The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. A n aphorism is a concise statement of a principle. It's just a bit more direct than an adage or a motto. The most famous aphorism of all is Hippocrates' statement about the art of medicine. I want to try an aphorism on you.
Good people do make good machines and bad people do make bad machines.
I'd been handed an aphorism that was both dangerous and compelling in its simplicity. But I've certainly watched people act on both good and bad intentions. That's why machines provide the metaphors we use all the time to make sense of things. We tell each other that a tornado descends like a hammer, an efficient person functions like a Swiss watch, a friend is an open book, a fine machine is the Cadillac of such devices. We look for the needle in the haystack.