserted its new standard through a quasi governmental agency which it supported called the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC).

I see a huge parallel between the development of the radio business, especially early AM radio (1920 through 1950) and the development of the internet. Early AM radio broadcasting was poorly regulated. Business models for radio broadcasting were based on older technologies of wired telegraph and telephone service. These early ways of doing business did not take advantage of what broadcasting could offer and suffered from the technical differences between radio and wired services. The same thing is happening on the internet. E-mail is modeled somewhat after postal mail, but the extremely low cost of sending bits is very different from the real costs of paper, printing, and transportation involved in snail-mail. Ultimately the regulation of radio broadcasting became centered in a new government bureaucracy—now the FCC. I expect a similar outcome will have to happen with regard to regulating the internet.

RCA is not a unique case. AT&T once enjoyed not a near monopoly (as did RCA) but an actual monopoly, again possible only because of government action. Both of these companies are gone now, swept away possibly by mismanagement, but also by the increasing spirit of deregulation that followed the Reagan years in the 1980’s. Some of my readers may think this deregulation is all to the good. To them I say that deregulation is also why you have failures of perfectly good technology. For example, the FCC approved several AM stereo formats and intended to let the invisible hand of the market ferret out the best one. Today, not only is AM stereo practically a total market failure in every format, so is the AM band itself since it has not been able to keep up technologically with FM. In any case, government action or inaction has profound marketplace results.

On the positive side, durable and long lasting standards have come out of RCA’s near monopoly. Today’s FM stereo and analog color TV standards are marvels of sophistication considering the era in which they were invented. Although new standards are now entering the market (HD Radio, HDTV), the whole world avoided the chaos of the many possible incompatible standards. Although such regulation is a mixed blessing, it always can be directed for various purposes. It is the direction that counts—regulation itself will exist in some form.

The internet came about in its present form because of government sponsored research (just as in the case of RCA, government was instrumental) and FCC regulations regarding public access to the telephone system. (The backbone of the internet in the U.S. is operated by telephone companies.) That spam can exist in this situation is also due to positive legislation and rule making on the part of the U.S. Congress and the FCC to deregulate and provide open access to long-distance telephone lines. Present laws are allowing spam. Maybe the free market can get its act together and suppress the spam—but there would have to be some economic incentive. Spam filtering services and filtering software seem to be the hallmark of the free market approach. I say we should reconsider the laws which are allowing spam and modify them appropriately. Some e-mail, like certain messages “from Nigeria” are simply evil. Government action is appropriate and probably necessary for truly effective results against evil. The exponential growth of spam e-mail will eventually force the issue.

(P.S. A “boyg” is a problem that can’t be defined and is therefore insurmountable.)