Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Season 2 Episode 06: Problem Solvers: The Resilient Generation with Emma Coltoff
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We're looking at the world through the lens of a younger generation - young professionals, problem solvers, and entrepreneurs - exploring their unique perspective on the challenges facing the Hudson Valley and the country. This week we're talking with a young mechanical engineer about prosthetics, electric vehicles, 3D Printers, and resiliency.
This week's episode features Emma Coltoff, a young mechanical engineer working with TE Connectivity, who even dedicates her free time to solving problems.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way we usually do things. We are intentionally choosing to see the silver lining opportunity arises. We can shine a light on the things that weren't working well on those things that weren't really working at all, we can regroup reevaluate and re-engineer it's time to explore new patterns and paradigms those that inspire us to rise above the chaos and explore how the conditions of today and take us to a better tomorrow patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast from Hudson Valley pattern for progress. You're listening to season two, episode six, problem solvers, the resilient generation with your host pattern, president and CEO, Jonathan Dropkin.
Speaker 2Hi everyone, and welcome to patterns and paradigms. We hope you enjoyed last week's episode. Would Kim element the CEO of the open space Institute? One of the nation's most prestigious land trusts , please remember to subscribe to our podcast and share it with a friend bubble or trend. The golden globe nominations were recently announced. I said to myself self, how did they do that? If no, one's going to the movies. I looked through the list of nominees and recognized that they were all available through one of the many streaming services. What then is the future of the movie theater? We had a chance to explore some of this when actor Mary Stuart Masterson joined us on the podcast, but will the experiential side of going to the movies, win out over the comfort of watching it at home? We say that people will want to return to the movies, but the business side of making movies and their distribution will ultimately dictate where we watch stay tuned. Before I introduce this week's guest, where we, we will be previewing a new periodic series of talking with younger problem-solvers and entrepreneurs. Let me ask my partner at pattern to help me with framing this segment, Joe Cheika with what's up Joe. Hey JD . So I thought it would be fun, Joe, if we could take the podcast every couple of episodes and talk to a younger demographic about , um , entrepreneurship, where they're , where they see the country going in terms of all of the issues that we're facing. Um, is it too much? Can they address it? And Joe , in order to sort of give a little bit of the background about why I want to go there, maybe you can give us a little bit of the history of the Hudson Valley and its relationship to , um, engineers.
Speaker 3Sure. Well, as many people know, the Hudson Valley had been home to IBM, which was filled. It was filled with engineers and engineers are very interesting people. They, they, they come to, to a job with the theory of one thing in mind, and that is how do you solve a problem? How do you solve a problem like Maria? It was a sound of music episode, right? But engineers, engineers are just there they're fabulous problem solvers . And when they did come to the Hudson Valley years ago, it was a boom there, they, you know, there was, there was homes being built or businesses being established. Uh, IBM just, just took off. I mean , and it became a way, a way of the, of the Hudson Valley, where there were high paying jobs. Um , and those high paying jobs then really helped these communities thrive and engineers were local. They, they lived in the community, they participated on boards. They participated as volunteers. And we had our incredible pool of people with very creative minds. And so with these high paying jobs in the, and this , this thoughtful creative side of things, the communities did well, there were on, on, on, on a track to just continue to explore and to expand and to look at things in an efficient way. And it was , uh , it was a great time then IBM downsized ,
Speaker 2IBM is still, still prominent in Poughkeepsie. And in Westchester there's still thousands of IBM jobs, but it left a void, I think is what you're saying in that, in that we had an opportunity for the region to be populated with these problem solvers . Now, one of the exciting things that I think is happening is there is this whole new group of people throughout the Hudson Valley that are entrepreneurs, they're creative, they're thoughtful. And an entrepreneur could be in many, many different ways. Don't, you know, our listeners shouldn't think of it as an entrepreneur is an only in business throughout the pandemic. There've been all kinds of entrepreneurs who have figured out how they're going to get by. So, you know, I think Joe , with this segment , um, we're going to take a ch you know , uh , uh, uh, uh , look through the lens of a younger generation as to the series of issues that we face in the Hudson Valley and throughout the United States. So thanks Joe. And let me introduce our guests today. We're going to be talking with Emma. Co-taught a 26 year old mechanical engineer and currently working for T E connectivity as a sustaining product engineer. Emma graduated with a bachelor of science degree from Tufts university in may of 2017. And my explains that engineers are just what we're looking for. Problem solvers. The more I tried to prod her about the numbers of issues, her generation will have to address the more she pushed back by saying, speaking for young engineers, we are problem solvers. It just means there's more problems for us to solve. And this father died when she was very young. He was an engineer. Her younger sister is a cancer survivor. The word that is used so often to describe getting to the other side of the pandemic is resiliency and Emma Pitta, Mises that let us know what you think of this episode by contacting us@patternforprogress.org slash podcast. Hi, I am , um, this is the first in a series where we're trying to get the perspective of different generations to the period that we're in. So the question I pose to all of our gasses , how are you doing and how are you surviving in the time of COVID?
Speaker 4Well, then I appreciate you asking me that. And I have to admit, I am , I've been unusually lucky during the pandemic, and I try to stay aware of that and, and count my blessings for sure. Um, you know, my I've stayed healthy. My family has stayed healthy. My friends have stayed healthy. I've really been relatively unaffected other than my daily life, like most of us. Um, but yeah, I've still, I've still been able to work and maintain my job just transitioned easily, remotely. Yeah. I'm still able to kind of do all my daily responsibilities in almost more than that. They got some new things as well.
Speaker 2So, so let's explain your job. You're a mechanical engineer. How, how did that, how did that happen? Why engineering and tell us a bit of, you know , your pathway of getting there?
Speaker 4Sure. Well, so my , my current title is as a product engineer , um, at T connectivity and I'm working in the automotive industrial commercial sector. Um, so the , to just to explain that a little bit there's , the automotive is more like personal vehicles, cars, and then industrial commercial transportation is basically everything. That's a vehicle that's larger than that. So construction trucks , uh , long haul trucks, boats, sometimes ADVS emergency medicine, vehicles, fire trucks, and , um , that type of thing, buses. Um, so that's the field I'm currently in, but obviously to get there, I had to take a few other steps , um, like getting my bachelor's in mechanical engineering. I graduated from Tufts in may of 2017,
Speaker 226.
Speaker 4Yes. My birthday was on Sunday.
Speaker 2Well , happy birthday, but why engineering? Well , I mean, you could have, you know, you could have done anything why'd you pick engineering?
Speaker 4Well, you know, admittedly, my dad was an engineer. So from a very young age, I had the opportunity to kind of know what engineering was beyond a train conductor. So that started me off on the right foot. But, you know, I always kind of gravitated towards science and math though. I do also have an affinity for English and writing as well. Um , that's one of the reasons I actually chose Tufts is because it's a liberal arts school that has engineering. So I was able to do courses outside of engineering, as opposed to , um, more of a technical school route where the courses were kind of hardcore technical and you didn't have a lot of requirements outside of those courses. Um, but I was always drawn to the concept of , you know , of a problem solving of hands-on developing solutions for the world's problems. Be it something medical, be it something in transportation, or even if it was just, you know, out of Legos or connects, trying to come up with interesting, weird structures,
Speaker 2You know, I was looking at your resume and it said , uh , to D you wanted to develop within the field of biomechanics what's biomechanics. And what is the, what is it that you're heading towards?
Speaker 4So biomechanics is broad , um, in terms of the research, it can refer to, so you can think of buying a CanOx of everything from more of a nano micro scale of tissue engineering or cellular mechanics up to more macro level or whole body biomechanics. So either thinking you go from thinking about the cells where you're thinking about limbs or the entire body and how that responds, and that becomes relevant in everything from interesting creative treatments of cancer through ultrasonic therapies, or , um, understanding how different muscle fibers work up through on the more macro level. Some of the research that I've looked into is like what happens during , uh, an automotive crash or during head trauma in sports, or doing trauma from other incidents as well , uh, where you can look at how to develop prosthetics or exoskeletons in ways that are helpful and comfortable and provide a high quality of life for the people that are using them.
Speaker 2So I've actually seen you do at least a presentation on a prosthetic. Um, but, and, and I know you would say you're not an expert in that, but the presentation was pretty darn good. This was for the, the hand up to the elbow. I think the prosthetic that you had, or maybe it was just the hand, I don't know, and you'd use 3d printing. This was kind of like not your real gig as a job. What were you doing? And , and I made the idea of just messing around in something that seems so incredibly complex. So what was that all about?
Speaker 4I mean, one thing about how I, your initial question for me was how did I get to engineering in the first place? And that's because I'm interested in problem solving. And I, and one of the things about engineering as opposed to other careers is that, you know, an engineer, if you, when you're in school, you learn a skillset of how to problem solve and not necessarily. And it's a language too, and engineers have the capacity to be thrown on any type of project and engineer. Um, so I happened to work in the automotive sphere and I do my engineering thing there, but where my passion really lies is with this field of biomechanics. I love how the human body moves. I love to think about how it moves, how we can make it move better, how it can make it move worse and avoid that. Um, you know, I'm an athlete. So I think about injuries, I think about how to improve my performance. And that's also led me to interesting volunteer work, which is like, what I, what that hand was from that you were talking about. So there's a group called E enable. Their goal is to use 3d printed and other easily accessible inexpensive materials to make low cost devices, to distribute to people that need them, particularly kids who, as they grow, you need to replace a device really often. And it's really cost prohibitive to keep them buying devices.
Speaker 2The imagery is so important as you're showing the thing . So we'll provide a link because I think our listeners then could get a better image enabling the future.org, all one word. Okay, perfect. So any of our listeners out there, if you want to see some of the visualization, what Emma was talking about , um, it may help a bit more with the understanding the conversation.
Speaker 4Yeah. And they have a great , um, you , you can get involved in a variety of ways, whether you have 3d printers yourself or have access to one , um, and you can help fabricate devices. Uh, you can be someone who receives printed pieces and just assembles the devices. If you don't have access to a printer, you can be the type of person that helps to create contacts between people who need the devices and people who can make them. And those are variety of other roles as well. I happen to be lucky enough to be in possession of a printer on loan to me. So I'm able to print and make the devices myself. Um, but it's , uh ,
Speaker 2And this is just a volunteer. This was just a volunteer use of your curiosity with , um , engineering. And as it applies to the human body, I mean, I would think watching sports, but okay. You know, but that's , it's fascinating that you would take the time to do this. Okay. So that's per statics, but in your regular job, then you're also working on batteries and cabling for electric vehicles. Or
Speaker 4I have worked on those types of products. What I, what I specifically work on is connectors. Uh, I know people can't see them, but this is what they do .
Speaker 2All right. So let's do our best. It's a cylindrical device that screws into each two parts that screw into each other and the goal. Okay. So the goal of the connector is to do what
Speaker 4You can use it for a variety of applications of power or signals or something that's going to a larger unit on a vehicle or something that's going to your AVU system or two yeah. Power distribution units and the battery, you know, and then, and the important thing to think about in that application too, is that these, these types of products are constantly being innovated as the needs change in the industry from hybrid electric vehicles to fully electric vehicles as well. And in the amount of current than you need to be able to pump through these things increases. And so you need in concept bigger, heavier wires, but you don't want to add more weight to a vehicle because then that makes it have higher requirements of more power output it's balancing the needs. Basically a good example for these types of products is that with the needs of the industry these days, it's almost like trying to drink from a fire hose. Like how can we put the most energy through these devices, these cables, so that the vehicles themselves can harness it. But with doing that with low cost, low weight, and still being sustainable as well in terms of our material choices and making it cost effective too , because nobody wants to buy something that's thousands and thousands of dollars when you can make it for a hundred dollars. Instead,
Speaker 2General motors just announced that by third 20, 35, 100% of their vehicles were going to be electric for the layman , not an engineer, but for the layman, is this realistic? How important is this to you that we've moved to all electric vehicles? Is that the future?
Speaker 4I definitely think it's the future in terms of it being realistic, that all vehicles achieve that title of being electric. Yeah. I think, I think it is feasible, but I also, you know , I was actually reviewing some of my company's literature earlier in preparation for this, you almost have to think about it in, in different categories. So it's a lot easier to make vehicles that have a low mileage or a short route that they do like a school bus or a mail truck, or , um, even a , uh , commuter bus , uh , into an electric vehicle because they have shorter range, but it's a lot harder to do the same thing for a long haul truck. You need to drive across the country. You don't want to have to stop every 200 miles just to charge the truck and wait a couple hours. You want to be able to charge it in 10 minutes, or you want to be able to go 500 miles on one charge. So the problem isn't necessarily electrifying these to these vehicles. It's how can we increase the range, the battery power of these, of these vehicles so that they can fulfill their purpose in greater and greater ways.
Speaker 2Are we close? I mean, is it a question of getting, you know, the right, the figuring out the battery, and then once we figured out the battery, if it can last longer than a ha we've got it, or we're not that close,
Speaker 4Definitely a lot of different groups and a lot of different companies working on us . I don't know if I can give you an exact year of when we're going to have a solution that I wish I could,
Speaker 2But do you know how many times they've gotten much older than, you know, any times they keep pushing the year back and pushing the year back that , so your opinion on this is probably as good as everyone. Else's, it's an opinion. So, but you're a young engineer who thinks about these things, so it's possible, but right now, one of the things is not the car itself, you're saying, but it's actually figuring out the batteries.
Speaker 4It's a combination. And in fact, from what I see, it's, it's almost more a question of the, like the charging inlets and the charging stations and, you know, how can we efficiently get energy from the charging station into the vehicle quickly without causing an electrical fire or having cable that's the size of your head? So, so that becomes questions for engineers of like, what materials can we choose? How much can we safely put through this cable without having to provide additional safety measures, because you have to put in safety precautions and these types of things, and we call it pokey Oak , sorry, there's a term that we use in engineering called pokey Oak , which I want to say the equivalent is like idiot proofing. Um , and I'm not saying that the average consumer is an idiot by any stretch of the imagination, but , um, there's certain things that you have to do to make sure that people are safe using your , using your equipment. No matter how well designed it is.
Speaker 2Well, I mean, that's as simple as when people get gasoline and they have to get something that's highly flammable into their car. Everybody has to be able to do it. And so they've tried to make it idiot proof. You know, you take it, you put it in and still people accidentally let the gasoline go and someone may be smoking a cigarette or something. So I get it that there's a need. If everybody's going to do it, then it's gotta be thinking about the common man for the solution,
Speaker 4Right? And that's after we , we, you know, achieve the actual challenge of being able to charge these cars fast enough and come up with the technology to even do it in the first place, because you're talking about right now, the goal is to be able to put the equivalent charge into vehicles for a 200 mile range. So to be able to charge the car to go that far in 10 minutes or less, right now, it takes about an hour to charge that much. So we're trying to reduce it six fold, which doesn't necessarily equate to, you know, increasing the cable size six times. It's much more complex.
Speaker 2All right. So as an engineer, and as you say, someone who loves to look at problem solving, are there aspirational problems that you've thought about that said, yeah, someday I'd love to be able to figure this out. Anything ever come across your way in , in school or at the job and say , there's gotta be a solution. I do it all the time only. I'm not an engineer, but is there something that, you know, you said there's gotta be a solution for it because it's very interesting that you describe engineers as problem solvers . Now , maybe all engineers think of themselves as that, but the general public may think of engineers as, I don't know, these are these geeky kind of people that do other things, but we're increasingly in a world that says we have problems. We have big problems. How do we solve them? So any that you've thought about that, you've said, boy, someday, I'd like to devote a little bit of time to figuring this out.
Speaker 4That's a really good question. I actually want to, I want to skirt that for a second. Just for going back to the initial part of the question you asked is sure , not only do I think of engineers as problem solvers , but one of the things I've actually noticed about engineers in, in my rock climbing hobby is that pretty much every rock climber I meet is an engineer of some sort. And it's not just that we like problem solving in our career. It's like, it's that we problem solve all the time in our hobbies. Climbing is a sport that's derived from problem solving. You just do it with their body and your mind instead of only your mind and maybe your hands, if you're working on something. And I've always thought that was really funny because I'll go to the gym and I'll meet new people and then ask them what they do. And it's like engineer, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, engineer. It's just, it's never shocking anymore.
Speaker 2So I saw , um, last night, Elon Musk is prepping for his , um, private , uh, rocket launch, which will put four civilian astronauts into orbit around the earth. It turns out that one of them flew a fighter jet. So he actually knows a bit about aeronautics, but the idea that anybody could go into space, I would have thought was impossible, but I could only imagine the number of engineers who were sitting there figuring this stuff out. And so is that what sort of gets to you is just figuring stuff out. You know, I , I work often in government and policies so that my, what sort of makes I believe, and I'm accused of this, that I can solve anything. The answer is I can't , and it's very hard for me to take that as like, well, there's gotta be a solution. I just haven't figured it out yet. So is that weirdly really ? What is the mindset of an engineer? Give them a problem. And they will figure out a solution like the , you know, the United States has the army Corps of engineers and they're brought in to do all sorts of things, erect hospitals during COVID , uh, you know, and I would have said the army Corps of engineers does that. Sure. They do. They do anything they're told to do. So I'm just kinda curious, like, if that is sort of the approach that all engineers have or some more narrow in focus, or is it only, are you only bound by your imagination?
Speaker 4I would definitely say that that at least from what I've observed in myself and in my peers, our approach is, is I want to solve that. I want to come up with a solution that works and then I want to iterate on it and make it better. Um, and that, and that can be anything. It can, you know, it can be something in your house that breaks and you want to do better job. I use my 3d printer to come up with , um , things around the house.
Speaker 2What have you done?
Speaker 4Well , um , one small example is , uh , uh, I ordered one of those , um, devices you can put in your key chain that you can use to pull on door handles. So I don't have to wear gloves all the time , um, where you can push like push buttons or like for the sink or something like in a public bathroom, especially during the time of COVID, it's just this little metal piece. And then I can go home and sanitize that, but I didn't, I'm not touching all these handles and buttons and stuff out in the world. The problem with it is while it works well, and it's strong because it's metal, it's very thin. So when I pull on it with one or two fingers, it's , it's sharp. So it digs into my finger. You know, this isn't like, you know, a , a global,
Speaker 2Don't worry about it. We'll get to those later in it a little bit, you know, global issues and your perception, but, okay, so yet we've all, you know, we , some people use pens to like press the elevator button cause they didn't want to touch it. When we were very concerned with COVID that it was transmitted from surfaces. Now we're much more concerned about it being airborne. So, so you actually created,
Speaker 4Well, actually it's even simpler than that. I can just take the same outline and design it in 3d modeling software. So that's something that I learned in school and I use in my job and I have it on my computer from work and I can just make it thicker and then I can 3d print it instead. So now I have exact same thing, but it's just not digging into my finger. So you can be, you know, it's something as simple as that, it doesn't have to be some sort of like world saving idea. I mean, obviously those are wonderful. The people who come up with ways to filter water out in rural areas where that's just not possible, otherwise without hauling in some big equipment or, you know, people who've come up with other low cost devices too , like cookstoves. I see a lot of projects like that. Cookstoves. They don't release harmful chemicals for communities in Africa or in Latin America. Um, that's, that's something I've seen a bunch of projects on other sustainability projects as well. Those are wildly innovative things that they're coming up with there that are truly changing lives.
Speaker 2Well, so wait, let me, it just occurred to me. We were having a debate recently on our staff at , um, remember we're planning and policy people. And we talk about, well, 3d printing and then the conversation went to what actually happens with a 3d printer. What kind of material is in a 3d printer and what is etching out? The thing that comes from, I guess, what I would have called some computerated design or something. So what's in it that, you know, you is then formed into whatever you're trying to make with the 3d printer.
Speaker 4Well, so the first thing before you even get to what's in it is there's a variety of different ways to 3d print. You can either print just a line of resin, repeatedly making layers, almost like laying layering, a brick wall. Um, you go around and around and around. So you have your piece. There's also types of 3d printing that work where you do it in a liquid body and it's suspended and then the liquid will drain afterwards. There's also ways to do multiple types of materials at the same time. A really good example of that type of printing is if you need a ball and socket joint, something that has mobility. So you don't want the, the two materials are two pieces to print attached to each other. You want there to be a little bit of space, but you can't print them separately because you can't assemble them afterward. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Speaker 2It does. And, and I think unless you're actually around the 3d printer and someone is showing you, here's what we're going to put inside, here's the connectivity to tell whatever the printer is. I guess here's what you're going to do to that inanimate object and to create what you're trying to create. Um, I, you know, I thought one of the most interesting applications I ever saw of 3d printing and , um , virtual reality was it was a discussion with a very difficult brain surgery. And so what they did was they did a 3d before they did the surgery, they created you're nodding your head, like, you know, so that they created a , um, a model of the skull first and then using virtual reality, they then created the pathway that the medical instruments needed to take in order to actually operate. I believe it was on a brain tumor, but it was so complicated these two doctors use , but to you, it virtual reality, AI, these are all common terms to me. I have to learn about it. It's the world you're inheriting, I guess. And so I want to use this to pivot because I think we've established, you got game and that you clearly, you know, as a 26 year old are , um, very, very bright and attuned to your area. So, but I'm curious, what is your take on where we are and is there a sense of optimism and what I'm referring to is where we are with regard to the pandemic economic disruption and, you know, do you think there's, and whether it's you personally as a young adult, or it is you thinking as an engineer because there's problems everywhere we look , we can, we can actually figure this out. Do you , are you optimistic?
Speaker 4I say that I'm optimistic. You know , I think that there's always going to be societal problems , um, in the economy. Hopefully there's not always a pandemic, but there will always be global health issues. There will always be socioeconomic issues. It will. I really hope that sincerely there are racial issues, but it's, that's been around for a very, very long time. There's a whole slew of categories we could talk about here, but I mean, honestly in the same ways that technology like AI or 3d printing or any other things that you mentioned have developed to enable engineers to problem solve better. And one thing about that as it is not only do the , someone have to develop those technologies, but you also have to, to understand enough about how the technology works in order to actually use it successfully to problem solve . So I could say, I want to 3d print something, but if I can't design it in a way that the 3d printer can make it, then it's not a successful solution to whatever I'm working on. Maybe I can just build it on a lave or a milling machine, much better than I can 3d printing it. And so you have to, part of being an engineer is picking the right method to actually create your solution for it to be successful. And so in the same way, I think we have technology and social media and zoom and all sorts of other softwares that didn't exist six months or a year ago that are enabling us to do all sorts of really important things for, for social justice and for the economy and for global health issues. I mean, like for take, for example , um, all of the people who are gathering together in communities to make masks where the people who are sharing files to 3d print , uh, the mask holders or the ear savers or all sorts of things. I mean, that's a community effort of, of people of all generations, not just millennials, but you know, working together with the technologies that we have. And that in itself brings me optimism, that people are willing to work together to do whatever they can from their homes to help out everyone else in the world.
Speaker 2So do you think of yourself as a millennial or I'm about to rename the 18 to 34 year olds as maybe because I need to the resilient generation, because if my father's generation coming through the great depression and world war II was known as the greatest generation, then we sure need the 18 to 34 year olds to be the resilient generation is resiliency. It's used in many different ways, but do you consider that to be a characteristic that's important to younger adults right now that they , they have, it seems like so much is coming at them from the pandemic, from economics, from social justice . Uh , well , climate change clearly another one, but you know, is it that you think, I mean, and it's not everybody obviously, but do you think you consider yourself resilient, your friends , resilient, young adults, resilient?
Speaker 4The easy answer to that is yes. However, I don't think only our generation is resilient for sure. I mean, like I said, every generation has had it's equivalent to a pandemic and I don't think there will be any generation in the future that doesn't have something memorable like this, that, you know, I sort of some things that come to my head are like the AIDS crisis or world war II or the great depression, or it just like , you can think of something in every generation that requires resiliency. So with that in mind, I would say, yes, of course were resilient. Just like the generation before us was in the generation after us will be. I mean , it is important, I think to, you know , not only to just survive on a day-to-day basis and survive through whatever's happening in the world. But I also think, you know , from a professional sense too, it's important to be resilient so that you can be successful in your work and then in your career. And if you're not willing to fail and get back up again, that hurts, it makes it harder to progress in life and to , and to continue on. So resiliency is, is a critical character trait, I would say,
Speaker 2But from your point of view, which I absolutely willing to be corrected, it could exist in any generation, but I'm looking towards yours because I've heard it said to me many times by young adults that they, they look at older generations and say, you're not the world you're leaving us is pretty messed up and that, you know, we, we have to fix it. We, there are so many issues in front of us. And do you, you know, from talking to your friends and others, do you feel that that burden is upon your generation to sort of clean up the massive older generations? You know , and let , if we can, you know , if you want let's , let's just say climate change, you know, there, there's an issue where, you know, for decades or generations, people didn't pay attention to, but we've managed to say here 18 to 34 year olds, we're leaving you to figure this one out. Do you think that's a burden upon younger? Or it just comes with the territory?
Speaker 4I think every generation has its things that it's focusing on. And does it happen to be that we're truly at a critical moment, maybe we've , we've been at a critical moment for environmental issues and climate change for a while and maybe the generation before us could have done more. Yes. But now we're at the point where that's, I mean, there's no point in thinking about what could have been done at this point and , and feeling like it's a burden on our shoulders. It's interesting that you picked that topic specifically too , because I, I, you know, there's a variety of different topics you could think about of like, why has less been done for racial justice and, and policing? Um, in particular we've seen so much of that this year in particular, but it's not like it didn't exist last year or 20 years ago or 50 years ago, it's always been a problem and there could have been other things done about it too. Um, so yeah, it depends, it depends on the topic, but I think more of these things are coming to light now and millennials and even gen Z are , uh , rising to the occasion more to , to tackle these things. But also don't want to discredit the other people in other generations who are working
Speaker 2Okay. You , you can discredit us that , that that's fine. Um, you know, it , the number of issues, I can only think of one period where the caffeinate of issues was the sixties. It was just endless, you know, and , and the overarching issue was the Vietnam war you either for, or against it. Um, here, it's like, there's this incredible cacophony of issues, this constellation of issues that are coming to a head at one time. And by the way, we're going to just throw a pandemic at you, which changes your ability to, you know, move about the cabin and , and it restricts certain solutions. Or you , you have to be thinking about , um, climate change at the moment, but through the lens of a pandemic, you have to be thinking about social justice, but through the lens of a pandemic, I just wonder, is it fair? Is it, have we just overburdened? And , and do we have an obligation to say, we have to work with you? And maybe the notion of generations has to go away. It's just one set of people. You know ,
Speaker 4Thinking back to how we started this conversation and making this be through an engineer's lens, because I am an engineer. The way we are trained to problem-solve is first with no constraints, you treat everything simply, and you say, anything can happen in this world. Gravity doesn't even exist. Let's start with the basics. And then over time as you go through your degree, you get more and more constraints as you learn more and more about the complexities and the theorems you're with and about , um, you know, starting to think about cost or amount of materials are available to you or timing and projects. And, and I think that that same thing can apply here to these, to these principles, which is that we still have to problem solve . There's just different constraints. And so I think that in terms of the way that our generation things , it's not necessarily like, Oh, there's more being thrown at us. I mean, that it, that, that is true. It just happens to be more complicated. And we're going to work with what we have here. You can't just solve racial injustice. We have to think about the pandemic. I mean, think about the people who aren't in the black lives matter protests, they wore masks, and they did their best in some cases to social distance, too . There's ways to work on both problems at the same time, if you're willing to commit the energy to it. And I think that millennials,
Speaker 2That's a great way to look at it. And I think we're going to leave it there. Um , because I think the that's a great sense of optimism, that it is a sense of, there is no problem that you can solve. They get more complicated. Yeah . That requires more complicated solutions. And , um, from an engineering point of view, Emma cult , thank you for joining patterns and paradigms. I just hope you have the opportunity to solve more issues that come your way, your energy, your enthusiasm is just great. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast. For more information about this episode, visit our website pattern for progress.org forward slash podcast.