3 ms·

I wonder how much documentation we have for the practicalities of modern construction methods, and how much of it is passed down orally by the construction work

I wonder how much documentation we have for the practicalities of modern construction methods, and how much of it is passed down orally by the construction workers who are actually building stuff, or locked within internal company manuals. I mean sure I can look up formulae for concrete, rebar etc. on wikipedia, but for actual step-by-step instructions with specific machines and materials? I bet that information is a bit more discombobulated.

treeman79 3y ago
Max dad worked for McDonald Douglas, later Boeing. Tons of little tricks to build things that weren’t documented. Made union strong. Replacement workers couldn’t reproduce parts to spec when following instructions. Things like adding strings to foam molds in just the way, etc.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  > McDonald Douglas, later Boeing. Later Burger King :)
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Today's tech content would fare worse than you might imagine. So much is tied into byzantine ERP/PDM systems . . or contains specialized processing instructions for a particular black box editor/processor . .OR juggles actual techdata with the entity peculiarities of a CCS (component content system) that itself can result from any number of nebulous engineering fads. I guess, short version of what I'm trying to say, is that today's tech data doesn't have narrative. It's a bunch of little pieces floating around and needs a living org to put it together. If you froze it, Pompeii-style, future generations would find themselves facing dead ends all over the place.
- al_be_back 3y ago
  with software, it's particularly problematic - the dependency hell: libs, api, versions, platforms, players, os. your software needs documenting, and so do the deps. and if you want to run it/replay it, good luck getting it operational 20years from now let alone in year 3000. when a book, newspaper, magazine is published, a copy is archived with the National Library - narrative etc preserved. Websites get some archiving, but pay-walling is threatening this. Other types of software is very tricky.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    It is always interesting to me in science fiction how humans are able to repair/reverse-engineer ancient technology from aliens or pre-downfall humanity. If you stumbled across a non-encrypted WinXP hard drive, how would you possibly read the data? Figuring out the right power/voltage, creation of a SATA cable, constructing the SATA communication protocol, figuring out how to decode a NTFS file system, and then how to read bespoke binary format X. Modern humans with a very good idea of how NTFS work struggled to reverse engineer it for years.
    - TechBro8615 3y ago
      Our best hope would be exploit devs, cryptographers and infosec professionals with reverse engineering skills. It's incredible what some people can do with a black box system and no tools aside from a voltmeter and logic analyzer. First you probe the chip with the voltimeter to find where data is being interchanged, then you hit it with a logic analyzer to look for patterns, then you start breaking it down with cryptanalysis, which is really about finding patterns in noise. I think you'd be surprised what the best minds would be able to decipher, given the right hardware and unencrypted data. If the data's encrypted, it gets a lot harder, especially if the encryption is advanced enough that it basically looks like noise. But even then, there has to be some bootstrapping process, so we'd be able to reverse engineer that part of it, and then would need to hope to find an exploit in the encryption. Regarding cables and such, you'd have to expect that you wouldn't just find a single isolated hard drive. Even if you didn't have a full system, surely there would be cables and auxiliary components strewn about. And if there weren't, their absence would probably be significant, since you'd know they used some material that didn't survive as long as the material used to make the hard drive, and could infer its properties from that. So you'd probably be able to piece together which cables plugged into which components and make educated guesses about voltages and the like.
    - al_be_back 3y ago
      I agree. just think home much effort went into braking the Enigma Code in WW2, a tech developed by a contemporary power, with similar scientific know-how etc. If you've got hints/docs from similar formats, AI could help develop a pattern.
btrettel 3y ago
Nominally patents are supposed to describe these technical details, but unfortunately the law ("enablement") has no teeth in the US. When I was a patent examiner, I wanted to do enablement rejections, but couldn't. The law is supposed to incentivize properly documenting the invention, but attorneys have gamed the system, disclosing little in exchange for a monopoly.

treeman79 3y ago

Max dad worked for McDonald Douglas, later Boeing. Tons of little tricks to build things that weren’t documented. Made union strong. Replacement workers couldn’t reproduce parts to spec when following instructions. Things like adding strings to foam molds in just the way, etc.

boeingUH60 3y ago
> McDonald Douglas, later Boeing. Later Burger King :)

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Today's tech content would fare worse than you might imagine. So much is tied into byzantine ERP/PDM systems . . or contains specialized processing instructions for a particular black box editor/processor . .OR juggles actual techdata with the entity peculiarities of a CCS (component content system) that itself can result from any number of nebulous engineering fads. I guess, short version of what I'm trying to say, is that today's tech data doesn't have narrative. It's a bunch of little pieces floating around and needs a living org to put it together. If you froze it, Pompeii-style, future generations would find themselves facing dead ends all over the place.

al_be_back 3y ago
with software, it's particularly problematic - the dependency hell: libs, api, versions, platforms, players, os. your software needs documenting, and so do the deps. and if you want to run it/replay it, good luck getting it operational 20years from now let alone in year 3000. when a book, newspaper, magazine is published, a copy is archived with the National Library - narrative etc preserved. Websites get some archiving, but pay-walling is threatening this. Other types of software is very tricky.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  It is always interesting to me in science fiction how humans are able to repair/reverse-engineer ancient technology from aliens or pre-downfall humanity. If you stumbled across a non-encrypted WinXP hard drive, how would you possibly read the data? Figuring out the right power/voltage, creation of a SATA cable, constructing the SATA communication protocol, figuring out how to decode a NTFS file system, and then how to read bespoke binary format X. Modern humans with a very good idea of how NTFS work struggled to reverse engineer it for years.
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    Our best hope would be exploit devs, cryptographers and infosec professionals with reverse engineering skills. It's incredible what some people can do with a black box system and no tools aside from a voltmeter and logic analyzer. First you probe the chip with the voltimeter to find where data is being interchanged, then you hit it with a logic analyzer to look for patterns, then you start breaking it down with cryptanalysis, which is really about finding patterns in noise. I think you'd be surprised what the best minds would be able to decipher, given the right hardware and unencrypted data. If the data's encrypted, it gets a lot harder, especially if the encryption is advanced enough that it basically looks like noise. But even then, there has to be some bootstrapping process, so we'd be able to reverse engineer that part of it, and then would need to hope to find an exploit in the encryption. Regarding cables and such, you'd have to expect that you wouldn't just find a single isolated hard drive. Even if you didn't have a full system, surely there would be cables and auxiliary components strewn about. And if there weren't, their absence would probably be significant, since you'd know they used some material that didn't survive as long as the material used to make the hard drive, and could infer its properties from that. So you'd probably be able to piece together which cables plugged into which components and make educated guesses about voltages and the like.
  - al_be_back 3y ago
    I agree. just think home much effort went into braking the Enigma Code in WW2, a tech developed by a contemporary power, with similar scientific know-how etc. If you've got hints/docs from similar formats, AI could help develop a pattern.

btrettel 3y ago

Nominally patents are supposed to describe these technical details, but unfortunately the law ("enablement") has no teeth in the US. When I was a patent examiner, I wanted to do enablement rejections, but couldn't. The law is supposed to incentivize properly documenting the invention, but attorneys have gamed the system, disclosing little in exchange for a monopoly.