The Century's Top Engineering Challenges 290
coondoggie writes "The National Science Foundation announced today 14 grand engineering challenges for the 21st century that, if met, would greatly improve how we live. The final choices fall into four themes that are essential for humanity to flourish — sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability, and joy of living. The committee did not attempt to include every important challenge, nor did it endorse particular approaches to meeting those selected. Rather than focusing on predictions or gee-whiz gadgets, the goal was to identify what needs to be done to help people and the planet thrive, the group said. A diverse committee of engineers and scientists — including Larry Page, Robert Langer, and Robert Socolow — came up with the list but did not rank the challenges. Rather, the National Academy of Engineering is offering the public an opportunity to vote on which one they think is most important."
I'm confused (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever heard of social engineering?
Seriously, what is securing cyberspace if not a people problem? The machines don't cause the problems, people do.
Securing cyberspace is easy, building systems to secure cyberspace that users can actually use is the hard part. People have been telling me to get a Mac as the solution to all my usability problems for years. So today I bought one.
OK so the Mac is nicer in many respects, but mostly as far as I am concerned on the hardware package side than the software. But the security usability is no better. None of the assistants in the shop were able to solve the simple security tasks I proposed. Which is good for me I suppose since there would be no point in trying to solve an already solved problem.
Now securing the fifty year old banking IT system, now that is much harder than securing the Internet, and that is the system the criminals are attacking because that is where the money is.
Larry Page? (Score:1, Interesting)
I would rather see a panel made up of real engineers and scientists. Yes, he helped found Google. But he is not a luminary figure that should be talking about how to save the world. He really does not belong in that group. There should be some circles you cannot buy your way into.
Wanna know my big engineering hurdle? We should first and foremost be thinking about population controls. Nail that one (figuratively, we want less kids) and we are well on our way to solving some real-world issues.
Missing option: holes. (Score:5, Interesting)
To summarize, what we need is a better way to dig cheap holes.
Think of it: with a cheap way to drill a hole we can drill down close to the mantle of the earth for cheap geothermal. With a cheap way to dig a tunnel we can expand our freeway infrastructure by placing new roads below ground. Infrastructure can be run underground more cheaply--if we have a cheap hole to run them through.
Holes are the future.
"manage the nitrogen cycle?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Missing option: holes. (Score:5, Interesting)
The necessary advance isn't a "hole drilling robot." It's incredibly strong, heat-resistant pipes, and some kind of trick for installing them while drilling without affecting the bore diameter or preventing bit replacement.
NSF and my list (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Human space travel to planetary bodies outside of earth
2) Widespread therapeutic use of engineered tissue, gene therapy and RNAi (gene knockdown)
3) Therapeutic approaches to overcome antibiotic resistance
4) Complete reduction of dependence on fossil fuels
5) Artificial intelligence
6) Reduction of the human costs of war through military technologies (as much as I hate to say it, world leaders seem to be too arrogant or too shortsighted to eliminate it)
7) Pervasive cyberinfrastructure
8) Elimination of obesity and related diseases
9) Engineering of useful artificial biotics (and control of the dangerous ones)
10) Health informatics and truely personalized medicine in the age of postgenomics
I'm sure there are others maybe some environmental issues (global warming, overpopulation, etc)...
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" (Score:2, Interesting)
False problems (Score:4, Interesting)
* Make solar energy affordable
As noted elsewhere: affordable is relative. Let oil hit some arbitrarily high price, and solar power suddenly looks cheap.
* Provide energy from fusion
Also, as noted elsewhere, the sun is a stable fusion reactor, and it is safely located millions of miles away.
* Develop carbon sequestration methods
Only if we intend to continue gulping oil. Assuming it goes off the charts in expense, carbon sources (oil or coal) will cease to be economically viable and will cease being used except for Important things like medicine and materials, both of which are small carbon burners compared to the local SUV.
* Manage the nitrogen cycle
Corn, Beans, Squash.
* Provide access to clean water
Nice idea, but first you have to have enough to go around. This problem (as would many others) be solved with FEWER people shitting the place up.
* Restore and improve urban infrastructure
Mostly, TRAINS. Lots of electric TRAINS. Remember: Peak OIl == Peak Asphalt.
* Advance health informatics
Nice idea - how you will do it with out petroleum is another issue.
* Engineer better medicines
See above.
* Reverse-engineer the brain
Why? I would think reverse engineering the liver might be more useful.
* Prevent nuclear terror
Sure: Ban nuclear weapons or drive civilisation back to the 18th century. We can do the first, and the oil crash will do the second, over time.
* Secure cyberspace
Against WHAT? Phishing?
* Enhance virtual reality
Eeew- that is like SO five minutes ago.
* Advance personalized learning
Sure, so I can leverage my human resources, right? fuck off.
* Engineer the tools for scientific discovery
Like WHAT - INSIGHT? Good luck with that Butch, lemme know how it works out for ya. Moron.
RS
Re:Carbon sequestration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Missing option: holes. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My top challenges (Score:3, Interesting)
2. No way. She rocks even if our taste in TV differs.
3. Got one. Doesn't change the wife from wanting to watch stuff. See 2.
4. Where???
5. A script that can answer as well as I can? Where?
6. where?
8. It's called a traffic jam.
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" - also (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would add: (Score:5, Interesting)
But, yes hopefully we can approach "comparable".
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who are these idiots? (Score:3, Interesting)
They also tread carefully around current events, cover the asses of various government and corporate interests, and ensure future funding (at least for the next year or so) by including "security" topics that everyone knows are bogus ways of diverting funds (except for the rotton apples at the top of the barrel).
If we have learned anything it is that the future of engineering is interdisciplinary (e.g. bio-engineering, regenerative therapy/stem cells, genetic engineering, etc). This just shows how horribly shriveled and unimaginative the NSF research vision really is.
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that shouldn't be a target, it should read : Make available a cheap energy source; You can't do anything with a perpetual motion device, if you can't make (cheap)energy with it.
and what about passive housing? [wikipedia.org]
Re:I would add: (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever since I learned about antimatter I've been dreaming of a battery powered of a small amount of the stuff. Yeah, I know about the problems with avoiding uhm, "spectacular" failure-modes. But the energy-density is gargantuan.
Cars that need to swap a tiny battery once-a-year ? Check ! Passenger-jets that emit zero pollution, and that replace tons and tons of jet-fuel with a small, easily swappable battery ? Check !
Okay, so I know this is totally unrealistic. It would however be very cool.
e = mc^2
0.5 gram of antimatter in a battery, reacts with 0.5g of normal matter, releases 0.001 * 300000000 * 300000000 J = gargantuan number. More energy than you could spend in a lifetime. All in a handy AA-cell.
Building a safe antimatter confinement-cell that size is left an engineering-challenge for the reader.
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" - also (Score:5, Interesting)
Declared nuclear states (and states like Israel that are unofficially declared) are just fine. If the Israelis lob a nuke at the Russians, they know they have only twenty minutes or so to make peace with whomever they worship. India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed countries that have, what, seven wars under their collective belt haven't nuked each other. Fear is a wonderful demotivator.
But terrorism is different. Let's say Al Queda gets ahold of a nuclear bomb. What, exactly, is their downside to actually using it? Who would we retaliate against if they used it to blow up New York? Hell, they might not care if we went on a big bombing spree, since all the dead Muslims are gonna get their virgins.
And why are you so sanguine about their chances of actually acquiring one? The technology is over sixty years old - you can get plans off the internet. People have been caught selling stolen Russian fissionables now on more than one occasion. And terrorist groups don't seem to have a big problem attracting engineers. Sure, they probably couldn't build a fusion bomb, and a crude fission bomb might be large and have a yield of "only" 50kt or so. That would be enough to kill millions.
Personally, I don't think nuclear terrorism is an "if" question. It's a "when" question. But short of a verifyable, complete international ban on all nuclear devices, including power stations, I don't see how it can be prevented.
social engineering? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of these shuold also not be on a 21st centurt list, but a 10 year list. We'll be, for example, making solar power affordable by then with little doubt.
Here are a few engineering feats I'd like to see:
- Install a superconducting electrical grid across each major continent
- BUILD enough solar/wind/etc clean power plants to supply all homes and businesses with 100% renewable clean power
- engineer retroviruses to target and correct or simply prevent disease/cancer/deformity/etc.
- build fully automated mass transit for every city in the world and eliminate 80% or more of commuting in personal vehicles in major cities.
- design and build self driving vehicles that operate as a mesh network, cars talking to other cars as well as GPS positioning, and eliminate the need for traffic lights entirely (Minority Report style autonomous driving, just with vehicles we'll actually drive) No more traffic, no more accidents, no more insurance.
- develop localized terraforming (convert desert into forrest, wasteland into cropland)
- Develop planetary terraforming (not just CO2 sequestration, but other things as well). Reverse global warming. control rainfall.
- pass laws to make cash illegal (no cash = no drug trade, no black market, no tax evasion, no criminals on the run, no reason to mug someone, no politicians getting paid under tables, utopia...)
- crack quantum mechanics and build optical quantum CPUs.
- not just improve VR, but make it nearly as real as RL.
- eliminate stupidity from gevernment. If you both figure out how to do it and then actually get it implemented, we can considder it the most astounding single achievment of the human histroy.