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Engineering Our Digital Future: The Infinity Project
Product Description This book, Engineering Our Digital Future, plus a broad spectrum of supplemental materials, classroom technology, and a comprehensive instructor training program-work in concert to motivate users to learn about the infinite possibilities of technology and engineering in today's world. Developed by a national team led by Southern Methodist University and Texas Instruments, this book is the first of its kind in the country. Chapter topics include: The World of Modern Engineering; Creating Digital Music; Making Digital Images; Math You Can See; Digitizing the World; Coding Information for Storage and Secrecy; Communicating with Ones and Zeros; Networks from the Telegraph to the Internet; and The Big Picture. A new outlook into the possibilities of technology and engineering for beginner engineers. Back Cover Copy This book, Engineering Our Digital Future, plus a broad spectrum of supplemental materials, classroom technology, and a comprehensive instructor training program-work in concert to motivate users to learn about the infinite possibilities of technology and engineering in today's world. Developed by a national team led by Southern Methodist University and Texas Instruments, this book is the first of its kind in the country. Chapter topics include: The World of Modern Engineering; Creating Digital Music; Making Digital Images; Math You Can See; Digitizing the World; Coding Information for Storage and Secrecy; Communicating with Ones and Zeros; Networks from the Telegraph to the Internet; and The Big Picture. A new outlook into the possibilities of technology and engineering for beginner engineers. Reader Reviews This book is the outcome of a collaboration called "The Infinity Project" between Southern Methodist University, the government and Texas Instruments. It is intended to be an interesting introduction to current leading-edge digital technologies. For vehicles it uses digital music (a digital band), digital images (acquiring an image, and a robot eye), digital multimedia records (a digital yearbook and a digital backpack, or personal data assistant), digital transmission, and network design. There is a web site at http://www.infinity-project.org/. The strong point of this collection of projects is its design orientation. It begins with a distinction between scientists (creators of explanation) and engineers (creators of solutions for needs). It presents math and physics just-in-time, as parts of design problems and illustrates (with fair success) a common paradigm for pursuing such problems. Weak points of the collection are wordiness, some repetition, and a lack of justification or qualification of some general remarks. For example, a "nine-step" design algorithm is proposed with inadequate development or discussion. Excessive enthusiasm leads to some annoying hype to support engineering. An example of the book's myopia regarding creativity is a discussion of a design problem to "create a digital system that can produce award-winning movies from scratch by simply using a few suggestive keywords typed in by a user". This project sees creativity in the design of the system, but not in creating a movie - all you have to do is "paint by numbers" using a huge inventory of snipets. Other professions also may feel minimized. Overall, the book provides a nice feel for engineering, and for the use of math in solving engineering problems. It clearly shows the inquiring nature of creativity and the extension of common sense to penetrate complex issues. The ideas of constraints and trade-offs are made clear. This book appears aimed at precocious high-school students or at first-year engineering courses either for engineers or for those that want a flavor of what engineering is. The authors have not explicitly stated their target audience, but the infinity web site suggests "high school and early college engineering curriculum". Comment | | (Report this)
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