Engineering Our Digital Future: The Infinity Project

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I think it is a great book. DSP education has suffered by not having this level of material presented and understood before diving into the blizzard of equations that characterises most peoples first exposure to DSP education. Also, its goal of reaching high school students is filling the need of providing a basic literacy in the digital nature of daily life that is sorely needed.

The presentation is clear. It uses aspects of technology that touch peoples lives, so they aren't remote or unapproachable. I think it is very positive in promoting electronics as an area where females as well as males can be comfortable participating. The topic areas were selected to peak interest, the first step toward learning. And although the book intended to lay basic groundwork, it does it with a clear eye toward paving the way to more advanced investigations, and strikes good compromises about the depth to go into, so that introductions are made to techniques that will be major themes in later study.

It is also an attractive book. It is colorful and inviting.

I disagree with another reviewer that it is has hype for engineering. It is compelling and elicits enthusiasm. How can that be a flaw in a textbook?!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Approach
Review: This book is the outcome of a collaboration called "The Infinity Project" between Southern Methodist University, the government and Texas Instruments. It is intended to be an interesting introduction to current leading-edge digital technologies. For vehicles it uses digital music (a digital band), digital images (acquiring an image, and a robot eye), digital multimedia records (a digital yearbook and a digital backpack, or personal data assistant), digital transmission, and network design. There is a web site at http://www.infinity-project.org/.

The strong point of this collection of projects is its design orientation. It begins with a distinction between scientists (creators of explanation) and engineers (creators of solutions for needs). It presents math and physics just-in-time, as parts of design problems and illustrates (with fair success) a common paradigm for pursuing such problems.

Weak points of the collection are wordiness, some repetition, and a lack of justification or qualification of some general remarks. For example, a "nine-step" design algorithm is proposed with inadequate development or discussion.

Excessive enthusiasm leads to some annoying hype to support engineering. An example of the book's myopia regarding creativity is a discussion of a design problem to "create a digital system that can produce award-winning movies from scratch by simply using a few suggestive keywords typed in by a user". This project sees creativity in the design of the system, but not in creating a movie - all you have to do is "paint by numbers" using a huge inventory of snipets. Other professions also may feel minimized.

Overall, the book provides a nice feel for engineering, and for the use of math in solving engineering problems. It clearly shows the inquiring nature of creativity and the extension of common sense to penetrate complex issues. The ideas of constraints and trade-offs are made clear.

This book appears aimed at precocious high-school students or at first-year engineering courses either for engineers or for those that want a flavor of what engineering is. The authors have not explicitly stated their target audience, but the infinity web site suggests "high school and early college engineering curriculum".