• Question: In lets say 100 years time what sort of level would you expect engineering will be at?

    Asked by yellowumbrella2 to Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 19 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Oooh wow.. where to start?

      The basic principles of engineering will remain the same. For example, we will still be building machines, using scientific principles, to exploit natural forces and improve the world. I don’t think that will change (or if it did, I don’t think it will be engineering!)

      In terms of the job, I think a lot more will become automated. In a 100 years, it seems likely to be that the majority of design work will be done by computers. Human engineers will supervise and provide the creative input mostly. This could be good and bad for engineers; we wouldn’t need to do the boring stuff (and we would make fewer errors as a result), but it may also take away a lot of the work we like to do. This has already happened in the last two decades, and will continue.

      Engineering will evolve a lot with technology and demand. I expect bioengineering to become much bigger, as well as nanoengineering. Both of these new fields have real potential. Other engineering fields will change a lot, but may remain fundamentally similar.

      Oh, and whatever we end up making in 100 years, it will be better, bigger, faster, smaller and all-around cooler than anything today 🙂

    • Photo: Jessica Marshall

      Jessica Marshall answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      I think it will be unrecognisable in many ways- imagine is we had predicted spacecraft 100 years ago that are going to other planets! Or the Internet, or jumbo jets. Bit that is the exciting thing- it will change and be exciting.
      However, the fundamental physics and engineering will be the same, we will just know more and use it in different ways.
      I think there are lots of problems still to solve, medically, our climate, food and water production and supply and then other things like space travel becoming more available. I see engineering as key to all that, and I hope we have good people to solve these problems.

    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Hard to tell. Hopefully things will be using a lot less power than they do now to do similar things. We are slowly moving in this direction.

      When I was kid, a friend had a robot car (called ‘Big Track’) that you programmed via a keypad to drive around. It needed a 9V battery and 4 D cell batteries to work. When I was bought a new version as a Christmas present a couple of years ago, it just needed 3 D cell batteries. The electronics and motors had become much more efficient so it needs less power to work.

      I also expect more of an interface between biology and engineering -this could be amazing. There is a whole area called ‘regenerative medicine’ that could turn out to be really interesting. Using engineering techniques to e.g. grow new organs or tissue to help make people better when they are sick.

      Predicting the future is always tough though, I doubt anyone would have predicted all the computer power we carry in our pockets routinely.

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