What fields are at the "cutting edge" of technology?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I am hoping to start an interesting and fun discussion about this. This is not a "what should I major in" thread, I just think it could be interesting to hear your speculation, ideas, and/or dreams. Try to keep it the discussion relevant to OUR lifetimes.</p>

<p>From which fields are the great innovations of our generation going to come from? In what fields are the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of our generation going to come from (assume for the sake of this discussion that they were innovators)? Will individuals even be a major factor, or will huge collections of great minds from different fields work together? </p>

<p>Is computer science/computer engineering/software engineering still where it's at, or are much of the major breakthroughs in the past?</p>

<p>Maybe the future is in biomedical engineering? Are we going to have artificial hearts and livers by the time we're elderly? Are we going to live to be 120?</p>

<p>Artificial intelligence? Are we going to reverse engineer the human brain, create computers based on that engineering, and improve it? </p>

<p>Energy? Are we still going to be fighting over oil in 2070? Are we going to be mining the moon for Helium 3? Will we find ways to grow enough crops to fuel the world with biofuels AND feed the people in it without needing oil?</p>

<p>Agriculture? </p>

<p>Space?</p>

<p>Some other field/combination of fields? </p>

<p>Or is the renaissance over? Are we on the verge of the dark ages round 2? Are global warming, overpopulation, and limited resources going to cause everything to crumble in our lifetimes?</p>

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<p>As our demand for energy increases and we continue to deplete our finite reserves of fossil fuels we guarantee energy as being a field of interest for innovation. Will we still be fighting over oil in 2070? Unfortunately the answer is most likely yes, hopefully we are considerably less dependent on it in 2070 then we are today. We are certainly capable of implementing alternative technologies to at least supplement the energy we get from fossil fuels. But with fossil fuels being relatively cheap in comparison to these alternative sources it will certainly be an uphill battle.</p>

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<p>You heard about Steve Jobs because of the products he helped develop and the market they were sold in. </p>

<p>Yet, there are “cutting edge” ideas in the nuclear power industry that address the nuclear waste issues that you probably haven’t heard about because of their nitche market and they are not exactly comsumer products. </p>

<p>There are newer steel alloys being “designed” and evaluated for use in mega-watt solar power plants that have the cycle life required at the temperature ranges seen in those plants. There are newer analysis techniques being developed to evaluate those lifetimes. This will probably lead to new code changes to accomodate these material and the analysis techinques.</p>

<p>So, I believe that almost any field of engineering will produce new “cutting edge” technology. It is just a matter of how far into a field you have to “dig” to find them.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I’m not sure this question makes sense… each technical field has a “cutting edge” or “state of the art”. Perhaps what you really mean is this: which technical field will most significantly (and, really, visibly) transform the lives of the most people next? Like you say, I think few would argue that CS/software has been that over roughly the last 20-30 years or so (Internet, personal computers, smart phones, etc.) I would, however, question what CS/software has in store next for the near future…</p>

<p>So, which engineering is going to be hot over the next 10 years? I propose two objective metrics: (1) the industry’s growth rate in terms of jobs; (2) Google trend generator (normalized by current # of jobs). I’ll get some numbers and be back.</p>

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<p>Here are the results:</p>

<h2>Specialty, %diff</h2>

<p>Biomedical, 72
Software, 32
Environmental, 31
Civil, 24
Petroleum, 18
Mining/Geo., 15
Industrial, 14
Agriultural, 12
Nuclear, 11
Aerospace, 10
Materials, 9
Marine, 6
Mechanical, 6
Comp. Hardware, 4
Electrical, 2
Chemical, -2</p>

<h2>Specialty, 2-yr trend index</h2>

<p>Petroleum, 1.00
Biomedical, 0.85
Mechanical, 0.85
Comp. Hardware, 0.80
Electrical, 0.80
Materials, 0.80
Aerospace, 0.75
Agriultural, 0.75
Chemical, 0.75
Civil, 0.75
Industrial, 0.75
Marine, 0.75
Nuclear, 0.75
Environmental, 0.70
Mining/Geo., 0.70
Software, 0.65</p>

<p>I think this indicates two things: first, that biomedical will be getting popular AND it’s getting more popular than it is now; software and environmental will remain popular, but they’re not getting any more popular now than it has been; other specialties are significantly less popular, and vary in terms of how much more popular they are becoming.</p>

<p>Based on this, my nod goes to biomedical.</p>

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<p>Those percentages can be misinterpreted pretty easily. Some people might think that there’s going to be tons of biomedical jobs in the future, when there is not. When small fields double it’s still small.</p>

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<p>True, but the rate of growth - not the size - of the field is what seems important to me when it comes to evaluating what the next big thing will be. If we’re going by number of jobs… CS/software is the clear leader and will be for the foreseeable future.</p>

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<p>How much good would CS have done if not for the engineers that made affordable personal computers and all of our miniaturized devices that we use every day? What good would all the CS theory do if we didn’t have cheap silicon and memory to go along with it? </p>

<p>No matter what field you’re in you’ll be able to have a hand in whatever technology shapes the next 20-30 years.</p>

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<p>I’m thinking in terms of what will radically transform the world, if anything, like personal computers and internet have? No doubt all of the advances in computing were built on top of decades (even centuries) of breakthroughs encompassing almost every form of science - but I’m focusing on the turning point where it all came together to have a major impact on the lives of basically everyone on Earth. Another example is flight, and before that - the assembly line. Is there any emerging technology that is going to change the world in our lifetimes in the way these examples have?</p>