iBracadabra

Ever heard the expression, "so-and-so is a wizard with this"? Well, after seeing Gerry and Tony from Motorola and Autodesk (respectively), I've come to the conclusion that this is much more than a figure of speech: it's a truth. Good engineering is like a well-done magic act.

Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first is called, "the pledge." The magician shows you something ordinary.
It begins with something simple...an object, an idea, a process. Pretty straightforward; the phone on the wall, a Walkman, a drafting table. Nothing radical.
Not yet.

The second act is called, "the turn." The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something...extraordinary.
The engineer comes up with a way to better that something ordinary..."what if I could take this with me? What if I could make it flip open like the communicators on Star Trek? What if I could digitize this information or this process?" He makes it work.

But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back.
Just making it work isn't enough; it has to have...something. Something that sets it apart. Maybe it's the bells and whistles. Maybe it's the user interface. Maybe it's the casing, a la Prof. Weightman's lectures on industrial design. Whatever it is, without it it still works, but it's not complete unless it has that something.

But the layman never sees all the inner workings that make the trick. They never stop to consider why it works. More than likely, they don't want to. They like the fact that it "magically" works.
Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because, of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be...fooled.