A FiberSmart internal conversation between Gijs Dutry van Haeften and David Wang

David:I walked out of the movie theater. My mind was still there. I don't know how to describe the movie, but I think there are words like complexity, power of science, vulnerability of a scientist.  I feel how humble a scientist can be while you're making something that makes such an impact.

Gijs:Some of it is in black and white and some of it is in color. I think the black and white is objective and color is subjective. And I wonder if, David, that you knew that before you went in or if you kind of just associated with that during the film, whether that was an interesting touch point.

David:I think it's an interesting touch point, I do not know. But I feel black and white feels like a documentary, it feels like it's real recorded history. And there's a lot of this mind image that they're trying to impose. For people to feel that was actually in Oppenheimer's mind when he's thinking about quantum physics. And I think it's very visually impactful.

Gijs:Okay, this is slightly off topic, but do you feel like the film inspired you to do any sort of thought piece? Because I know that sometimes when you kind of see these types of things and obviously there's really interesting parallels with the business, did anything kind of spring to mind?

David:Yeah, totally. First is the inspiration.

My biggest impression was how to approach science, how to approach technology, how to get from an unknown to a product and the level of collaboration. The Manhattan Project is probably the most sophisticated human scientific product collaboration. During that process they created OR (Operations Research), which applies mathematical models to optimize processes.

Secondly, I think human collaboration is tremendous. Nobody can do something that's so wonderful and sophisticated by him or herself. Orchestration is so important, so critical and communications along with that.

You're only a small piece of a bigger puzzle, how to put all the pieces together. I think the real story showed wonderfully how humans can work together to create something far more advanced.

Lastly, there's a lot of decision making. You have to use gut feelings and the best possible information you can get. And you have to be able to justify that. So I think it shows a tremendous level of sophistication, especially being a technical leader that makes such a big impact.