Why study technology?
A student asked me: “Why do you think technology is important and not something else? It seems that you are promoting a field that you are teaching and encourage students to study it. Is it a good advice?
Answer: Today technology is increasingly become the key driver of the global economy. You connect to the Internet then you can talk to anybody in the world using Skype. You contact your friends and share everything via Facebook. You take pictures using iPhone camera then upload them to Flickr where your friends can download and share. You travel to foreign countries but do not speak their language so you take your iPhone with you, you can say in English, tap into translation application and it will translate what you said into Spanish, or Chinese, or Japanese or other languages that you choose. You can go to school online, listen to lectures and send homeworks to professors by emails. You can buy almost everything online whether it is a song, a book, jeans, a TV, or even a car. All of these things that change your life come from technology and that is why it is important.
If you still do not believe technology is important and can impact society than you may want to look at self-driving cars that are already available in the market. You get into the car, tell it where you want to go, the voice recognizing software will activate the car and it will drive you there. You can read a book; watch a TV in the car without worry because the car is designed to drive in traffic based on its special sensors. This is not a science fiction but already a reality. Last month, California is the third state in the U.S, after Florida and Nevada, allows self-driving car and one of the first people who go to work in this car is Sergey Brin, the founder of Google.
If you still do not believe technology is important and can impact society, you can visit some new factories in the U.S. UK and even China then you may find half of people who work there are … actually robots. They lift heavy materials; build products, packed them into trucks to ship etc. The “real people” who work there sit behind computers to monitor these robots, give them instructions on what to do and make sure that they (robots) do not make mistakes. Today 35% of manufacturing works are done by automation and robots; the number is expected to increase to 50% by 2020 and 85% by 2030. What will happen to manufacturing labor workers? Either they learn technology and manage robots or they will become unemployed workers.
Technology can help support many things for people. It also makes money for companies that develop them. It creates many high paying jobs for people with technology skills – the entrepreneurs, the scientists, the technologists, the engineers, the mathematicians (STEM). Today 80% of the richest people in the world came from technology industry or invest in this industry. Today most of the highest paying jobs are in the technology fields (STEM field). Today we are just beginning to see the impact of technology, but there are more to come and it is coming fast. If you do not study STEM, you may be left behind. Technology is a big wave, either you ride it or it will drown you. It is your choice.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
