Years ago, I mentioned to a French philosopher friend that I was thinking about setting up a blog about engineering. "Ah!", he replied, "so you're investigating the epistemology of engineering?"
Naturally I hadn't the faintest clue what he was talking about, though I may have given more of a non-commital "mmm-mmm" answer, rather than an "um." But the idea stuck and the kernel of an idea grew - more slowly than my enthusiasm for starting up the Literal Engineer and contributing to Engineer Blogs and Engineers Looking for Stuff. But whilst writing about PPAPs and DFMEAs had its merits, I realised that what I really wanted to think and write about was the "why" of what we do. And its meaning.
So I started putting this blog together in the summer of 2019; reading Simondon and Wikipedia; jotting down topics that I would want to cover over the coming years - and learning the absolute basics of Jekyll and GitHub. The name in the URL, Existential Engineer, came about because the original idea for a name, Onto Engineering, looks silly in a URL (ontoe... is in there). Onto Engineering is the real title of this blog, and reflects the Ontology of engineering (another concept that needed a few clicks around Wikipedia and the web). But, here we are: I've started it and I'll probably never finish it. But I'm hoping for an interesting journey along the way, and not just for myself. Here's hoping you'll join me for the odd stretch or two. Why? I suppose we'll find out along the way!