Reddit and What I Found There.

This blog post discusses my findings on reddit with regards to Electrical and Computer Engineering!

User : franchise help, "Reddit", 12/09/14 Public Domain

1. What kinds of things do people in the Reddit forums seem to be arguing about, debating, disagreeing about or otherwise engaging in meaningful exhanges of ideas about? Give us a descriptive and clear sense of the kinds of stories you're seeing in the Reddit forums.

People on r/ElectricalEngineering primarily bounce ideas on how to build, tune, and perfect various inventions. The one that sticks out to me the most right now is this article where this guy basically talks about how he wants to build a lightsaber! In this article, people give him advice on how he can fix 100 different LED lightbulbs in succession in the most effective, streamlined way. There is also lots of advice artistically, too!

2. In your opinion, what are the two most interesting debates/disagreements you found in the Reddit forums? Hyperlink us to the two different Reddit threads and explain why you found those debates interesting. Be specific and honest and be yourself. I don't want you to blah-blah-blah this. I want you to really engage.

The most interesting was pretty easy to find - all I did was go to r/ElectricalEngineering, then click on "Top" of "All Time". The article was about how Khan Academy added Electrical Engineering to their plethora of informational videos that help teach kids and adults online. There's complaints that the material that it covers is too baseline, however I find it great that the website is encouraging kids to not only pursue engineering, but demonstrate that it isn't impossible to get into the field.

Another interesting article was about how engineers and robots are taking over jobs that used to be run by people. This article in specific talks about a quote from "True Detective", the TV show. "I used to want to be an astronaut. Now they don't go to the moon anymore." The reason that this intrigues me so much is because it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to note how replaceable medical, technical, and technological jobs are. The only way to maintain your employability is to have a creative edge that a robot cannot replace.

3. Overall, what impression do you get of your discipline based on what you saw happening in the Reddit forums? Were the people in those forums talking in ways you expected or did not expect, about things you anticipated they'd be talking aboput or things you had no idea they'd be discussing? Explain in concise specific detail.

I learned that to succeed in engineering, it's not enough to just be a good math student. Almost everyone who goes into engineering would consider math their strong suite! You need to be able to discern your abilities from the pack, and add a creative edge to learning. A robot can easily reach over the counter and give you your prescription, but can a robot determine whether you actually need the prescription? Life is a greyscale, not black and white. We shouldn't treat it so.