Techies on TV [REflections]

A long, long time ago???back in the 1980s???there was a concern within the IEEE about how to raise the public esteem of engineers. In our opinion, they didn???t seem to be sufficiently appreciated. It was a time when doctor and lawyer shows were big on television, so an idea floated around some of our committee meetings: Could we get an engineer show on TV? ??? One distinguished colleague suggested, possibly in jest, a show entitled ???L.A. Engineer,??? riffing off the thenhit U.S. show ???L.A. Law.??? What a delightful fantasy that was! But I realized immediately that it would never happen, and even if it did, no one would watch it???not even us. ??? But times have changed. I don???t think engineers worry much about the public???s esteem now. We???re too busy starting companies, changing the world, and stuff like that. And with no impetus from us, there is now a comedy series on the U.S. cable channel HBO entitled ???Silicon Valley.??? It???s all about engineers and computer scientists trying to start a company called Pied Piper, whose music app of the same name is based on a new data-compression algorithm. (Meanwhile, over on another U.S. cable channel, AMC, there is the 1980s period tech drama ???Halt and Catch Fire,??? while one of the highest rated shows on U.S. broadcast television??????The Big Bang Theory?????? features an aerospace engineer as one of its core characters.) ??? Okay, so we got a few things wrong with our ???L.A. Engineer??? idea, starting with the venue. Silicon Valley and its technology culture were only nascent back then. Another thing: No one ever thought our show would be a comedy. After all, this engineering is serious business. Yet ???Silicon Valley??? is in large part a parody, with caricatures of both the techies and the venture capitalists. Still, the caricatures aren???t so broadly overdrawn that we engineers don???t recognize familiar personalities and technical and business issues.