what's happened and what will happen

The "Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Twentieth Century" and the "Grand Challenges for Engineering" are so broad that they basically say everything that was ever done was a great feat and everything that will be done will be a challenge. People can definitely try to classify most all accomplishments under one of the twenty categories presented in the list of achievements. As can any challenge be twisted to fit into the categories of the "grand challenges."

Electronics and the Internet are the two biggest achievements that my generation cares about. People around my age basically used a computer since grade-school and the internet since around the same time. Now most people use laptops, ipods, digital cameras, and most recently smart phones. The electronic industry is key in helping define my generation. The internet has created an entire community as well as improved instant communication with anyone anywhere. Networking sites ease communication among far away friends and family members.

Contrasting with what already happened (and is continuing to change as I type this entry), is what will happen and why my generation cares. Securing cyberspace and making solar energy economical are what young people probably care about the most out of all of the challenges. Cyberspace is expanding all the time. More information is available, and with that more viruses are created. If eventually (and I hope this happens within the next few decades) all health care files become digital a much more security will be needed to make it safe. I guess that issue kind of overlaps with advancing health informatics, but if you tell the average eighteen year old what health informatics is odds are they won't care. Solar energy is also an important issue. As we all know or just constantly deny in some cases, the world oil supply is diminishing. Conventional oil used for heating and transportation will become drastically too expensive in the next decades. Natural gas is also a limited resource. People are becoming increasingly concerned with "going green," and they are realizing that fossil fuels are not renewable resources. Making solar energy more economical will be necessary in the future. These days young people have a greater sense of the natural environment than they did years ago.



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