rtfm

RTFM

by Bob on April 12, 2008

If you are at a very competitive university engineering school, you might ask a question and instead of getting an answer, you might have someone say to you "RTFM".

It means "Read The F*&(^&% Manual". Which really means (a) why are you asking the question when you can look it up and find out for yourself, or (b) can't you figure it out yourself ?

In extremely competitive situations, this really happens. It is far from convivial and friendly. But in many engineering schools, especially the top ones, information, especially shared information, comes at a premium.

It even happens if you simply ask a question, which might be hard to figure out anyway, and someone will look at you like you're crazy. In essence, "why are you asking me? Supposed I wasn't around ? Who would you ask then? You'd have to figure it out yourself then."

This is the fate of very competitive schools and situations. But, although it makes a lot of sense, like the famous "figuring something out on a desert island by yourself because there's no one else to ask" concept, it's harsh on ordinary people.

And let's not forget that most of the salt of the earth, most ordinary people, just don't go by the RTFM law.

There is a certain Stoicism in this whole RTFM attitude. It also has unthought of side effects like what Alvin Toffler predicted in his book in 1970 called "Future Shock", wherein he worried about people being absolutely afraid and petrified of new technology and afraid even to ask anyone about it.

We are living in an age to some extent in the womb of Toffler's predictions of thirty years ago: Information Anxiety it is now called.

Also, we have too much information for any one person to digest and comprehend. So there's a whole new "cowboy" approach to engineering, which goes against the grain of time honoured engineering principles, and says just improvise and fix something quickly without worrying about what will happen a year from now. This band-aid/videogame/PacMan approach to engineering is ubiquitous for it produces the fastest results that are demonstrable. But in a year, the whole contraption may fall apart because of this hasty but bombastic band-aid approach.

But no one really worries about this anymore, it seems.

Of course, there is a time and a place for conscientious thinking. If someone is on a sinking ship, it is hardly useful to ask for the builder's plans for the ship. You have to find a way to quickly stop the leak and worry about the big picture of what went wrong later or else you sink and the fat lady sings. So, in these emergency situations, all-encompassing knowledge is not useful or to be sought after to be effective. A short term solution is needed until later.

But what happens if band-aids are constantly applied and there never is a later time when the whole picture is studied and fixed ? Well, that seems to be the norm these days. Worry about it later. Fix it now, no matter how hasty and short-sighted a fix is applied.

There, admittedly, is a sort of magic in a quick fix to a problem which immediately works. It's truly amazing. It saves the day.

We then fall into the concept of design and designing something right from the beginning so it won't fail. Although we all admit that's kind of hard to do in general and with limited budgets like most projects have these days.

It used to be that when the USA phone company, The Bell Telephone System, was one big family, and there was only one phone company, that things were designed to last forever. Telephones were made with hard materials to endure almost a lifetime, and the scientists and engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories designed new things to last nearly an eternity. "Ma Bell" as well called the company, was the place to go to for anything really. You could call the operator and ask what time it was. And you got a human being too.

So a benevolent monopoly seems to allow better design than a plethora of little competing companies who make cheap phones which are designed to last a year at best.

It all comes down to the "Titanic Syndrome". The ship Titanic was never meant to sink, by design. But it did.

Maybe some engineer on the project design team asked a question and was told "RTFM" and left it at that.