Engineering at Scale – IEEE Spectrum

Engineers are masters of the scale. They exploit the energy of the sun, wind, rivers, atoms and minerals. They handle electrons, photons and crystals to calculate and communicate. They design instruments that detect disturbances in the space-time fabric. And they are struggling with challenges – anticipated or not – which are presented by the extent of the problem they are trying to solve.

The articles of this issue describe the engineers who think, interact and create things on very precise and often mind -blowing scales. They took the contact with contact with contact and put it on the scale in decades in a product made in quantities almost unimaginable (13 sexillions, or 13,000,000,000,000,000, between 1947 and 2018, by an estimate) and involving one of the most complex but the most effective workflows on the planet. They sequen the genomes of 1.8 million species. They model and reduce a potential disaster – Kessler’s syndrome – which threatens to decimate satellites in low terrestrial orbit [p. 58]. Wherever you look at, ingenious engineering grows against the limits of the scale.

This ingenuity extends to the creation of scales for what has not yet been measured. How will we know when AI has reached general intelligence at the level of man? How to precisely measure the absence of material in a vacuum? Then there is the complexity of the scale of a technology for mass adoption. Why, for example, some manufacturers of humanoid robots have announced too optimistic deployment objectives and increased the production capacity well in advance on specific humanoid robot safety standards, high reliability, a life of the decent battery or a demand for hordes of humanoids? And how can terrestrial wind turbines continue to develop unless there is a proven way to transport them?

“Infographics allow readers to grab a glance which would take explanation paragraphs.” —Eliza Strickland

In this issue, our publishers and artists flex their data visualization powers thanks to convincing infographics, to help readers appreciate the scale of hundreds of carbon dioxide gigatons and the immense interstellar distances that we could cross with a swarm of laser -power kitties.

“While we wanted each article to include a visual element, some subjects called for special treatment. You could tell the story of carbon capture or interstellar trips in words, but the real impact occurs when you see the gaps, the scales, the jumps involved, “explains Eliza Strickland, editor -in -chief, who organized this issue. “Infographics allow readers to grab a glance which would take explanation paragraphs, whether it be the request for a balloon for AI or the long trip from the gross quartz to finished computer flea.” Several of these infographics, as well as the coverage, were created by the renowned graphic designer Carl de Torres, owner of Optics Lab.

We also ordered an essay by the writer of nature Paul Bogard, who addressed his subject of the human scale. Who among us has not looked at the stars and has amazed the way our eyes absorb the light that has traveled thousands of years to reach us? Bogard has ventured in Chile to see how light pollution encroaches on astronomy and change our sense of place in the universe, perhaps irrevocably.

We hope that this problem stimulates the questions and arouses our appreciation for people who measure independence, build outlet and resolve the insoluble.