Imagination is the yellow-brick road to engineering success. Last time on Expedition Engineering, I dove into the reality that engineers are humanities students. Today, I plan to expand on that idea and present something bolder. A verdict that flips the engineering world on its head. The best engineers are writers, specifically those in fiction. Understanding that fictional writers supersede engineers is pivotal to reforming the education system. When you emphasize the creative talent of the discipline over regurgitating knowledge, you nip the bud of information entropy at its source before it collapses the entire discipline.
Interpretation is the double-edged sword of information entropy. For those new to the concept, information entropy is a phenomenon in academia where knowledge is naturally lost as it transfers from professors to student projects. What drives information entropy is interpretation. At each step, from course objectives to slides to student minds, information is lost in abstraction. A game of telephone applied to academics. Underappreciated in telephone, and what I failed to mention in my last article on information entropy, is that the same abstraction which distorts a message can subsequently reverse the entropy process.
Fictional writers plan for information entropy. When a writer gets an idea, they generate a whole universe to house it within their minds. Naturally, writers understand the mechanics of their world, from gravity to why lemons explode, and the identity of Big Sister. When authors pen their work, they knowingly submit their world to information entropy, both when the book is written and when individuals interpret its pages. Think about that. The author knows upfront that information entropy exists, and either provides compensation or, oftentimes, plays it to their advantage. Ambiguous endings. Unresolved romantic interests. New villains from the ashes of old. Information entropy no longer dictates the story. It elevates the story.
But an engineer is not a writer. They look for solutions. They problem-solve. They are constrained by reality. Wrong. I wholeheartedly argue that the engineer should not look for silver bullets. The goal is not a single solution. If that were true, all bridges would look the same. Dominos would still use square boxes. For crying out loud, Big Sister wouldn’t exist.
The idea of engineering tied to writing was explored in the past. Historical records show that in the 1900s, both the Soviet Union and China took great pride in their fictional writers, specifically those of science fiction. Why? They understood that writers have a knack for innovation. A writer in China envisions a high-speed rail line. Perfect. The engineers build it. A Soviet scientist examines space travel and what life is like on the moon. Amazing. Add it to the list of things to consider. Storytelling is engineering at its finest.
To properly use storytelling, constraints are necessary. Obviously, not all stories influence reality. If that were true, I should have my hoverboard from Back to the Future, or a dragon flying around campus. That is why science fiction writing during this era came with restraints. Authors looked to the near future and drew inspiration from the world around them, penning it from a new perspective.
Story engineering is the way to eliminate information entropy. Stop isolating problems. Stop pretending that a single solution exists. Stop feeding entropy by simplifying problems. Students must learn to engineer like a writer. Let them build. Let them explore. Let them question. The next breakthrough won’t come from a lab. It will first come from the mind of a story engineer who dared to ask what could be possible.
