[archiver]

Posted by Steve Shade.

Other on team #7, Firestorm, from Parkville High School and Black & Decker / AAI / Raytheon.

Posted on 11/3/99 5:32 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: New Poll posted by Fran on 11/3/99 8:46 AM MST:



I agree so far with what is being said about alliances. However, we look at the technology and see how that advances, but in addition to the advances, there are social effects. Last year I was a Senior and the Head Coach of my team and I didn't understand the importance of alliances. Now I'm at the University of Maryland: College Park, and yesterday Dr. Mark Sagoff presented my Science, Technology and Society Colloquium with a lecture entitled 'The Fox, the Hedgehog, and Nature.' The most important thing I got out of the lecture is that in many cases engineers are considered to be 'foxes', always looking for a technology fix to solve every problem. The fox solves problems in many ways by looking at each individual problem. The hedgehog unlike the fox, looks at the whole picture and makes the decisions based upon the big problem. Alliances fit into this picture by making teams look at the game as a whole. As the #1 seed in Philly, the times that my team did better in matches was when our alliane worked together on a strategy that was based upon the overall goals of the game, picking up floppies, pushing the puck, getting on top of the puck, raising 8 feet ect. and not planing out exactly what we were going to do. We had an idea, but stayed flexable and looked at the whole game. I think alliances are important because the future of our society won't just be new technology solving ecconomic, social, and enviromental problems; it will be the incorporation of technology with a more universal approach. From my experience, I see alliances as a way to look at the game from a different perspective by asking the question 'How does our robot fit into the game when we are allied with another team and are against two other unknown, in most cases, robots?' I believe alliances are important to broaden our thinking as engineers and the possibilities of the game. Society is effected by our actions, and our actions have more than technological effects. Sometimes we have to think beyond the competition to see what we learn but not always realize it until 6 months later.