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Grand Challenges for Engineering
Posted on | February 13, 2010 | No Comments
With input from people around the world … an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Now their conclusions are revealed on this website.
From urban centers to remote corners of Earth, the depths of the oceans to space, humanity has always sought to transcend barriers, overcome challenges, and create opportunities that improve life in our part of the universe.
In the last century alone, many great engineering achievements became so commonplace that we now take them mostly for granted. Technology allows an abundant supply of food and safe drinking water for much of the world. We rely on electricity for many of our daily activities. We can travel the globe with relative ease, and bring goods and services wherever they are needed. Growing computer and communications technologies are opening up vast stores of knowledge and entertainment.
As remarkable as these engineering achievements are, certainly just as many more great challenges and opportunities remain to be realized. While some seem clear, many others are indistinct and many more surely lie beyond most of our imaginations. Today, we begin engineering a path to the future.
via Grand Challenges for Engineering.
The top two vote getters were my top two as well – make solar energy affordable and reverse-engineer the human brain. While I’m a do-gooder at heart, the reality of the world is that the best way to help the poor in the world is to increase their economic opportunity, and I think that a wholesale shift in energy sources and the ability to create artificial thinking machines are the greatest potential sources of growth in the future.
Which ones do you think are most important?
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