A world of wonder – life in science, technology and engineering

As we celebrate national engineering day I am thinking about how I ended up fascinated and passionate about science and technology. As a child of the 1960s it’s impossible to forget and not have been inspired by the lunar landings at the end of that decade and the challenges overcome to get there.?As a child, I remember reading science magazines like ‘Look and Learn’ and ‘World of Wonder’ and the excitement they instilled in me for science. I still have a decade’s worth of them in my loft at home today.

The 1960’s predictions of the future have not always turned out as we thought. Predictions of flying cars and living on the moon are just two examples of ideas that are not quite there yet. But, in some cases what has happened instead is even more extraordinary, take the development of digital technologies and the way they have completely transformed the evolutionary path of society. The remarkable impact of smart phones, personal computers and the internet were not that well understood in the early days.

It is hard to imagine that in the 1980s when I started my university physics education we were still only writing primitive computer programs in Fortran and submitting them to a mainframe on punched paper cards.?Today we take for granted that we carry devices in our pocket that can tell us where we are, browse the web for information, play games make financial transactions, interact with multiple people by video or chat and of course use it as a phone. ?These devices are many times more powerful that the computers that took us to the moon at the end of the 1960s.

Looking towards the present and the future, I see little reason to suggest that the remarkable developments that have taken place since I first set foot on a university campus, as a young undergraduate science student over 42 years ago, are going to slow down. We are starting to see the first steps towards the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Perhaps the car will not be flying yet but increasingly it will be driving itself.?

Looking further ahead, the emergence of quantum technology could bring yet another revolutionary change.?The quantum world creates some remarkable opportunities: computers that can solve problems in seconds that even the fastest computers in the world today cannot solve; to sensors and communications devices that can operate far further or far more sensitively than any conventional devices we have today.

Of course, all of this is exciting, but engineers and scientists have an obligation to understand the consequences of their actions. Connectivity and access to data opens up the potential for all sorts of cyber-crime.?We need to make sure that when we are working with AI or autonomy, we understand and trust the decisions these systems make for us. We also need to think more deeply about how we as humans continue to interact effectively with these increasingly sophisticated and connected systems.

For those of you at the early stages of your education, or for parents of children selecting GCSE or A-level subjects my message to you is, do not give up on science and technology because they appear complicated. There are many routes into engineering today from the conventional academic path to a variety of different apprenticeship and vocational paths including the recently introduced T-levels.?The purely academic path may not work for everyone but do not let that stop you, if you are passionate about the subject, through apprenticeship schemes you can ultimately achieve degree level qualifications through a vocational route.

As a nation we need many more engineers and scientists than come out of education at present. If you have a passion for it, I implore you to keep at it.

If anyone would like to discuss a career path in science, technology and engineering, please do reach out for advice, there are many resources available on-line, located simply by typing STEM in your search engine.

Engineering is a profession where you can progress to highly paid careers but never lose that childhood passion and enthusiasm for discovering new things every single day.??The Royal Academy of Engineering