Educating innovators
09/01/2005
It was a rare quick exchange during Alan Greenspan’s testimony before a Senate finance committee. After lengthy thoughtful analysis of the current economic situation by the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, a senator suggested that supporting efforts to get young people more interested in science and technology would be important to the future economic health of the nation. Greenspan not only concurred, but added, “If we can do that, we won’t have to worry about all the other problems we’ve been discussing.”
That simple comment spoke volumes. It was innovation, particularly in science and technology, that enabled the United States to become a world leader, economically and also militarily. But leadership in science and technology is not guaranteed. Other nations, perhaps with far different worldviews, might gain dominance in the future. Continuing leadership will depend on even more innovative ideas because of the increasing complexity of the industries and sciences that underpin a steadily more mechanized, automated society. The question is “Will the US continue to be a world leader in innovation?” It depends on how well prepared the next generation or two will be to continue to create new technology and to provide the skills needed to put it into production.
Those who are pushing the frontiers, whether inventing new devices or expanding scientific understanding, have learned the exciting rush that comes from creating new knowledge. But they also have gone through the long grind required to master the knowledge and reach a point where they can contribute.
The Information Age will be shaped by advances in semiconductors, chip design, and software, along with the business acumen to move innovative ideas out into the marketplace quickly and profitably. Future needs are clear in semiconductors. From a few very familiar materials, semiconductor processing will be extended to cover large new patches across the Periodic Table, with complex interactions involving interfaces, grain boundaries, electromigration, differing thermal expansion coefficients, and myriad other potential incompatibilities. Lots of science will be needed to make future process recipes work well.
After that, nanotechnology offers exciting prospects, such as self-assembly, and accentuated properties, like higher conductivity and speed, brighter emissions, and lower power drain, but to achieve them we will have to master the dynamics of a very weird quantum world. Designers may have to learn to make reliable systems from probabilistic rather than deterministic components. Programmers may have to go beyond parallel to multilayer processing.
A workforce capable of inventing tomorrow’s technologies and operating the tools needed to make them effective will need a strong, basic understanding of the science, mathematics, and technology. Comparatively, up to now, we’ve had it easy! It’s going to get a lot tougher. Areas like biotechnology offer new challenges. Biochips are already here, and in the future, biological models may reshape the architecture of electronic systems and networks.
We need to get kids excited about innovation, and give them opportunities to experiment and discover things at each level of education. Today we see a few examples - like battling robots or racing solar-powered automobiles - that instill a thirst for greater knowledge. Semi and companies like Intel and Teradyne are trying to give kids at least a sampling of the technology underpinning the Information Age. Groups of young students visit plants, learn about the work being done there, and participate in fun, technology-based events. We need to come up with an array of programs like this, and then give the kids the support and backup they need to learn the fundamentals. Apprentice programs need to take shape to help young people learn how to operate the increasingly sophisticated tools of the workplace.
You can’t force kids to learn no matter how hard teachers try to cram in enough facts to pass standardized tests aimed at weeding out the laggards. We need to develop a thirst for knowledge in youngsters by showing them how they can actually contribute and innovate on their own. And they need to see that those who learn well can move up the ladder, or perhaps start companies of their own someday.
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At least one economist in Washington seems to understand the challenge. Let’s hope someone is listening.
Robert Haavind
Editorial Director