In a world where all the simple things are invented, why would one spend effort on scientific research of topics that whole industries work on perfecting?
How could one person produce better results than large groups of people?
But what to do, when offered a chance to research failures and deficiency of such seemingly simple products? For if these people do not know, who am I to say, that these problems are solved.
So I shall research how things go wrong, to reach the shoulders of the ones before me. With each added test, with each new analysis, I climb up one step higher towards the peak of knowledge. But after each new step or idea, I see that someone has already been here before.
Time and time again, I head towards new disappointments chin on my chest. Is all this time and effort spent on this worth it?
But it seems that instead of shoulders to stand on, I should be looking for the forest instead of trees. For the forest is ever expanding and new towering peaks of knowledge both hiding and replacing the old growth.
And alas a ladder can be found from the intertwining branches of neighboring trees. Perhaps the knowledge is not that hard to acquire after all.
From the top of the trees I can see a way back to the original problem. Is it true, that the problem is not understood, or is it that the question posed is wrong?
Are the issues more of a question on perspective instead of ground-breaking ideas? Instead of wondering whether something is worth the effort, the question should be how can tall his effort on research be used to produce maximal results? After all there is always a new question behind each answer so begins a new journey in the forest of research.
Erkka Virtanen
Doctoral Researcher, DSII