Interview with Douglas Strain

Introduction by Richard Farson

Welcome to our interview with Douglas Strain. Doug is well known to many of you, not only because of his active participation online, but from his days in our School of Management and Strategic Studies. A top scientist/technologist, he is the founding chairman of ElectroScientific Industries in Portland, Oregon, a successful business in laser technology, and a company highly regarded for its enlightened management. Beyond that association Doug has been involved in many other organizations at the cutting edge of science and education. Through all this he has become one of the futurists I most admire. I’m very much looking forward to this week with Doug, and I hope you will join me in probing the depths of this man and his fresh and exciting perspectives.

Participant
How did you become interested in being a scientist/technologist?

Douglas Strain
The short answer is that I was born with a "left brain" orientation. My male grandparents from Scotland and Ireland were all "doers" as ship captains, marine engineers, steam powered woolen manufacturers and my father graduated from Cornell with a specialty of "dairy manufacturers" of such things as powdered milk, ice cream and processed cheese. My mother was a college graduate in "home economics".

My "awakening" came at an early age for I was fortunate to have my Scottish grandmother as my "nanny" for the first five years of my life as both my parents were working to make things meet in the depression years following WWI. I had an insatiable curiosity to the point my elders thought my middle name should be Curiosity rather that the family name of Campbell. My grandmother introduced me early to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" and I became accustomed to making myself very small. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, English mathematician, 1832-1898 thus became my first science mentor. In 1925, when I was 5 years old, Robert Millikan discovered the "electron" as the smallest particle known and "electrons" became familiar to me even before I knew much about them in a mathematical or engineering sense. In more recent times "photons" and "electromagnetic waves" have captured my interest.

Participant
Your comment that you became accustomed to making yourself very small is intriguing. That may have been just your joke playing off Alice in Wonderland, but is it possible that your ability to think of yourself in that way enabled you to think creatively about the micro-sciences?

Participant
No doubt, then, that Douglas has a great interest in nanotechnology! <g>

Douglas Strain
You are right, Dick. My process is to actually pretend I am an "electron" with all its known characteristics and then actually go down the circuit and try to respond in the same way an "electron" would. The same for "photons" or "electromagnetic waves". Amazing what you can observe "first hand" that just being a "design engineer" would miss.

Participant
You should write about that at length someday, Doug. Perhaps you have read Oliver Sacks article in the July 28th issue of the New Yorker, about how such visualization disciplines actually shape our brains and increase our perceptual abilities.

Douglas Strain
Yes Ray, nanotechnology does interest me but I have much to learn about quantum mechanics for my "impersonating" scheme to work well in the nano dimension world!

Douglas Strain
The Oliver Sacks article in the July 28th issue sounds most interesting, Dick. Our library here has the New Yorker but the July 28th issue was missing. It may turn up again in a day or two. The August 4th issue was here and I was interested in the Chernobyl article. I had no idea that Reactor 3 was still in operation after the Reactor 4 disaster. The article had a picture of the current staff of Reactor 3. I believe the man on the far right is an excellent left brain engineer. How can I be sure? Check him out and then you tell me!

Participant
In becoming an entrepreneurial businessman, how did you balance your longtime interests in the pursuit of science with the discipline of making a profit?

Douglas Strain
Fortunately my partners and I had substantial industrial experience in profit making companies so we had no illusions about the necessity of making a profit in our own company. I had worked every summer since being a freshman in high school. First in as radio service shop where we installed the first of Paul Galvin’s "Motorola" car radios. Paul visited us several times and said he came up with his corporate name by observing that RCA called its phonographs "Victrolas" and its radios "Radiolas" so he decided to call his auto radios "Motorola." And the name is still well known over 70 years later! My summer careers took me next to Gilfillan Brothers in LA who were the largest contract radio manufacturer in Los Angeles where I worked for a couple of summers on the assembly lines being paid on a "piece work" basis. Then on to Union Oil and their survey crew for two more summers and finally to National Technical Laboratories (now Beckman Instruments) before WWWII whisked me away from Cal Tech. Five years with various technical assignments under the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Then back to Cal Tech and two more years with Beckman as an instrument designer.

By then my long term friend Lawrence Rockwood had become chief engineer for Beckman and joined me as plant manager as we formed ESI in 1953. I go through all this to indicate that we had been well drilled in the necessity for making a profit while pursuing science before we started our own business. We did try to put the role of profit in a more social perspective in our own company. We documented four principles we used as our management guide and laid them out widely in our company literature. The fourth one was on the topic of "profit" and was stated as follows: "To develop and encourage a better understanding of the nature of profit. Profit is the monetary measure of the contribution of our business to society. It is the difference between the cost of the goods and services we produce and their value to society. It is our insurance that our business will continue to grow and flourish, meeting all of its obligations to our customers, employees and the general public. It provides our stock-holders with a fair return on capital and encourages further investment. Profit, in short, is not the proper end of business but is the means that makes the achievement of the proper ends possible."

Participant
With the rapid advances in both the biological and mechanical disciplines we seem to be on a cusp in technology - the possible marriage of the two in some fundamental ways. For some it represents an exciting future while for others it presents the specter of a possible nightmare. So, a few questions.

1. What is your personal view of the likely outcome? Where might this marriage take us?

2. In your own career, what consideration have you given to the potential social consequences of your products?

3. Do you think that those who are involved in technological creations have any obligation to consider the effect on society of their work?

Participant
The last sentence of Doug's business philosophy really says clearly what is missing in so many business leaders: "Profit, in short, is not the proper end of business but is the means that makes the achievement of the proper ends possible." If I'd had those eloquent words at hand thirty years ago, I might have saved myself and others some bad moments.

Somewhat later -- about 22 years ago -- I said of the telecommunications industry, "From a strategic point of view, technology is now nearly irrelevant, for we can do most anything we want. A successful strategy depends more on imagination -- we've got to figure out what we ought to WANT."

Do you think, Doug, that this observation applies in other places also?

Douglas Strain
Thanks for your thoughtful questions. One of my favorite companies which has completed the marriage of medical and mechanical products is Medtronics, the primary supplier of heart "pacemakers". I had one put in 10 years ago with no complications and am alive today because of it. They and others now are working to simplify heart bypass surgery. I recently had a hip replacement which has beoome a common surgery since the art of making metal replacements has been perfected. I think this kind of marriage will continue but eventually exceeding the biblical limit of three score and ten years by artificial means may be too much of an economic burden for society to sustain.

In our company, we have deliberately avoided military hardware contracts. Our "Management Principles" state: "To manage our business with the primary objective of making a contribution to society. Business can be one of the most effective vehicles through which man serves society. Thus any service we perform should be oriented toward the public welfare and any product we manufacture should be the best possible value in its class."

Yes, I think that the those of us in technology should take upon ourselves the responsibility for the social consequences of our work. Unfortunately, the long term consequences are often hard to determine. When I was a student at Cal Tech in the early 40ties, we were excited about the possibility of the development of nuclear power generating electricity "too cheap to meter" and ending our dependence on fossil fuels which we are still at war to control. Even though nuclear reactors still furnish more than 20% of our electricity safely, the accident at Chernoble and ours at Three Mile Island plus our use of nuclear weapons has put a cloud over nuclear technology that prevents rational consideration regardless of advances in the art and responsible utilization of nuclear to conserve our rapidly diminishing fossil fuels. Unfortunately technologists often have little control over the intended use of their creations!

Douglas Strain
A wise observation, Ray. With so many opportunities these days, delivering things that are really "wanted" and don't have to be "sold" or that fill an unexpressed "need" because people don't even know they exist or can exist is a tall order. Supposedly what "market research" is all about but such research rarely makes any judgment about what people "should" want. This gets back to Kip's point about responsibility for the consequences of our decisions about what we bring to market.

As an example of this dilemma, I had the opportunity to know Bill Gates and Steve Jobs when they were both here at Reed College briefly. Steve was totally absorbed in perfecting the "man-machine" interface in his Apple computer design and Bill saw the computer as a communication tool even calling his Model 100 portable "MEWS" - Miniature Executive Work Station and put a modem in even his least expensive machine. Both have been successful but Bill had the solution that was more "wanted".

Participant
Your company, Electro Scientific Industries, was named as one of "The 100 Best Companies to Work For" in America. As founder and chairman, what did you do to earn that status?

Douglas Strain
This is where my interest in the social dynamics of organizations became useful. I have always believed that I can accomplish more through working as part of an organization than I can by working alone. My father was a great believer in the Co-operative movement both producer and consumer. He organized a number of farmer Co-ops in the dairy industry and worked for years in the Challenge Cream and Butter Association, eventually as national Credit Manager for Challenge before joining me in ESI as business manager in 1953 so part of my interest in "group dynamics" is inherited.

One of my first mentors was Douglas McGregor and his book "The Human Side of Enterprise" which he wrote while he was still at Antioch College. Later, when I was in Chicago during the war, I took a course from S.I. Hayakawa based on his book "Language in Action" and stayed in touch with his Institute for General Semantics for many years learning about both the power of language and its limitations. Then Carl Rogers and his "Group Dynamics" ideas arrived and I began going to the Ojai Conferences where I met a number of valuable people like Alex Bavelas and Richard Farson and became active in WBSI.

Our view at ESI has been that people are usually "over managed" and that typical MBA training encourages this. We lose the tremendous resource of the group in managing themselves. This takes a matrix style of organization rather than the traditional "pyramidal" style where management is all from the "top". We try to move decisions to the level and the people most directly involved. It has been amazing to me how well this distributed responsibility works. Our women, particularly, are effective and the majority of our managers are women. After all if they can manage a home, a husband and a family, management of a well-defined job in business is duck soup.

Our formal management policy states "We recognize the dignity and personal worth of every individual. All employees should have the opportunity to share in the company's success for each of them helps to make it possible. Every individual deserves job security in accordance with their performance on the job and the personal satisfaction of being commended for a job well done. The objective is not simply to make the organization more efficient-although that will certainly be one result-but to emphasize beyond any possible doubt that human labor is not just a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace."

We back this up with quarterly employee meetings with officers of the company in which we specifically ask each individual to list the things that are "Going Well" and things that are "In the Way." We post the management responses by the following week along with our usual weekly postings of new orders received, orders shipped, current backlog and orders past due. Management has no secrets and everyone works off the same basic information. We have a well run and effective profit share plan again managed by people selected by the employees themselves.

We have survived for more than half a century now operating on Rogerian principles in a very "lumpy" capital equipment business and we expect to be around for at least another half century!

Participant
Is technology going to be our savior, our Grim Reaper, or neither? How do you see coping with the present explosion of technology?

Douglas Strain
One thing seems sure, information is one technology that has still a substantial way to go. With the new "hot spots" popping up in all the coffee houses and fast food operations (over 175,000 licenses in last year alone according to my latest report) this new fast very high frequency mode of information dispersal is just getting underway. Just this past week I saw a new "super computer" prototype that uses only laser light switches that will match the latest Cray megacomputer performance and fit into an ordinary suitcase instead of one ordinary city block and probably sell for less than $100K instead of the multimillions for the Cray. Operating speed like 80 gigahz. With instant information available to nearly anybody anytime on any topic, the impact on our educational system will be so far greater than the printing press that Gutenberg will be completely forgotten.

It will certainly change the balance in education in what we have to "learn" and what we can "look up". I can remember just a few years ago what a battle we had to permit the use of hand calculators in the classroom. Everybody had to go through the math flash card drills.

My prize example is the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003. Here we have 3 encyclopaedias on one DVD, a junior version for elementary students, a student version for high school and college use and the full unabridged version for the rest of us. Two complete dictionaries and two thesauruses from Merriam-Webster. Timelines, world atlas plus 21,000 images, videos and animations. 220,000 Web sites selected by Encyclopaedia Britannica editors. If a good curriculum on nearly any topic cannot be generated from such a source, the professor not only needs his head examined but we have to start looking for his head. Price: $24.95 - College anyone? The future is bright for lifetime "distance education" dim for "institutional" education.

The outlook for energy resources is still difficult to forecast and one of the most critical for our survival. Those of you who were with WBSI in its first incarnation will remember we did an energy study and report with the cheerful title of "Homo Sapiens — The Endangered Species" in 1992. Eleven years later I am not yet ready to be more optimistic. We predicted serious physical (not just political) shortages by 2020 in that report. Our consumption has continued to increase apace and our new source discoveries continue to decline. So called "green" energy sources developed to date actually absorb more energy in their production and replacement costs and so puts additional net load on our fossil fuel and hydro facilities. Our nuclear resources have continued to decline as the earlier plants have reached the end of their useful life and are being decommissioned.

There have been a few surprises. Natural gas deposits off the Northern Australian coast have been substantial and liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a prime source of energy for Japan now but is expensive. Look for the big white spherical storage tanks in the harbors that you visit - the signature of LNG storage.

There is encouraging news on the nuclear energy front. Totally new fission plants using small self-contained pellets of fissionable material with their own moderator which will only get very hot but not explode have been designed and a major new installation is underway in Cape town, South Africa. These plants use helium for the heat transfer rather than water and the electric turbines are turned directly by expansion of the superheated helium.

Another international effort is being mounted on nuclear fusion encouraged by recent developments in laser power a million times greater than achieved before and possibly enough to trigger fusion in small pellets the size of aspirin pills. This is along way from commercial development but could deliver energy "to cheap to meter" eventually.

The dream of bringing the energy processes that have heated the sun for so long may yet be brought safely to earth but none to soon for maintaining our life style so dependent on fossil fuels.

How to avoid the intransigence of mankind wanting to use every new technology to kill each other off is beyond my meager skills to forecast.

Participant
Through the years, you have spent a lot of your energy on education, from museum education programs for children, to higher education (including, I'm happy to say, distance education). What do you see as the future of education? Any new problems or possibilities on the horizon?

Douglas Strain
As I indicated in my last comment on technology, education is the area that will potentially be changed the most by the new technology. So far we have contented ourselves with supplementing our public education system with new organizations such as our museums broadening their base from the display of art and artifacts to "hands on" group educational experiences for people of all ages. Charter schools are expanding, home schooling is becoming more popular and private ventures are invading the public school domain.

When we built our new Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland a couple of decades ago our idea was to integrate it into our public school system to provide the programs and facilities that were lacking in the public system. Fortunately we had the enthusiastic support of the then Superintendent of Schools and lines of yellow school busses filled our parking lots during the week days bringing in K through 12 students on "release time" to use our excellent facilities including a planetarium, our wide screen OMNImax theater, a dozen laboratory spaces, and a well equipped and staffed computer lab. All this used the museum facilities during the week days when the museum would otherwise be largely vacant and gave us the audience we were trying to reach. The school system paid us a substantial sum as they did not have to pay for their own labs and equipment and it was a demonstrable net saving to the school district.

We underestimated the resistance of our public schools to change and when the next superintendent came in the program was discontinued completely and everything confined to the public school "shop" as an "economy move", much to the detriment of both OMSI and the students in the public schools. It was long after the printing press arrived on the scene before the monasteries stopped spending their time doing illuminated manuscripts by hand so such resistance to change in our educational system is nothing new.

I believe that our early K through 8 educational experiences are the most critical but receive the least attention. They are particularly deficient in accommodating the "left brain" child for the typical grade school is dominated by "right brain" teachers who have little affinity for the excitement to be found in chemistry, physics and mathematics so our budding technologists get off to a poor start. By the time one gets to high school there are usually a few chemistry, physics and math teachers around although my sophomore math teacher was "borrowed" from the French department and had not a clue about algebra!

Fortunately, the private sector is aggressively pursuing the new technology in education and one can sign up for "distance learning" from any number of sources, some of them very well known. From the advertising appearing in the "Economist" it would appear that the British are even more aggressive in this respect. The opportunities for "lifetime learning" facilitated by the new technology is most appealing for knowledge is expanding so rapidly that the days when a college education would last for life are long gone. WBSI is a pioneering example of a lifetime learning experience and "distance leaning" certainly provides a stimulating lifetime partner. As I indicated in my previous comments on technology I believe that the outlook for classical "institutional education" is dim and new patterns are emerging that are more effective and rewarding;

Referring to our previous discussion on discrimination against youth, I do believe that to keep our children trapped within an outmoded educational pattern that keeps them in college until they are well into their 20ties is no longer necessary. With the aid of our new technology, we should be able to prepare them to be fully "accredited" by the time they are eighteen and have basic high school level diplomas by the time they are fourteen. Certainly they will have the same opportunity for "lifetime education" that we will all find necessary in the future if we wish to keep up with the academic world.

Participant
Doug: I have been working on one promising application of electronic discussion and citizen participation in governance. It seems to me that this application fits in well to your concerns and experience, but I would love to hear your comments.

This is an application to fit into citizen response to referenda. It's target is to substitute learning and discussion for the current mindless sound bite harassing of voters and forcing them into a phony yes/no choice.

And example of this technology is AmericaSpeaks with the two urls that I will type below. At present I am trying to match Maine Public Broadcasating with an experimental use of this during October before a November referendum.

http://www.americaspeaks.org

Participant
How would you change the pedagogy for young scientists and technologists?

Participant
As has been noted earlier, young people with "left brain" characteristics find very little encouragement in their grade school days from grades 1 to 8. It is rare for them to have a teacher primarily interested in math and science in grade school. As a consequence they often are considered stupid by their teachers, who themselves are generally "right brain" oriented.

My son Jim is a lefty and my daughter, Barbara, is right brain. Barbara had no problem whatever in her early public school days. She took up the clarinet and became good enough to play in the Junior Symphony. My son, Jim, in the same public school, had great difficulty and was about to flunk out in the 3rd grade. We transferred him to a good private school through the remainder of his grade and high school days, where he thrived.

Jim always had excellent spatial perception and went on to be head of his class at the University of Oregon in architecture and then went back to Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh for his graduate work. Carnegie-Mellon was one of the first universities to develop "computer aided" architectural design and Jim picked it up immediately and employed it to design emergency medical facilities with helicopter access along the major freeways in Pennsylvania as his thesis project, got it funded and supervised the construction for several years.

When that was finished, the Dean of the Architectural School, Dr. Briner, had left the University and gone out to Vail, Colorado to form the firm of Briner and Scott to develop the Vail area as a major ski and vacation resort and recruited Jim as their lead architect. Jim designed the Hilton Hotel complex, the employee housing projects and a number of other private home and commercial buildings in his 25 years in the Vail and surrounding area. He has now retired, having long ago discarded the drafting board, as computer software for design has become more and more powerful. He still carries on a few design jobs each year from his computer equipped RV while traveling around the country following the seasons and transmits the designs back to some of his associates still in Vail.

You can see why I think the public school curriculum needs a fundamental change. In Portland, we have tried through our Museum of Science and Industry to supply some of the missing education for young "left brainers." Unfortunately, we have made very little progress in this direction with the public schools despite some demonstrated successes. If any of you have some suggestions as to how to cope with this situation, they would be much appreciated!

Participant
It's interesting that you find the public schools more hospitable to so-called "right brain" students--those whose leanings would be to the arts, humanities and social sciences, when almost all the emphasis we hear about is on the basic skills of reading, writing and math. Isn't that ironic?

Participant
Don, it is good to hear from you again! I have been following your frequent participation in WBSI with interest. Thank you for sending me the America Speaks URL. I have just pulled down a half dozen pages and it looks good. As you know, I like "hands on" participation and I see you have the 4H organization involved. My mother was long a 4H leader and I have supported 4H here in Oregon. Maybe we should go after the Boy Scouts, too? Good luck with Maine Public Broadcasting. You have given me a good idea - I should go after Oregon Public Broadcasting!

Douglas Strain
Dick, yes, it is ironic that all the emphasis we hear about is on reading, writing and math. Could be that these are the subjects early grade school teachers have the most trouble with themselves and are frustrated because they find them difficult to teach. Right brainers tend to have an "all at once" response so assembling letters or numbers to make words or equations are difficult whereas enjoying listening to a symphony or admiring a piece of art is not an analytical or assembly experience.

Participant
Doug, in this interview you've given us a marvelous picture of the way your mind works. Are there any parting shots you’d like to take?

Douglas Strain

Here are some references which I have found of interest.

The first is the Leonard Shlain book "Art and Physics" first published in 1993 and currently in paperback under the Harper Collins Perennial label 2001.

Publishers note: "Art and Physics"... Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light

The two realms seem completely opposed. In "Art and Physics" Leonard Shlain tracks their breakthroughs side by side throughout history to reveal an astonishing correlation of visions. Provocative and original, "Art and Physics" is a seamless integration of the romance of art and the drama of science... an exhilarating history of ideas."

Says the New York Times book review: "Provocative...passionate...Shlain is an engaging story teller, skilled in the use of metaphor, analogy, and even imaginary journeys that at times are poetic."

"Bold and persuasive...solidly researched and gracefully presented...Never before has such material been explored deeply and lucidly enough for nonspecialists" says the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Leonard Shlain's "Art and Physics" is exquisite food for thought." Fritjof Capra, author of the "Tao of Physics."

"A tour de force...A brilliant, accessible, and visionary look at the most revolutionary artists and scientists from the Golden Age of Greece to the present."

L. A. Times Book Review

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have no quarrel with the reviews. Among other things, it was where I learned that Einstein as a boy was familiar with "light waves" and would surf them in his imagination and then get off them and watch them go by and came up with his idea of "relativity" long before he knew the mathematics to explain his ideas rigorously. Also Shlain came up with the observation that if you clasp your hands together with the fingers interlocked and your left thumb is on top you are "left brained" and interested in math and science and if your right thumb comes up on top you are "right brained" and interested in music and art. I have tried this out with several groups now with surprising correlation.

Try it yourself and see if it works for your orientation!

The web has many references in the fields of "education," "energy," and "science" and it is interesting to explore to see where the web leads you.

Some net sites I have found interesting are:
"Scientists and Science, Education Reform, Myths, Methods and Madness"
James M Bower, Co-Director: Caltech Precollege Science Initiative
California Institute of Technology (9 pages)
Pasadena, CA
http://www.nas.edu/rise/bacg2a.html

"Combining Art & Science Though Information Technology"
Johan Groth, Ph.D
CEO Metamatrix Development & Consulting (8 pages)
Groth has been a leader in establishing the Swedish Schoolnet to use the Internet as a fundamental pedagogical tool in the Swedish K12 schools. The project is run by the Swedish National Agency for education.
http://www.eun.org/cn/vs/history/papers/johan1.html

"Web Resources-Educational Resource Links" (4 pages listing of internet sites)
http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/links/ed.html

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