Blog 002

Amir, August 7

Sometimes I feel like technology is providing the right answers but to the wrong questions. While gadgets become smaller and smarter, the most important devices, those which affect our environmental surroundings have hardly been changed for decades. So, as a soon-to-graduate electrical engineer, still seeking in what field to specialize, I find it hard to avoid asking myself: what would be the social and ethical impact of my choices and does it matter?

Last weekend I went to visit relatives in California, home of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the world’s best universities, the Golden Bridge, aerospace, entertainment, software, you name it. But, also a place where public transportation is worse than any other place I know. I just could not believe that the only route from LA to San Francisco started by 3 hour bus ride that leaves from a very shabby station (called Los Angeles Union Station) to a town called Bakersfield, then continued by 5 hour train to Emeryville, and then yet one more hour of pitiful-bus drive. I will save you the details of how poorly managed this journey was. I'll just say that it's astounding that when global warming issues are so hype and technology so advanced, in a leading economy, between two exemplary cities there is public transportation that would embarrass most cities in the world!

This week, Monday, 4pm, I leave the Nano Core Facility at UIC to go home. After hours of trying to understand the simulations I'm running of magnetic nano-structures that my professor says might be the building blocks of the next generation of microprocessors, I wait endlessly for the CTA. Finally on board the train, as it passes through the tunnels under the Loop, the noise from the tracks is so deafening that I can hardly concentrate on reading the posters on the wall. One of the posters informs that since most of the blue line is "slow zone" due to the line's age, at last the city plans to upgrade. The public is asked to be patient and understanding, look for alternatives, and wait until 2009. So, while engineers work on the next generation of electronics, the public will have to simply wait – for the train.

I just finished reading through IEEE Spectrum Magazine. There was an interesting article about quantum computers. I added the magazine to the pile of paper which I save until I will find the time to bring it to a recycling drop-off site. Because in my neighborhood there is no serious recycling program, not for papers, compost, plastics, or metals, I have to drive two miles to a garbage disposer where all recyclable materials go in and are supposedly later sorted. As if, yeah, sure. Someone once told me that the reason there is no significant recycling in Chicago is that recycling technology has not yet been made efficient; I don't buy that.

I keep trying to think what I'd like to do most with my career, whether it's solid state devices, signals, control systems, or communications; they all seem interesting. I ask myself if fulfillment is obtained more by technical achievement or by making a difference. I realize that while America looks shining on TV commercials that offer consumerism, there are important matters where technology is lagging far behind, not only in innovation but also in simple application. At the same time, I try to focus on which areas have the brightest future and potential or just more employment opportunities. As electrical engineering students, we live the frustrating disparities between what techonolgy could do and what it is doing, and it’s up to us as future engineers to find the way to make it right.