Don't be so overly pessimistic TheSCSIBug. Edison didn't have much of a formal education(he was probably a "magneto gearhead" too)and spent a huge amount of time with overly complicate experiments with exotic metals and book theories and such trying to invent the lightbulb. And at the end of his sanity he decided to try a simple piece of cotton string and... presto.
The rest is history. Thank God Edison wasn't a formally educated pessimist.

Many highly complex problems have simple but artistic solutions.