The Next 100 Years: A Love Story

By

Linda Deng

Engineering is no longer the solitary bachelor it once was.  Instead, it has finally found a mate—or many mates, for that matter—and the world has born witness to DNA computing, the illegitimate child of computer science and biology; to laser micrometers, the offspring of electrical engineering and physics; and to the study of human factors, resulting from an illicit affair between mechanical engineering and psychology.  Indeed, engineering has come out of its shell and will be constantly looking for love in the next 100 years.

It’s just as well too, since engineering has started to get a tad creaky in the knees; but its children will divvy up engineering’s many fortunes among themselves, and they will someday have children of their own, and by 2105, engineering’s blood will be surviving in many of the world’s disciplines.  And no longer will engineering’s human followers be restricted to constructing steel bridges or developing word processing software; but they will build roads between cultures and perform calculations in alternate dimensions—not through gushy Miss America promises or out-of-this-world science fiction stories, but  through cognitive science and quantum computing.
   
For sure, engineering’s offspring will be faster, stronger and friendlier, as we employ interdisciplinary principles to create more efficient forms of computation, more structurally sound materials, and more of an understanding of human psychology.  But of course we must first nurture the children, for they are mere kids now.  USC—and universities around the world—must show their students the photo albums of engineering’s children, make their students aware of just how adorable these children are now and how handsome they’ll surely turn out to be if we raise them right.  Students will no longer be engineers; they will be engineers and linguists, engineers and chemists, engineers and musicians.  The Viterbi School of Engineering will be the Viterbi School of Engineering and Mathematics and Science and Psychology and Law and Philosophy…
   
Of course, that is not to say that “pure” engineering wasn’t just as handsome.  But what good is beauty when you lack a significant other with whom to share it?  Indeed, engineers may still be able to produce smaller silicon chips and faster microprocessors year after year; but perhaps all computer engineering requires is the gentle encouragement of a physics wife to whisper that she wants a son named a Qubit—and the world will become proud godparents of a quantum computer able to calculate any equation faster than its pure engineering father—even after decades of training—ever could.
   
Granted, the see-how-fast-and-small-you-can-go race is not the only competition we want to win either.  Humans have always been curious about themselves, and so monikers like Freud have become household names.  But cognitive science, a mixture of computer science and psychology and linguistics and neuroscience and philosophy and anthropology (oh, there’s probably more), has cropped up lately as well to answer those burning questions about ourselves.  No, engineers won’t just be building things anymore (even if what they build will be smaller and faster and better); we’ll be learning about ourselves as well, winning the human race, attempting to answer virtually any question thrown at us, mechanical, electrical, psychological, philosophical, or otherwise.