Sunday 17 May 2015

An era of, um.. openness? Or should I say exposure?

No, please don't hit the close button immediately.. This isn't going to be a sermon on tradition and conservatism - I might touch upon its periphery, yes, but do read on, and I promise you, you will have plenty of opportunity to judge me - and curse me, if you so wish.

The 21st century is one that would, perhaps baffle even the best thinkers of the previous generation, why, I'd say those of all time.. Anyone would've said that exposing one's (well it at least applies to women) body in a provocative manner would become fashionable, but who in the world would've thought that the same would apply to engineering - and by engineering, I'm implying both the crude mechanical and the 'soft' computer wings.

The OOP (Object Oriented Programming) revolution proved that programmers ape real life, modelling programs based on real life object attributes such as character (properties), behaviour (functions) and the like, but time has turned the world around, with openness penetrating every possible field.

As technology engulfs life, flattening the three dimensional world into two dimensional screens which tend towards 3D, real life objects take an unexpected turn, tending towards - for want if a better term, unreality. Programmers who talked of concealment, hiding and encapsulation during the OOP phase, have now shifted their focus to open source. Now that is understandable, but it comes down as a paralyzing shock that their closer-to-the-old-real-life counterparts shape their design to ape the obsolete procedural programming paradigm - do what you want to do, and as long as it serves the purpose, don't bother.

Believe it or not, these days even buildings like to flaunt the structures that keep their roof up. Until some genius coins a nice term, I'll call this "engineering glamour". So far, I've seen it at a couple of airports, and I believe that it will spill over to conventional buildings too.

Trust me, people, this is no joke, and just to prove that it wasn't just one exception, I'm putting below some pictures of this phenomenon, vividly seen at four different airports in India, namely Chennai, Mumbai Bangalore and New Delhi (Courtesy: Google Images, because I'm lazy to put the page URLs):

Chennai Airport

Mumbai Airport

Bangalore Airport

New Delhi Airport (Terminal 1D)

What will it be next? Transparent wings and fuselage of airplanes to reveal the rib, longeron and bulkhead structures? Or will the exposure mania inflict another unbelievable arena? Maybe someone should shoot a film depicting out-in-the-open surgeries..

No wonder the oldies keep saying that they don't know what today's generation is rushing towards...

1 comment:

  1. Raamboy! It's for a sustainable future. To save power.

    ReplyDelete

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