Eric Devlin

In this TED talk, Thomas Thwaites, describes how he designed and built a toaster from scratch by harvesting his own materials and putting it all together without any sort of outside help. While it may sound ridiculous to some people that anyone would attempt such a project in the first place, he did it with the purpose of giving people a new perspective on technology and design. In this TED talk then Thwaites shows that all pieces of modern technology are made because many groups of people depend on each other to design and manufacture each part. He shows this by going through the arduous process of doing each part of the toaster construction by himself when usually a toaster is made because many different companies work together to make different parts of it and a final company assembles it. This whole process gives the viewer a new perspective on technology in seeing how sophisticated everything we make is. It can inspire someone to take part in a multitude of professions because a profession of every sort is involved in making, selling, and distributing a toaster and the whole process requires many people doing different jobs to make the final product. I was interested in this video because I am interested in technology and engineering, and the creation of a toaster apparently requires both. The video has inspired me to go into those fields because I know now in our intertwined society that my efforts will most likely go into something useful that people use every day.

Thomas Thwaites is a designer who graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2009. He majored in Design Interactions and currently makes a living by undertaking projects relating to future and present day technology, as well as social trends, science, and design. What I think makes Thwaites successful in design is his creativity, his way of thinking about things most people don’t think about. The toaster project is an example of this because most people generally don’t think about how much collective work it takes to make a toaster and how much our society relies on many different people working together on different parts to make a final and useful whole. He is also eccentric and funny so people actually pay attention to his ideas about the world and potential designs for new things. His creativity is also what probably got him onto TED and talking about his projects.

I already have plans after high school to go to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to major at the college on engineering in computer science. I want to major in computer science because I think that in the past years everything has become more dependent on computers, and I think that this trend will only continue in the future. Since our society is interdependent, as illustrated by my video, computer scientists, the people who design and create the software used by computers, will be and are currently in very high in demand to make just about anything involving a computer work. In that sense, computer scientists have a stake in everything from microwave ovens, to cell phones, to navigation systems on airplanes.

My plans for my college and major are already set in stone, but after that then nothing is set yet. I think my first jobs will have to do with computer programming. I could get a job as a computer programmer, later a software engineer, and even later become the manager who makes sure that the engineers and programmers will create the final product. Internships in college will be for computer software and hardware companies, and there are many of these companies here in the bay area.

http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html