#198: Pointy Rocket Effect, Inventor’s Dilemma & Sir Alec’s Camel
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Terrible Designs
I. Pointy Rocket Effect
Does form follow funkiness? The Pointy Rocket Effect postulates that technological designs are often not chosen because they are functional or useful. They’re chosen because they look cool.
When it came to the design of his rocket, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Admiral-General Haffaz Aladeen famously declared: “It is too round on the top. It needs to be pointy. Round is not scary. Pointy is scary.” SpaceX’s Elon Musk took this sentiment to heart and instructed his engineers to make the head of his Starship more pointy than it had to be.
And if that doesn’t convince you, look at Boeing’s entry into the Joint Strike Fighter program. Tell me that their X-32 was not (at least in part) rejected because it looks like a fat, happy cartoon fish smiling at the enemy.
II. Inventor’s Dilemma
The Inventor’s Dilemma is an explanation for how objectively terrible designs come about. YouTuber Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons enlightens us from the perspective of historic firearms design.
[W]hat would happen is, as inventors come up with ideas, they patent them.
And so the most obvious, simple systems often get patended pretty quickly. And then there continues to be this big group of inventors who are still looking for their ticket into this new technology. So they start kind of widening out into stranger and more complicated ways of doing the same thing, so they can build something that isn’t under patent protection.
And as a result of that you get all sorts of really funky and unusual designs that often don’t work well, which makes them perfect fodder for a YouTube channel like mine: “Oh, they made 300 of these and then everyone went bankrupt because it’s a terrible idea. But it sure looks interesting.”
—Ian McCollum, The Reload
III. Sir Alec’s Camel
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
—Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the Mini car
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Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com