future of science and technology essay

Science and Technology Will Change Our Future Essay

Introduction, papers are replaced by computer interface, credit card type media, changes in travel, lowering the cost of living, works cited.

Science and technology have continued to play a central role in providing means through which people improve their well-being and health, alleviate poverty, and define themselves as a nation and people. Many societies are built on a firm foundation of science and technology and irrevocably dependent on them. As such, science and technology will continue to play a major role in shaping our lives and nation. It will change how people communicate and interact with each other, how people work, travel and how students learn. Technological innovation in the next 50 years will rival innovation that took place in the past 400 years.

According to Reuters, businesses and schools will go paperless as papers are replaced by computer interfaces built into furniture and walls. Advances in communication, energy distribution, and storage in consumer products and businesses will support a technology known as “room ware” that will support this breakthrough. Offices Tables, walls, and cafeteria tables will double as terminals that will allow a person to write down the idea and send it to a personal desk or computer located somewhere else. School and office Walls and windows will have the capability to display maps and direction commands to help locate particular offices, staff, classrooms, etc ( Reuters, 2009). As offices/schools go paperless, the environment will benefit from reduced dependent on the tree for paper production.

After a long period of stability as the main choice of storage DVD and CD, media will be replaced by credit card type media by 2015. As the internet becomes more flexible coupled with the availability of cheap massive storage space, high data transfer rate, people will no longer need physical storage media to store data. File storage and access will be done remotely due to the convenience brought by the internet. Movies will only be available for download from the internet and that the user will need to access code to get movies and data. (B, 2009)

Innovation in Science and Technology will also change travel. People will be traveling on sky car that will be cruising comfortably at a speed of 300Miles per hour using regular fuel. The sky car will be equipped with onboard computers and will be fully automated. This means that one will not need a license to fly the sky car. The sky car will be equipped with redundant engines for safety purposes just in case the main engine fails (FutureCars.com, 2010). The cost of a new sky car will be equal to that of a luxury car once mass production begins. Sky car will be cost less to main and will launch and land at a pad the size of the dining room. Using sky car, people will be able to avoid traffic, spending tickets and save travel time.

Other speculations about the future include the availability of cheap, advanced personal equipment for self-diagnosis for illnesses that currently require a costly medical diagnosis. This will reduce the cost of health care and health insurance, hence lowering the cost of living. It will also lead to better health. Robots will also become part of mainstream life, in form of interactive toys, household items like carpets and pets will require no maintenance (Mooneyham, 2005).

The future will be shaped greatly by continued innovation in science and technology. Offices will go paperless and papers will be replaced by a computer interface inbuilt on office furniture and walls. DVD and CD media will be replaced by credit card types of media as people turn to online data storage and access. Technology innovation will also have a great impact on travel with the introduction of sky cars, which will result in reduced travel time and traffic congestion. New health equipment will help people to diagnose themselves for diseases, hence reducing the cost of health care, leading to better health.

Reuters. (2009). 2018 milestone: “Paperless Offices”. Web.

B, D. (2009). The Future of – Online/Remote Data Storage. Web.

Future Diagnostics Group. (2009). Nuclear Medicin. Web.

FutureCars.com. (2010). Moller Skycar – Long Time Coming. Web.

Mooneyham, J. (2005). Substantial regeneration treatments for various organs. Web.

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Essay on Science and Technology for Sustainable Future

Students are often asked to write an essay on Science and Technology for Sustainable Future in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Science and Technology for Sustainable Future

Introduction.

Science and technology play a crucial role in shaping our sustainable future. It’s through scientific discoveries and technological advancements that we can solve pressing environmental issues.

Renewable Energy

One key area is renewable energy. Technologies like solar panels and wind turbines generate clean, sustainable power, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and helping combat climate change.

Resource Management

Science also helps in resource management. Techniques like water purification and recycling ensure we use our resources efficiently, contributing to sustainability.

In conclusion, science and technology are vital tools in creating a sustainable future. They help us use resources wisely and combat environmental challenges.

250 Words Essay on Science and Technology for Sustainable Future

Science and technology are two crucial elements shaping our modern world. They have the potential to create a sustainable future by providing solutions to pressing global issues, such as climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation.

Role of Science in Sustainability

Science plays a pivotal role in understanding our planet and its complex systems. It helps us identify the challenges we face and provides the necessary tools to address them. For instance, climate science has been instrumental in identifying the causes and effects of global warming, leading to the development of mitigation strategies.

Contribution of Technology

Technology, on the other hand, provides practical solutions for implementing scientific knowledge. Green technologies, such as renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and energy-efficient appliances, are prime examples. These technologies reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, thereby mitigating climate change and promoting sustainability.

Interplay of Science and Technology

The interplay between science and technology is crucial for a sustainable future. Scientific research informs the development of new technologies, which in turn can be used to gather more data and refine our scientific understanding. This symbiotic relationship fosters innovation and progress towards sustainability.

In conclusion, science and technology are fundamental to creating a sustainable future. By harnessing their potential, we can address the pressing environmental issues of our time and pave the way for a future where humans live in harmony with nature. The task is challenging, but with the right approach, it is certainly achievable.

500 Words Essay on Science and Technology for Sustainable Future

Science and technology have been the driving forces behind human civilization’s progress. Their role in shaping our sustainable future is undeniable. As we face global challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, and social inequality, the application of scientific knowledge and technological innovation becomes more crucial than ever.

Science for Sustainability

Science provides us with the knowledge and understanding necessary to address sustainability issues. It helps us comprehend the natural world, the impact of human activities, and the interdependencies within ecosystems. Advanced scientific research in fields such as climatology, ecology, and environmental science enables us to predict future scenarios and develop strategies for mitigation and adaptation.

For instance, climate models help us understand potential future climate change impacts, guiding policy-making and planning. Genetic research can lead to the development of drought-resistant crops, contributing to food security in a changing climate.

Technology as a Tool for Sustainability

Technology is the practical application of scientific knowledge. It is a powerful tool that can either exacerbate or alleviate sustainability challenges, depending on how it is used. Technological innovations in renewable energy, waste management, water conservation, and agriculture are critical for a sustainable future.

Renewable energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, are instrumental in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Advanced waste management technologies can convert waste into resources, promoting a circular economy. Precision agriculture technologies can enhance crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts.

The Intersection of Science and Technology

The intersection of science and technology provides a fertile ground for sustainable solutions. The development and application of technologies are often based on scientific principles, and scientific research is frequently facilitated by technological tools. This symbiotic relationship can drive sustainable development in various ways.

For example, scientific research on carbon capture and storage can lead to the development of technologies that reduce CO2 emissions. Conversely, advancements in satellite technology can enhance our scientific understanding of global environmental changes.

Challenges and Opportunities

While science and technology hold great promise for a sustainable future, they also present challenges. Technological advancements can lead to job displacement, and the benefits of technology are not equally distributed. Furthermore, scientific research can be misused or misunderstood, leading to misguided policies.

However, these challenges also represent opportunities. For instance, education and training can equip people with the skills needed in a technology-driven economy. Transparent and inclusive decision-making can ensure that the benefits of technology are shared more equitably. And improved science communication can enhance public understanding and support for science-based policies.

In conclusion, science and technology are essential for a sustainable future. They provide us with the knowledge and tools necessary to address global sustainability challenges. However, to realize their full potential, we need to address the challenges they present and seize the opportunities they offer. By doing so, we can leverage science and technology to create a more sustainable and equitable world.

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• Science and Technology Essay

Essay on Science and Technology

Science and technology is the ultimate need of an hour that changes the overall perspective of the human towards life. Over the centuries, there have been new inventions in the field of science and technology that help in modernizing. Right from connecting with people to using digital products, everything involves science and technology. In other words, it has made life easy and simple. Moreover, humans now have to live a simple life. There is modern equipment explored by tech experts to find something new for the future.

Science and technology have now expanded their wings to medical, education, manufacturing and other areas. Moreover, they are not limited to cities, but also rural areas for educational purposes. Every day new technologies keep coming, making life easier and more comfortable.

Brief about Science

Throughout history, science has come a long way. The evolution of the person is the contribution to science. Science helped humans to find vaccines, potions, medicines and scientific aids. Over the centuries, humans have faced many diseases and illnesses taking many lives. With the help of science, medicines are invented to bring down the effect or element of these illnesses.

Brief of Technology

The mobile, desktop or laptop which you are using for reading this essay, mobile you use for connectivity or communication or the smart technology which we use in our daily life, are a part of technology. From the machinery used in the factory to the robots created all fall under tech invention. In simpler words, technology has made life more comfortable.

Advancement in science and technology has changed the modern culture and the way we live our daily life.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Science and Technology

Science and technology have changed this world. From TV to planes, cars to mobile, the list keeps on going how these two inventions have changed the world we see through. For instance, the virtual talks we do use our mobile, which was not possible earlier. Similarly, there are electrical devices that have made life easier.

Furthermore, the transportation process we use has also seen the contribution of science and technology. We can reach our destination quickly to any part of the world.

Science and technology are not limited to this earth. It has now reached mars. NASA and ISRO have used science and technology to reach mars. Both organizations have witnessed success in sending astronauts and technologies to explore life in the mars.

Other Benefits

Life is much simpler with science and technology

Interaction is more comfortable and faster

Human is more sophisticated

Disadvantages

With the progress in science and technology, we humans have become lazier. This is affecting the human mind and health. Moreover, several semi-automatic rifles are created using the latest technology, which takes maximum life. There is no doubt that the third world war will be fought with missiles created using technology.

Man has misused the tech and used it for destructive purposes.

 Man uses them to do illegal stuff.

Technology such as a smartphone, etc. hurts children.

Terrorists use modern technology for damaging work.

Science and Technology in India

India is not behind when it comes to science and technology. Over the centuries, the country has witnessed reliable technology updates giving its people a better life. The Indian economy is widely boosted with science and technology in the field of astronomy, astrophysics, space exploration, nuclear power and more. India is becoming more innovative and progressive to improve the economic condition of the nation.

The implementation of technology in the research work promotes a better life ahead. Similarly, medical science in India is progressing rapidly, making life healthy and careful. Indian scientists are using the latest technology to introduce new medical products for people and offer them at the lowest price.

The Bottom Line

The main aim of writing this essay on science and technology is to showcase how humans have evolved over the years. Since we are advancing, the science and technology industry is also advancing at a faster pace. Although there are challenges, the road ahead is exciting. From interaction to transportation and healthcare in every sector, we will witness profitable growth in science and technology.

FAQs on Science and Technology Essay

1. How technology changed humans?

Technology has certainly changed the way we live our lives. Not a single piece of technology has failed and is continuously progressing. Be it the small industry or large, technology is a boom to your society. Technology can encompass ancient technologies like calculators, calendars, batteries and others. In future, the technology worlds include Blockchain technologies, smart cities, more advanced intelligent devices, quantum computers, quantum encryption, and others. Humans are updated with technology. This is a good sign for the coming generation.

2. What are the top technologies?

In the last few years, there has been a massive update in technology. From individuals to companies, everywhere, the use of technology is required. Some of the top technologies we are witnessing are

 Data Science

 Internet of Things

 Blockchain

 Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

 Virtual Reality

 Edge Computing

Intelligent apps

Artificial Intelligence

Each of these technologies is in the use of daily life and even in making products. However, to use this technology, there is a requirement of skilled professionals and they need proper training to use them.

3. Is the topic Science and Technology an appropriate topic for students?

Yes, Science and Technology are one of the most important topics every student should know in their schooling. The world is growing rapidly at an increasing rate where one should be equipped with minimum knowledge about these concepts. Science and technology have become a part of everyone’s life today. Therefore understanding them is definitely important.

4. Does writing essays improve English?

Yes, of course it does. Writing is absolutely fundamental to language learning. As with anything, however, it is important to learn when and what you write. If you do it all the time, your writing might sound forced. If you only do it when you don't have anything better to do, you might find yourself procrastinating, and not do it at all. It's also a lot more effective to compose essays when you are in that mindset of an essay. So, to answer your question, yes.

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July 12, 2021

The Next 75 Years of US Science and Innovation Policy: An Introduction

By Robert W. Conn , Michael M. Crow , Cynthia M. Friend , Marcia McNutt

In the future, science and technology will be called upon to address many challenges, from pandemics to climate change to food and water shortages to crises that cannot be foreseen today. Scientific research must be structured to meet society’s needs.

A discussion of

Since the end of World War II, a particular conception of the relationship between scientific research and societal benefits has dominated US science and technology policy. As laid out in Vannevar Bush’s seminal 1945 report, Science, the Endless Frontier , the federal government, by funding basic research at the nation’s universities and independent research institutions, would generate both new scientific knowledge and the skilled practitioners needed to apply that knowledge to societal problems, thereby ensuring “our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”

The vision at the heart of Science, the Endless Frontier— that society would benefit from new knowledge and should therefore support the generation of that knowledge—has been abundantly realized. Research conducted by America’s universities and independent research institutions on behalf of the federal government has opened pathways to improved living standards, public health, and national security not only in the United States but around the world. However, science and the broader society in which science is embedded have changed radically over the past three-quarters of a century. Even as new scientific discoveries and new and innovative technologies have spurred economic growth and reduced poverty worldwide, wealth, learning, and opportunity remain available to far too small a proportion of humanity. The development of new medical treatments and procedures has extended life spans but has not prevented massive inequities in health care and health outcomes, as has been starkly revealed during the current COVID-19 pandemic. A central debate in the years after World War II—how best to structure scientific research to meet human needs—remains a work in progress in this world of accelerating change.

The 75th anniversary of Science, the Endless Frontier , combined with the particularly complex and turbulent events of recent years, has created a valuable opportunity to consider the science and technology policies we will need for the next 75 years. Scientific research today is much more complex, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and transnational—and often occurs at a much more rapid pace—than in the past. Researchers are studying a much broader range of issues, including problems that science-based technologies have exacerbated. China now spends approximately the same amount on research and development as the United States and substantially more than the countries of the European Union (see NSF data ). Today, new knowledge travels rapidly around the world to institutions and to individuals who are ready, capable, and eager to apply that knowledge. The challenge for national governments is to develop and implement policies that enable countries to benefit from the assimilation of new knowledge to enhance productivity, national well-being, and new ways of doing things.

Universities and the federal funding of academic research are adapting to these and other changes, yet they still bear many hallmarks of an earlier age. Much of the research and teaching done in colleges and universities still occurs within disciplinary silos and adheres to the single principal investigator model, though this model can and does contribute ideas that serve as seeds for larger, more robust collaborative research efforts. Professors train PhD students to replace themselves despite a paucity of jobs and opportunities in academia. And an educational system designed to produce new scientists and engineers does far too little to help students in other fields gain an understanding and appreciation of science and the methods of science.

The 75th anniversary of Science, the Endless Frontier , combined with the particularly complex and turbulent events of recent years, has created a valuable opportunity to consider the science and technology policies we will need for the next 75 years.

Science and technology will be called upon to address many challenges during the next 75 years and beyond, from future pandemics to climate change to food and water shortages to crises that cannot be foreseen today. At the same time, the great accomplishments of the past 75 years in extending life spans, reducing poverty, avoiding another world war, feeding a growing population, and connecting the world electronically provide a solid foundation on which to build. We will need every bit of knowledge, reason, and creativity we can muster to overcome the challenges of the twenty-first century. This means we must draw upon all of the determination and ingenuity available in society today. We must find better mechanisms for incorporating the public’s outlooks and needs into research, while also reducing barriers to participation in the science and technology enterprise, to capitalize on the diversity of ideas and talent available across the globe. Nevertheless, we have every reason to believe that the human story will be one of continued progress made possible, in large part, by the application of new discoveries in science and technology to help solve human and societal problems. 

A Guide to the Future of US Science and Innovation Policy

Over the next year, Issues in Science and Technology , with support from The Kavli Foundation, will publish a series of articles chosen for their potential to shape the next 75 years of US science and innovation policy. Under the series title “The Next 75 Years of Science Policy,” the articles will appear first online in a dedicated space at Issues.org . A diverse group of authors will explore what is working well, what is not, and what needs to change. A special print edition of Issues in 2022 will compile selected articles from the series to inform the future of science and innovation policymaking.

This series of articles appears against the backdrop of many recent reports on US science, technology, and innovation policy. While these reports differ in their emphases, they exhibit several common themes designed to steer science and technology policy in more productive directions. Ten reports spanning three years, 2019 through 2021, are exemplars; their recommendations are shown in Table 1. The degree of commonality across these ten reports is remarkable. 

Table 1 . Common themes present in ten recent reports on US science, technology, and innovation policy published between 2019 and 2021. 

A Renewed Emphasis on Outcomes

Perhaps the most common of these themes is the call for much greater attention to accelerating the generation of new knowledge as well as the application of that knowledge to human needs. As the 2020 report Competing in the Next Economy: The New Age of Innovation from the National Commission on Innovation & Competitiveness Frontiers put it, “There are deficiencies in the U.S. innovation ecosystem, barriers in developing and scaling new technologies, too many Americans locked out of the innovation sector due to inadequate opportunity, education and skills, and insufficient U.S. leadership in the international developments that are setting the stage and rules for the next global economy.”

To better assimilate new knowledge into products and processes that solve human problems, many reports have called for increased federal funding of what is variously called use-inspired basic research, outcomes-oriented research, needs-oriented research, societally responsive research, applied research, and translational research. The shared element is that such research not only increases scientific knowledge but is linked from the outset to practical issues. Such research, according to the 2019 report Public Impact Research: Engaged Universities Making the Difference by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, “clearly and directly connects the investment of taxpayer dollars to public benefit.”

To better assimilate new knowledge into products and processes that solve human problems, many reports have called for increased federal funding of what is variously called use-inspired basic research, outcomes-oriented research, needs-oriented research, societally responsive research, applied research, and translational research.

Of course the line between basic research carried out to understand nature and research motivated by the need for solutions to practical problems is blurred and changes over time. An outstanding recent example is the development of highly innovative vaccines to counter the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Less than a year elapsed between the genetic sequencing of the virus and the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency authorization of vaccines that use messenger RNA to generate antiviral immune responses. 

The long-standing debate over how to direct and structure research funding raises fundamental questions: How can increased funding for research best promote synergies between the advancement of fundamental understanding and the solution of practical problems? What institutional arrangements and incentives have proven most effective in achieving such synergies? How should public sector and private sector efforts best be linked for mutual benefit?

Greater Funding for Research and Development

Another common theme of recent reports is that the federal government is spending too little on research and development. The 2020 report The Perils of Complacency: America at a Tipping Point in Science & Engineering from the Committee on New Models for US Science and Technology Policy recommended that the federal government increase its funding of basic research from 0.2 percent of the US gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.3 percent. The 2020 Science and Technology Action Plan from the Science & Technology Action Committee called for doubling total federal expenditures on research and development from 0.7 percent to 1.4 percent of GDP over five years. Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge , a 2019 report from the Council on Foreign Relations, urged federal funding for research and development to be returned to its historical average as a proportion of GDP, implying an increase from about $150 billion to $230 billion annually (in 2018 dollars).

Economic analyses indicate that these funding increases would more than pay for themselves in economic growth, public health, and defense preparedness. Nevertheless, the funding increases proposed in recent reports are dauntingly large. Boosting federal R&D from 0.7 to 1.4 percent of GDP would increase federal expenditures by about $150 billion per year. 

Policies designed to maximize the advantage to the United States of research funding would look different today than they did in 1945. What is the optimal size of overall research funding in the United States, and what proportions of that funding should come from government, industry, philanthropies, and university endowments? How can research funding from government be increased despite competition from other priorities? How does the science enterprise need to evolve and adapt, so funding increases translate into desired long-term outcomes?  

Balancing the Risks and Benefits of International Collaboration

The United States has benefited greatly by fostering openness and international collaboration in science. The openness of the US innovation system has enabled researchers to stay at the frontiers of knowledge and has attracted to the United States international students and researchers who have made major contributions to the economy and society. The 2020 report America and the International Future of Science from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences states the common theme: “The benefits of international scientific collaboration for the United States and the world are substantial and growing and far outweigh the risks they can present.”

Global competition for talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects, and increased difficulties in securing visas are also making it harder for the United States to attract international researchers.

But national security and intellectual property interests require that some controls be exerted on the international flows of information and people. As other countries—China in particular—have greatly increased R&D funding, science and technology capabilities, and research outputs, the United States is no longer in a dominant position. While US policymakers have a few options for influencing the actions of other countries, it is far more important that they turn their attention to determining how to “strengthen U.S. innovation capabilities in a robust and sustained way,” as stated in the 2020 report Meeting the China Challenge: A New American Strategy for Technology Competition from the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.

Global competition for talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects, and increased difficulties in securing visas are also making it harder for the United States to attract international researchers. How can US policies best balance collaboration with competition? How can the United States continue to attract the best and brightest from abroad but remain secure? What are the best ways to control the flow of sensitive information without unduly restricting the openness on which scientific research depends?

Developing a Twenty-First Century STEM Workforce

Part of the social contract described in Science, the Endless Frontier is that federal support of university research would “encourage and enable a larger number of young men and women of ability to take up science as a career.” The successful achievement of this goal was one of the greatest legacies of Bush’s report. But the link between research funding and the preparation of a skilled workforce has weakened. Other countries channel much greater percentages of their young people into the study of STEM subjects. 

Attracting, retaining, and developing more US STEM students require a wide-ranging and comprehensive approach, including enhanced educational and training program design from childhood on, as well as attention to undergraduates and graduates through academic and career advising, mentoring, research and internship opportunities, financial support for students going into high-demand sectors, and transitional programs into professions. In general, STEM education needs to become more individualized, student-centered, and holistic, rather than primarily representing the interests of the institutions involved. 

Attracting, retaining, and developing more US STEM students requires a wide-ranging and comprehensive approach, including enhanced educational and training program design from childhood on, as well as attention to undergraduates and graduates.

The need to individualize can be seen particularly in the need to better support individuals who use science and technology in their jobs but do not have a bachelor’s degree, a “critical, but often overlooked segment of our STEM-capable workforce,” according to the 2019 report The Skilled Technical Workforce: Crafting America’s Science & Engineering Enterprise from the National Science Board.

Likewise, at the graduate level, according to the 2018 report Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, universities need to “shift from the current system that focuses primarily on the needs of institutions of higher education and those of the research enterprise itself to one that is student centered , placing greater emphasis and focus on graduate students as individuals with diverse needs and challenges.” 

A further challenge, as underscored by the National Science Board’s Vision 2030 , is that the members of groups underrepresented in STEM often do not get sufficient career development and opportunities, leading to marginalization and attrition. As The Perils of Complacency report observed, “If not addressed, this failure to attract historically underrepresented groups will continue to further hamper U.S. efforts to strengthen America’s STEM workforce.”

The changes that are required at the university level are mirrored in structural and pedagogical barriers encountered by younger learners. Today, STEM subjects continue to be taught in K–12 and entry-level undergraduate classes mostly as collections of isolated facts with little real-world context. Classes typically fail to convey the rich interconnections among STEM subjects and between these subjects and the rest of human knowledge. Students, typically working individually rather than in the teams that characterize so much STEM activity, get little exposure to the creativity and innovation at the heart of these fields. They are more likely to get a sense of the dynamism of STEM subjects from experiential activities such as science clubs, math teams, and robotics competitions. Projects such as the Association of American Universities’ Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative and the National Academies’ Reshaping Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century have proposed cultural changes to improve the quality of undergraduate teaching and learning and to prepare students to translate their knowledge into impact in multiple careers, respectively.

Classes typically fail to convey the rich interconnections among STEM subjects and between these subjects and the rest of human knowledge.

A major concern, reflected in many reports, is the need to attract more underrepresented groups, including women, to the STEM workforce by reforming the culture and structures of educational institutions. Among them is a recent call from a National Academies committee, in its 2020 report Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine , for “systemic change in the STEMM [STEM plus Medicine] enterprise in an effort to mitigate structural inequities, bias, discrimination, and harassment that a substantial body of literature demonstrates significantly undermines the education and careers of women.” There are also calls to address, at a fundamental level, the systemic barriers and intolerable behavior that lead to racism and sexism (as discussed in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s report Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ). 

What policy apparatuses can we use to incentivize, encourage, and retain all talent in STEM? What institutional changes are needed to ensure the workforce can develop needed skills and remain responsive to the changing needs of employers? 

Engaging the Public in Research

Despite the centrality of technology and the knowledge enterprise to American life, the public has few ways of influencing either applied or basic research agendas. Vast numbers of citizens are left out of the process of making decisions about everything from how research funding is allocated, to which issues are studied, to how new technologies are regulated—a problem that is particularly acute for disadvantaged groups and communities. While Science, the Endless Frontier implied that knowledge flows one way, from creators to recipients, we now know that knowledge creation and knowledge use are tightly interwoven and interconnected processes. 

As Cristin Dorgelo, then with the Association of Science and Technology Centers, observed in The Endless Frontier: The Next 75 Years in Science , engaging the public in science requires building an infrastructure to harness the tools and the processes of answering questions and applying those answers in a way that addresses community priorities, not just the priorities of those inside the system. These tools and processes range widely, from developing scientific literacy, to citizens commissions, to laboratory open houses, to much greater outreach by government agencies. 

While Science, the Endless Frontier implied that knowledge flows one way, from creators to recipients, we now know that knowledge creation and knowledge use are tightly interwoven and interconnected processes. 

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ 2020 report The Public Face of Science in America: Priorities for the Future suggests several mechanisms to improve the connection between science and the public, including engaging the social and behavioral sciences in the effort. The practices of researchers also need to change to provide for transparency, trust, and the meaningful incorporation of public input into research.

How can the public provide feedback in the priorities of scientific research, including basic science? What mechanisms can be instituted to better understand the implications of science’s applications in society? When might public engagement be valuable for actually helping to conceptualize research questions and choose methodologies? How can policy, such as criteria for awarding federal research funds, be used as a lever to encourage and support scientists to more meaningfully connect with the public?  

A Groundwork for Analysis

Science, the Endless Frontier appeared at a time of great optimism but also great uncertainty. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred a few weeks after the report’s release, ending World War II but radically transforming the environment in which future scientific research and technology development would occur. US troops, still scattered around the world, were beginning to come home, but new threats from the Soviet Union and its allies were already emerging.

We invite you to join us in exploring these issues and sharing policy ideas that will fuel our science and technology engine for the next 75 years and beyond. Please send proposals for this special series to  [email protected]  or respond to the ideas raised in this essay by writing to  [email protected] .

Today’s historical circumstances are vastly different yet no less precarious—and, in new ways, equally promising. The COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences of structural racism and pervasive inequities, new international tensions, the gathering crisis of climate change, and deep social divisions pose great threats but also provide unprecedented opportunities to disrupt the status quo and pioneer new approaches. Science and innovation policies will have a great influence on the issues that confront us. As such, those policies need to be guided by the best possible thought and analysis. The current tension between the potential of science and technology and the societal problems we face requires active deliberation among all stakeholders. We have laid out some of those issues here and have referenced recent studies that are germane to the issues at hand. The forthcoming series of articles in Issues will extend the discussion. We invite you to join us in exploring these issues and sharing policy ideas that will fuel our science and technology engine for the next 75 years and beyond.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

SPECULATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE

Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing.

[ED. NOTE: As part of the activites of the Long Now Foundation, Stewart Brand has organized a series of seminars which are held at Fort Mason in San Francisco. "The purpose of the series", Brand writes, "is to build a coherent, compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking, to help nudge civilization toward Long Now's goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare."

Speakers in the series so far include a number of Edgies: Brian Eno, Jared Diamond, George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, and Bruce Sterling. All seminars are archived and freely downloadable.

The following Edge feature is based on Kevin Kelly's March 10th talk on "The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method." He's been exploring the theme on his blog, The Technium — JB ]

Introduction

Science, says Kevin Kelly, is the process of changing how we know things.  It is the foundation our culture and society.  While civilizations come and go, science grows steadily onward.  It does this by watching itself.

Recursion is the essence of science.  For example, science papers cite other science papers, and that process of research pointing at itself invokes a whole higher level, the emergent shape of citation space.  Recursion always does that.  It is the engine of scientific progress and thus of the progress of society.

A particularly fruitful way to look at the history of science is to study how science itself has changed over time, with an eye to what that trajectory might suggest about the future.  Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science...

2000 BC — First text indexes 200 BC — Cataloged library (at Alexandria) 1000 AD — Collaborative encyclopedia 1590 — Controlled experiment (Roger Bacon) 1600 — Laboratory 1609 — Telescopes and microscopes 1650 — Society of experts 1665 — Repeatability (Robert Boyle) 1665 — Scholarly journals 1675 — Peer review 1687 — Hypothesis/prediction (Isaac Newton) 1920 — Falsifiability (Karl Popper) 1926 — Randomized design (Ronald Fisher) 1937 — Controlled placebo 1946 — Computer simulation 1950 — Double blind experiment 1962 — Study of scientific method (Thomas Kuhn)

Projecting forward, Kelly had five things to say about the next 100 years in science...

1)  There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.

2)  This will be a century of biology.  It is the domain with the most scientists, the most new results, the most economic value, the most ethical importance, and the most to learn.

3)  Computers will keep leading to new ways of science.  Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year.  The data volume is growing to such levels of  "zillionics" that we can expect science to compile vast combinatorial libraries, to run combinatorial sweeps through possibility space (as Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata), and to run multiple competing hypotheses in a matrix.  Deep realtime simulations and hypothesis search will drive data collection in the real world.

4)  New ways of knowing will emerge.  "Wikiscience" is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors.  Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating "fast, cheap, & out of control."  Negative results will have positive value (there is already a "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine"). Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later. (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.)

5)  Science will create new levels of meaning.  The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory.  It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not.  It is all becoming effectively one machine.  And we are the machine.

"Science is the way we surprise God," said Kelly.  "That's what we're here for."  Our moral obligation is to generate possibilities, to discover the infinite ways, however complex and high-dimension, to play the infinite game.  It will take all possible species of intelligence in order for the universe to understand itself. Science, in this way, is holy. It is a divine trip.

—Stewart Brand

(KEVIN KELLY:) Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing.

Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking. The most powerful type of technology, sometimes called enabling technology, is a thought incarnate which enables new knowledge to find and develop news ways to know. This kind of recursive bootstrapping is how science evolves. As in every type of knowledge, it accrues layers of self-reference to its former state.

New informational organizations are layered upon the old without displacement, just as in biological evolution. Our brains are good examples. We retain reptilian reflexes deep in our minds (fight or flight) while the more complex structuring of knowledge (how to do statistics) is layered over those primitive networks. In the same way, older methods of knowing (older scientific methods) are not jettisoned; they are simply subsumed by new levels of order and complexity. But the new tools of observation and measurement, and the new technologies of knowing, will alter the character of science, even while it retains the old methods.

I'm willing to bet the scientific method 400 years from now will differ from today's understanding of science more than today's science method differs from the proto-science used 400 years ago. A sensible forecast of technological innovations in the next 400 years is beyond our imaginations (or at least mine), but we can fruitfully envision technological changes that might occur in the next 50 years.

Based on the suggestions of the observers above, and my own active imagination, I offer the following as possible near-term advances in the evolution of the scientific method.

Compiled Negative Results — Negative results are saved, shared, compiled and analyzed, instead of being dumped. Positive results may increase their credibility when linked to negative results. We already have hints of this in the recent decision of biochemical journals to require investigators to register early phase 1 clinical trials. Usually phase 1 trials of a drug end in failure and their negative results are not reported. As a public heath measure, these negative results should be shared. Major journals have pledged not to publish the findings of phase 3 trials if their earlier phase 1 results had not been reported, whether negative or not.

Triple Blind Experiments – In a double blind experiment neither researcher nor subject are aware of the controls, but both are aware of the experiment. In a triple blind experiment all participants are blind to the controls and to the very fact of the experiment itself. The way of science depends on cheap non-invasive sensor running continuously for years generating immense streams of data. While ordinary life continues for the subjects, massive amounts of constant data about their lifestyles are drawn and archived. Out of this huge database, specific controls, measurements and variables can be "isolated" afterwards. For instance, the vital signs and lifestyle metrics of a hundred thousand people might be recorded in dozens of different ways for 20-years, and then later analysis could find certain variables (smoking habits, heart conditions) and certain ways of measuring that would permit the entire 20 years to be viewed as an experiment – one that no one knew was even going on at the time. This post-hoc analysis depends on pattern recognition abilities of supercomputers. It removes one more variable (knowledge of experiment) and permits greater freedom in devising experiments from the indiscriminate data.

Combinatorial Sweep Exploration – Much of the unknown can be explored by systematically creating random varieties of it at a large scale. You can explore the composition of ceramics (or thin films, or rare-earth conductors) by creating all possible types of ceramic (or thin films, or rare-earth conductors), and then testing them in their millions. You can explore certain realms of proteins by generating all possible variations of that type of protein and they seeing if they bind to a desired disease-specific site. You can discover new algorithms by automatically generating all possible programs and then running them against the desired problem. Indeed all possible Xs of almost any sort can be summoned and examined as a way to study X. None of this combinatorial exploration was even thinkable before robotics and computers; now both of these technologies permit this brute force style of science. The parameters of the emergent "library" of possibilities yielded by the sweep become the experiment. With sufficient computational power, together with a pool of proper primitive parts, vast territories unknown to science can be probed in this manner.

Evolutionary Search – A combinatorial exploration can be taken even further. If new libraries of variations can be derived from the best of a previous generation of good results, it is possible to evolve solutions. The best results are mutated and bred toward better results. The best testing protein is mutated randomly in thousands of way, and the best of that bunch kept and mutated further, until a lineage of proteins, each one more suited to the task than its ancestors, finally leads to one that works perfectly. This method can be applied to computer programs and even to the generation of better hypothesis.

Multiple Hypothesis Matrix – Instead of proposing a series of single hypothesis, in which each hypothesis is falsified and discarded until one theory finally passes and is verified, a matrix of many hypothesis scenarios are proposed and managed simultaneously. An experiment travels through the matrix of multiple hypothesis, some of which are partially right and partially wrong. Veracity is statistical; more than one thesis is permitted to stand with partial results. Just as data were assigned a margin of error, so too will hypothesis. An explanation may be stated as: 20% is explained by this theory, 35% by this theory, and 65% by this theory. A matrix also permits experiments with more variables and more complexity than before.

Pattern Augmentation – Pattern-seeking software which recognizes a pattern in noisy results. In large bodies of information with many variables, algorithmic discovery of patterns will become necessary and common. These exist in specialized niches of knowledge (such particle smashing) but more general rules and general-purpose pattern engines will enable pattern-seeking tools to become part of all data treatment.

Adaptive Real Time Experiments – Results evaluated, and large-scale experiments modified in real time. What we have now is primarily batch-mode science. Traditionally, the experiment starts, the results are collected, and then conclusions reached. After a pause the next experiment is designed in response, and then launched. In adaptive experiments, the analysis happens in parallel with collection, and the intent and design of the test is shifted on the fly. Some medical tests are already stopped or re-evaluated on the basis of early findings; this method would extend that method to other realms. Proper methods would be needed to keep the adaptive experiment objective.

AI Proofs – Artificial intelligence will derive and check the logic of an experiment. Ever more sophisticated and complicated science experiments become ever more difficult to judge. Artificial expert systems will at first evaluate the scientific logic of a paper to ensure the architecture of the argument is valid. It will also ensure it publishes the required types of data. This "proof review" will augment the peer-review of editors and reviewers. Over time, as the protocols for an AI check became standard, AI can score papers and proposals for experiments for certain consistencies and structure. This metric can then be used to categorize experiments, to suggest improvements and further research, and to facilitate comparisons and meta-analysis. A better way to inspect, measure and grade the structure of experiments would also help develop better kinds of experiments.

Wiki-Science – The average number of authors per paper continues to rise. With massive collaborations, the numbers will boom. Experiments involving thousands of investigators collaborating on a "paper" will commonplace. The paper is ongoing, and never finished. It becomes a trail of edits and experiments posted in real time — an ever evolving "document." Contributions are not assigned. Tools for tracking credit and contributions will be vital. Responsibilities for errors will be hard to pin down. Wiki-science will often be the first word on a new area. Some researchers will specialize in refining ideas first proposed by wiki-science.

Defined Benefit Funding — Ordinarily science is funded by the experiment (results not guaranteed) or by the investigator (nothing guaranteed). The use of prize money for particular scientific achievements will play greater roles. A goal is defined, funding secured for the first to reach it, and the contest opened to all. The Turing Test prize awarded to the first computer to pass the Turing Test as a passable intelligence. Defined Benefit Funding can also be combined with prediction markets, which set up a marketplace of bets on possible innovations. The bet winnings can encourage funding of specific technologies.

Zillionics – Ubiquitous always-on sensors in bodies and environment will transform medical, environmental, and space sciences. Unrelenting rivers of sensory data will flow day and night from zillions of sources. The exploding number of new, cheap, wireless, and novel sensing tools will require new types of programs to distill, index and archive this ocean of data, as well as to find meaningful signals in it. The field of "zillionics" — - dealing with zillions of data flows — - will be essential in health, natural sciences, and astronomy. This trend will require further innovations in statistics, math, visualizations, and computer science. More is different. Zillionics requires a new scientific perspective in terms of permissible errors, numbers of unknowns, probable causes, repeatability, and significant signals.

Deep Simulations – As our knowledge of complex systems advances, we can construct more complex simulations of them. Both the success and failures of these simulations will help us to acquire more knowledge of the systems. Developing a robust simulation will become a fundamental part of science in every field. Indeed the science of making viable simulations will become its own specialty, with a set of best practices, and an emerging theory of simulations. And just as we now expect a hypothesis to be subjected to the discipline of being stated in mathematical equations, in the future we will expect all hypothesis to be exercised in a simulation. There will also be the craft of taking things known only in simulation and testing them in other simulations—sort of a simulation of a simulation.

Hyper-analysis Mapping – Just as meta-analysis gathered diverse experiments on one subject and integrated their (sometimes contradictory) results into a large meta-view, hyper-analysis creates an extremely large-scale view by pulling together meta-analysis. The cross-links of references, assumptions, evidence and results are unraveled by computation, and then reviewed at a larger scale which may include data and studies adjacent but not core to the subject. Hyper-mapping tallies not only what is known in a particular wide field, but also emphasizes unknowns and contradictions based on what is known outside that field. It is used to integrate a meta-analysis with other meta-results, and to spotlight "white spaces" where additional research would be most productive.

Return of the Subjective – Science came into its own when it managed to refuse the subjective and embrace the objective. The repeatability of an experiment by another, perhaps less enthusiastic, observer was instrumental in keeping science rational. But as science plunges into the outer limits of scale – at the largest and smallest ends – and confronts the weirdness of the fundamental principles of matter/energy/information such as that inherent in quantum effects, it may not be able to ignore the role of observer. Existence seems to be a paradox of self-causality, and any science exploring the origins of existence will eventually have to embrace the subjective, without become irrational. The tools for managing paradox are still undeveloped.

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The Impact of Science and Technology on Sustainable Future

March 15, 2023

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The United Nations defines sustainable development to mean “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Thus, sustainability requires us to protect both natural resources and human health while using our available resources efficiently. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings alone; therefore, it is imperative that we invest in new technologies which improve energy efficiency while eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels.

The goal of sustainability is to ensure that human activities do not undermine the capacity of ecosystems to meet people’s needs, now and in the future. That’s why we need new technologies and scientific knowledge to help us achieve our goals for sustainable development . Achieving a sustainable future will require innovation of new energy sources, materials, and infrastructure, as well as changes in how we produce food, travel, and build homes. In this blog, we will look at the impact of science and technology for a sustainable future.

A Reflection on What Science and Technology Can Do for The Planet

In the last two hundred years, science and technology have helped us to understand our planet better. They have enabled us to discover new ways of living, improve our quality of life and protect the planet. Science and technology can play an important role in building a sustainable future.

Science and technology for a sustainable future help us understand our environment and our impact on it, which is essential for making smart decisions about how to use our resources. It can also help us find solutions to problems, such as climate change and pollution, and improve the quality of life for all people. The sustainable future that we envision will need to be driven by new materials and advanced energy sources. The development of these technologies is necessary to meet the growing demand for a better quality of life.

Innovation in science and technology is needed to:

• To reduce pollution
• To reduce energy consumption
• To reduce waste production and increase recycling capacity
• To enhance forest growth and reforestation

Technological Changes Will Be Needed to Drive Sustainability

Technology plays a fundamental role in driving sustainable development. The diversity of technologies and their multiple uses are key drivers of economic growth, employment creation, and social inclusion. At the same time, technological changes can unlock new opportunities for achieving environmental sustainability by changing production processes and product designs, changing consumption patterns, or improving resource efficiency – all needed to achieve a sustainable future.

Science and technology for a sustainable future are likely to be one of the most important factors in determining whether humanity will succeed at tackling some of its greatest challenges: managing climate change; ensuring access to clean water; eliminating poverty; meeting health needs worldwide while protecting biodiversity; developing alternatives renewable energy sources etc.

Some Examples of Science and Technology for Sustainable Future

1. sustainable energy.

Sustainable energy is the use of sources of energy that can be consumed without causing significant damage to the environment. There are several different types of sustainable energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass. Renewable energy is a better choice than fossil fuels because it does not produce carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases when it is used. The development and large-scale use of sustainable energy is a great example of sustainable technology.

2. Biotechnology

Biotechnology refers to the process of replacing polluting materials with sustainable alternatives. Therefore, this form of technology helps us achieve sustainability. For example, biotechnology has been used to produce genetically modified crops that require less water and fertiliser, which reduces the amount of pollution they produce. It’s also possible to use biotechnology in developing new ways of managing waste, improving clean energy production, and capturing CO2 emissions from industrial processes.

3. Smart Mobility

When it comes to sustainable transport, smart mobility is the new frontier. The need for smart mobility is driven by four factors: population growth, urbanisation, and pollution. These factors have led to an urgent need for better transportation solutions that can help us address our environmental challenges while improving the quality of life in the world’s growing cities. Smart mobility solutions will play a significant role in reducing traffic congestion and improving air quality in urban areas.

4. Sustainable Infrastructure

Sustainable infrastructure is the foundation for economic growth and social well-being. It includes all physical assets that provide services to the community, such as transportation systems, energy production facilities, water treatment plants, and wastewater treatment facilities. These physical assets are made up of functions supported by various technologies, such as electric power transmission lines or carbon capture equipment at power plants.

Sustainable Innovation with Schneider Electric

The future of our planet is at stake, and science and technology for a sustainable future are the only answers to our problems. We have reached a point where we can no longer rely on nature or traditional methods to provide us with energy, food, shelter, or materials. Instead, we need innovative technologies that allow us to manage our resources while reducing pollution and greenhouse gases sustainably. Science and technology for a sustainable future offer hope for a better tomorrow by allowing us to create sustainable solutions in every sector of society, from agriculture, transportation, and infrastructure development all the way up to smart cities.

At Schneider Electric, we are advocates of innovation in the field of sustainability. Ecostruxture, our IoT-enabled system, is one such innovation. Connecting nearly every single aspect of your business. Allowing you to act on real-time data and business logic. Allowing you to act on real-time data and business logic. Our EcoStruxure Platform enables intelligent interoperability, an integrated foundation for smart operations, and facilities for cloud-connected digital services.

Tags: biotechnology , science and technology , Sustainability , sustainable development , sustainable energy , sustainable infrastructure

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Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world

The future is coming, and sooner than you think. These emerging technologies will change the way we live, how we look after our bodies and help us avert a climate disaster.

Technology moves at a relentlessly fast pace in the modern world. It can sometimes feel like every single day there are new technologies and innovations that will change our futures forever. But in a steady stream of announcements about new massive futuristic technological upgrades and cool gadgets , it is easy to lose track of the amazing ways the world is progressing.

For instance, there are artificial intelligence programs writing poems from scratch and making images from nothing more than a worded prompt. There are 3D-printed eyes, new holograms, lab-grown food and brain-reading robots.

All of this just scratches the surface of what is out there, so we've curated a guide to the most exciting future technologies, listing them all below.

Necrobotics

Sometimes new future technologies can offer amazing development, with the possibility of changing the future... while also being incredibly creepy.

This is one way to describe the idea of necrobotics which, as the name suggests, involves turning dead things into robots . While this sounds like a plot to a creepy horror film, this is a technology being explored at Rice University.

A team of researchers turned a dead spider into a robot-like gripper, given the ability to pick up other objects. To achieve this, they take a spider and inject it with air. This works because spiders use hydraulics to force their version of blood (haemolymph) into their limbs, making them extend.

Right now this concept is in its infant stages, but it could mean a future where dead animals are used to further science... it all feels very Frankeinstein-like!

Sand batteries

Not every technology bettering our future has to be complicated, some are simple, yet extremely effective.

One of these kind of technologies has come from some Finnish engineers who have found a way to turn sand into a giant battery.

These engineers piled 100 tons of sand into a 4 x 7 metre steel container. All of this sand was then heated up using wind and solar energy.

This heat can then be distributed by a local energy company to provide warmth to buildings in nearby areas. Energy can be stored this way for long periods of time.

All of this occurs through a concept known as resistive heating. This is where a material is heated by the friction of electrical currents.

Sand and any other non-super conductor are warmed by the electricity passing through them generated heat than can be used for energy.

E-skin could help us hug long-distance friends

While modern technology allows us to communicate verbally and visually almost anywhere in the world, there is currently no reliable method of sharing the sense of touch across long distances. Now, a wireless soft e-skin developed by engineers at the City University of Hong Kong could one day make giving and receiving hugs over the internet a reality.

The e-skin is studded with flexible actuators that sense the wearer’s movements and convert them into electrical signals. These signals can then be sent to another e-skin system via Bluetooth, where the actuators convert them into mechanical vibrations that mimic the initial movements. The system could be used to allow friends and family to ‘feel’ each other over long distances, the researchers say.

Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently invented what they're calling a 'novel, wireless, skin-interfaced olfactory feedback system '. In other words, VR attachments that let you smell stuff.

The smells are generated by the devices heating and melting odorous wax that releases adjustable concentrations of stink. There are two versions of this tech. One is 'mounted' on your upper lip for easy access to your nostrils, and the other is a facemask-like design with hundreds of different odour combinations.

The university said their new tech has a broad range of applications that includes online teaching and 4D movie watching. That's right, in the future, you'll not only be able to watch your favourite movies in VR, you'll also be able to smell them. Now that's immersion!

Catapulting satellites into space

Who would have thought the best way to get satellites into space was with a makeshift catapult! Okay, it is a lot smarter than a catapult but the technology exists in a similar way.

SpinLaunch is a prototype system for getting satellites or other payloads up into space. It does this by using kinetic energy instead of the usual technique of using chemical fuel found in traditional rockets. This technology could be capable of spinning payloads at 8,000km/h and 10,000G, then launching them skyward through a large launch tube.

Of course, small rocket engines will still be required for payloads to reach orbit, but SpinLaunch has claimed this system cuts down on the fuel and infrastructure by an impressive 70 per cent.

The company has signed an agreement with NASA and is now testing the system.

Xenotransplantation

Inserting the heart of a pig into a human feels like a bad idea, and yet, this is one of the latest medical procedures that is seeing rapid progress.

Xenotransplantation - the procedure of transplanting, implementing or infusing a human with cells, tissues or organs from an animal source - has the potential to revolutionise surgery.

One of the most common procedures performed so far is the insertion of a pig's heart into a human. This has now successfully happened twice. However, one of the patients was only alive for a few months, and the second is still being observed.

In these surgeries, the heart cannot be instantly put into a human, gene-editing needs to take place first. Certain genes need to be knocked out of the heart and human genes need to be added, mainly around immune acceptance and genes to prevent excessive growth of heart tissue.

Right now, these surgeries are risky and there is no certainty around success. However, in the near future, we could see xenotransplants happening on a regular basis, providing hearts or tissues from animals to humans in need of it.

AI image-generation

As artificial intelligence continues to perform jobs just as well as humans, there is a new industry to add to the list – the world of art. Researchers at the company OpenAI have created a software that is able to create images from just worded prompts.

Type in ‘a dog wearing a cowboy hat singing in the rain’ and you’ll get a host of completely original images that fit that description. You can even choose what style of art your request will come back in. However, the technology isn't perfected and still has issues, like when we gave it poor prompts on designing cartoon characters .

This technology known as Dall-E is now its second iteration and the team behind it plans to continue developing it further. In the future, we could see this technology used to create art exhibitions, for companies to get quick, original illustrations or of course, to revolutionise the way we create memes on the internet.

There is also technology known as Midjourney , a AI image generator that creates gothic masterpieces with a simple text prompt. We are truly living in the future.

Brain reading robots

No longer a science fiction trope, the use of brain reading technology has improved hugely in recent years. One of the most interesting and practical uses we’ve seen tested so far comes from researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).

Thanks to a machine-learning algorithm, a robot arm and a brain-computer interface, these researchers have managed to create a means for tetraplegic patients (those who can’t move their upper or lower body) to interact with the world .

In tests, the robot arm would perform simple tasks like moving around an obstacle. The algorithm would then interprets signals from the brain using an EEG cap and automatically determine when the arm had made a move that the brain considered incorrect, for example moving too close to the obstacle or going too fast.

Over time the algorithm can then adjust to the individuals preferences and brain signals. In the future this could lead to wheelchairs controlled by the brain or assistance machines for tetraplegic patients.

3D printed bones

3D printing is an industry promising everything from cheap house building through to affordable rugged armour, but one of the most interesting uses of the technology is the building of 3D printed bones.

The company Ossiform specialises in medical 3D printing, creating patient-specific replacements of different bones from tricalcium phosphate – a material with similar properties to human bones.

Using these 3D printed bones is surprisingly easy. A hospital can perform an MRI which is then sent to Ossiform who create a 3D model of the patient-specific implant that is needed. The surgeon accepts the design and then once it is printed, it can be used in surgery.

What is special about these 3D printed bones is that because of the use of tricalcium phosphate, the body will remodel the implants into vascularised bone. That means they will enable the full restoration of function that the bone it is replacing had. To achieve the best integration possible, the implants are of a porous structure and feature large pores and canals for cells to attach to and reform bone.

3D-printed food that takes the cake

What’s for dinner tonight? Soon it could be a piece of 3D-printed, laser-cooked cake. Researchers at Columbia University School of Engineering have created a device that can construct a seven-ingredient cheesecake using food inks and then cook it to perfection using a laser.

Their creation contained banana, jam, peanut butter and Nutella. Tasty. The technology could one day be used to create personalised meals for everyone from professional athletes to patients with dietary conditions, or could be useful for those who are simply short on time.

Natural language Processing

Natural language processing is the big new trend taking over the internet. While you've most likely seen it in use in Google's autocomplete software, or when your smartphone offers a prediction of what you are trying to type, it is capable of much smarter things.

OpenAI is a company that is at the forefront of artificial intelligence, originally taking the internet by storm with its image generator Dall-E 2 . Now it is back, making a chatbot known as ChatGPT , creating poems from scratch, explaining complex theories with ease and having full-length conversations like it is a human.

ChatGPT is powered by a software known as GPT-3, trained on billions of examples of texts, then taught how to form coherent and logical sentences.

ChatGPT is an example of AI and its future. It has proven its ability to make completely new websites from scratch, write entire length books and even make jokes... although, it clearly still hasn't mastered humour yet.

Boom-free supersonic flight

NASA’s X-59 ‘quiet’ supersonic aircraft is set to take to the skies for its first test flight at the Armstrong Flight Research Center later this year. The plane is currently being assembled in a hangar at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.

Its fuselage, wings and tail have been specially designed to control the airflow around the plane as it flies, with the ultimate aim of preventing a loud sonic boom from disturbing people on the ground below when it breaks the sound barrier. If the initial test goes to plan, the space agency aims to carry out further test flights over inhabited areas to gauge the public’s response to aircraft in 2024.

Digital "twins" that track your health

In Star Trek , where many of our ideas of future technology germinated, human beings can walk into the medbay and have their entire body digitally scanned for signs of illness and injury. Doing that in real life would, say the makers of Q Bio, improve health outcomes and alleviate the load on doctors at the same time.

The US company has built a scanner that will measure hundreds of biomarkers in around an hour, from hormone levels to the fat building up in your liver to the markers of inflammation or any number of cancers. It intends to use this data to produce a 3D digital avatar of a patient's body – known as a digital twin – that can be tracked over time and updated with each new scan.

Q Bio CEO Jeff Kaditz hopes it will lead to a new era of preventative, personalised medicine in which the vast amounts of data collected not only help doctors prioritise which patients need to be seen most urgently, but also to develop more sophisticated ways of diagnosing illness. Read an interview with him here.

Direct air capture

Through the process of photosynthesis, trees have remained one of the best ways to reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, new technology could perform the same role as trees, absorbing carbon dioxide at greater levels while also taking up less land.

This technology is known as Direct Air Capture (DAC). It involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and either storing the CO 2 in deep geological caves under ground, or using it in combination with hydrogen to produce synthetic fuels.

While this technology has great potential, it has a lot of complications right now. There are now direct air capture facilities up and running, but the current models require a huge amount of energy to run. If the energy levels can be reduced in the future, DAC could prove to be one of the best technological advances for the future of the environment.

Green funerals

Sustainable living is becoming a priority for individuals squaring up to the realities of the climate crisis, but what about eco-friendly dying? Death tends to be a carbon-heavy process, one last stamp of our ecological footprint. The average cremation reportedly releases 400kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, for example. So what's a greener way to go?

In Washington State in the US, you could be composted instead. Bodies are laid in chambers with bark, soil, straw and other compounds that promote natural decomposition. Within 30 days, your body is reduced to soil that can be returned to a garden or woodland. Recompose, the company behind the process, claims it uses an eighth of the carbon dioxide of a cremation.

An alternative technology uses fungi. In 2019, the late actor Luke Perry was buried in a bespoke "mushroom suit" designed by a start-up called Coeio. The company claims its suit, made with mushrooms and other microorganisms that aid decomposition and neutralise toxins that are realised when a body usually decays.

Most alternative ways of disposing of our bodies after death are not based on new technology; they're just waiting for societal acceptance to catch up. Another example is alkaline hydrolysis, which involves breaking the body down into its chemical components over a six-hour process in a pressurised chamber. It's legal in a number of US states and uses fewer emissions compared with more traditional methods.

Energy storing bricks

Scientists have found a way to store energy in the red bricks that are used to build houses.

Researchers led by Washington University in St Louis, in Missouri, US, have developed a method that can turn the cheap and widely available building material into “smart bricks” that can store energy like a battery.

Although the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the scientists claim that walls made of these bricks “could store a substantial amount of energy” and can “be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour”.

The researchers developed a method to convert red bricks into a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor.

This involved putting a conducting coating, known as Pedot, onto brick samples, which then seeped through the fired bricks’ porous structure, converting them into “energy storing electrodes”.

Iron oxide, which is the red pigment in the bricks, helped with the process, the researchers said.

Self-healing 'living concrete'

Scientists have developed what they call living concrete by using sand, gel and bacteria.

Researchers said this building material has structural load-bearing function, is capable of self-healing and is more environmentally friendly than concrete – which is the second most-consumed material on Earth after water.

The team from the University of Colorado Boulder believe their work paves the way for future building structures that could “heal their own cracks, suck up dangerous toxins from the air or even glow on command”.

Fuel from thin air

Chemical engineers from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have created a prototype device that can produce hydrogen fuel from the water found in air.

Inspired by leaves, the device is made from semiconducting materials that harvest energy from sunlight and use it to produce hydrogen gas from water molecules found in the atmosphere. The gas could then, potentially, be converted for use as liquid fuels.

Internet for everyone

We can’t seem to live without the internet (how else would you read sciencefocus.com?), but still only around half the world’s population is connected. There are many reasons for this, including economic and social reasons, but for some the internet just isn’t accessible because they have no connection.

Google is slowly trying to solve the problem using helium balloons to beam the internet to inaccessible areas, while Facebook has abandoned plans to do the same using drones, which means companies like Hiber are stealing a march. They have taken a different approach by launching their own network of shoebox-sized microsatellites into low Earth orbit, which wake up a modem plugged into your computer or device when it flies over and delivers your data.

Their satellites orbit the Earth 16 times a day and are already being used by organisations like The British Antarctic Survey to provide internet access to very extreme of our planet.

Read more about future technology:

• Dude, where’s my flying car? 11 future technologies we’re still waiting for
• Exciting new green technology of the future
• Future tech: The most exciting innovations from CES 2022

3D-printed eye tissue

Researchers at the National Eye Institute in the US have produced retinal tissue using stem cells and 3D bioprinting. The new technique may help scientists model the human eye to better understand – and develop treatments for – diseases and conditions that affect people’s vision, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The researchers created tissue found in the outer blood-retina barrier, which is the area AMD is known to start in, by printing stem cells taken from patients into a gel and allowing them to grow over several weeks. They are currently using the tissue to study the progression of AMD and are experimenting with adding additional cell types to model more of the human eye.

Car batteries that charge in 10 minutes

Fast-charging of electric vehicles is seen as key to their take-up, so motorists can stop at a service station and fully charge their car in the time it takes to get a coffee and use the toilet – taking no longer than a conventional break.

But rapid charging of lithium-ion batteries can degrade the batteries, researchers at Penn State University in the US say.This is because the flow of lithium particles known as ions from oneelectrode to another to charge the unit and hold the energy ready for use does not happen smoothly with rapid charging at lower temperatures.

However, they have now found that if the batteries could heat to 60°C for just 10 minutes and then rapidly cool again to ambient temperatures, lithium spikes would not form and heat damage would be avoided.

The battery design they have come up with is self-heating, using a thin nickel foil which creates an electrical circuit that heats in less than 30 seconds to warm the inside of the battery.The rapid cooling that would be needed after the battery is charged would be done using the cooling system designed into the car.

Their study, published in the journal Joule , showed they could fully charge an electrical vehicle in 10 minutes.

Artificial neurons on silicon chips

Scientists have found a way to attach artificial neurons onto silicon chips, mimicking the neurons in our nervous system and copying their electrical properties.

“Until now neurons have been like black boxes, but we have managed to open the black box and peer inside,” said Professor Alain Nogaret , from the University of Bath, who led the project.

“Our work is paradigm-changing because it provides a robust method to reproduce the electrical properties of real neurons in minute detail.

“But it’s wider than that, because our neurons only need 140 nanowatts of power. That’s a billionth the power requirement of a microprocessor, which other attempts to make synthetic neurons have used.

Researchers hope their work could be used in medical implants to treat conditions such as heart failure and Alzheimer’s as it requires so little power.

• 11 future technologies we’re still waiting for
• CES 2023: The 10 gadgets that will change the future
• Disco fridges and tech that wants you to pee on it: The 7 weirdest gadgets announced at CES 2023

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Science And Technology Essay

The knowledge of science is the knowledge that enlightens the route, directs one to the right path, and frees the individual from the burden of worldly responsibilities. Technology is the creation, alteration, or modification of the natural environment to fulfil reportedly unsatisfied human desires and needs. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘science and technology’.

100 Words Essay On Science And Technology

Technology is the practical application of science that improves the quality of life, whereas science is a systematic approach that uses observation and experimentation to gain information and develop abilities. Technology is a product of systematic research, which is what science is. Technology development usually follows scientific progress, and the latter is just a logical consequence of the former, so science and technology go hand in hand.

Today, science and technology are vitally important to a country’s overall development. These two describe the progress in nearly every field, i.e., infrastructure development, communications, defence, industrialisation, etc. Because of advancements in science and technology, the world is changing quickly and at an unprecedented rate.

200 Words Essay On Science And Technology

In order to have a strong national economy, science and technology are essential. Gross domestic product growth helps the economy advance technologically. They encourage the development of high-tech industries, boost productivity, build capital, and promote healthy global competitiveness. There is a real impact of science and technology on the agriculture industry. It goes without saying that their engagement has boosted crop yield. In addition, science and technology are assisting farmers in implementing new methods and equipment to minimise physical labour.

Medical, educational, economic, sporting, employment, tourism, and other fields are examples of science and technology. All of these developments demonstrate how equally important both are to our lives. By directly contrasting the lifestyles of the ancient world and the modern world, we can observe the differences in our way of life. The high level of scientific and technological development in medicine has made it easier to treat numerous ailments than it was before. It aids in the efficient treatment by medical professionals in the treatment of different illnesses through medications and operations and aids in the research of diseases like cancer, AIDS, diabetes, Alzheimer's, paralysis, etc.

Every day, advances in science and technology bring people closer together. In the department of transportation and telecommunication, we observe discernible development. Physical distance is no longer an obstacle thanks to the internet and the metro network. Every aspect of our lives has received a virtual makeover because of them.

500 Words Essay On Science And Technology

Science and Technology play significant roles in our daily lives. We turn out the lights at night and get out of bed when our alarm clocks ring in the morning. Science and technology have enabled us to purchase all of these luxuries. Most importantly, the development of science and technology alone is the reason we can do most things in our lives in such a short period. Without science and technology, our modern way of life is difficult to imagine. Indeed, it is now essential to our continued survival. New technologies are developing daily that make life easier and more comfortable.

We are in a scientific and technological age. Due to science and technology, many civilizations have been established. This establishment grows every day. People benefit from these, which makes life more enjoyable and relaxing.

Benefits Of Science and Technology

Considerable advantages of science and technology come to mind. They range in size from minor to significant. For instance, the morning newspaper we read, which provides us with trustworthy information, is a product of scientific advancement. Additionally, technological growth has led to the development of electrical appliances like refrigerators, conditioners, microwaves, and other items that make living easier.

Furthermore, if we consider the situation involving transportation, we see that science and technology also play a significant part in this case. Thanks to improving technology, we can travel to various parts of the world within hours. Science and technology have made it possible for a man to look beyond the Earth. The exact science and technology have enabled the establishment of satellites in orbit and the finding of new planets.

The domains of medicine and agriculture have similarly been impacted by science and technology. Millions of lives have been saved thanks to science's varied disease remedies. Technology has also improved the yield of various crops, greatly helping farmers.

India And Science And Technology

India has engaged in negotiations worldwide since the end of the British era. Science and technology have aided India's advancement since it attained independence. It is now a crucial source of innovative and fundamental scientific advancements worldwide. In other words, the Indian economy has benefited from all the remarkable scientific and technological advances made in our nation.

In the years that followed, science and technology helped advance in several sectors, including mathematics, astrophysics, space technology, nuclear energy, and more. The railway system, smartphones, the metro system, and many other innovations are excellent examples of these advancements.

Looking at the most recent accomplishment, Chandrayaan 2 was successfully launched by India. India's lunar expedition has received praise from critics all across the world. Once more, science and technology were responsible for making these accomplishments feasible.

We must acknowledge that technology and science have helped human civilization reach the highest living level and will continue to do so. However, we must use everything sparingly and in moderation. Technology and science misuse can have adverse effects and we are dealing with some of those. Therefore, we must keep an eye on usage and exercise caution while using the gift of science and technology.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Geotechnical engineer

The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction. 

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions. 

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Operations manager.

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Bank Probationary Officer (PO)

Investment director.

An investment director is a person who helps corporations and individuals manage their finances. They can help them develop a strategy to achieve their goals, including paying off debts and investing in the future. In addition, he or she can help individuals make informed decisions.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

An expert in plumbing is aware of building regulations and safety standards and works to make sure these standards are upheld. Testing pipes for leakage using air pressure and other gauges, and also the ability to construct new pipe systems by cutting, fitting, measuring and threading pipes are some of the other more involved aspects of plumbing. Individuals in the plumber career path are self-employed or work for a small business employing less than ten people, though some might find working for larger entities or the government more desirable.

Construction Manager

Individuals who opt for a career as construction managers have a senior-level management role offered in construction firms. Responsibilities in the construction management career path are assigning tasks to workers, inspecting their work, and coordinating with other professionals including architects, subcontractors, and building services engineers.

Urban Planner

Urban Planning careers revolve around the idea of developing a plan to use the land optimally, without affecting the environment. Urban planning jobs are offered to those candidates who are skilled in making the right use of land to distribute the growing population, to create various communities. 

Urban planning careers come with the opportunity to make changes to the existing cities and towns. They identify various community needs and make short and long-term plans accordingly.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Naval Architect

A Naval Architect is a professional who designs, produces and repairs safe and sea-worthy surfaces or underwater structures. A Naval Architect stays involved in creating and designing ships, ferries, submarines and yachts with implementation of various principles such as gravity, ideal hull form, buoyancy and stability. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

Pathologist.

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning). 

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian . 

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

Information security manager.

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

Business Intelligence Developer

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Davos 2023: Eight ways technology will impact our lives in the future

The next generation will live a very different life to us, thanks to technology. Image:  Pexels/ThisIsEngineering

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• Technology will be a vital tool for creating a cleaner, safer and more inclusive world, but what changes can we expect to see?
• Panelists on the Technology for a More Resilient World session at Davos discussed future trends and developments in tech.
• Be it the metaverse, smart glasses or large language models, the world as we know it may never be quite as we first imagined it.

Technology can be an important tool in the transition to a cleaner, safer and more inclusive world. But what strategic opportunities are there for technology to be an accelerator of progress and how is it likely to affect the next generation?

Leaders gathered on day two of Davos to talk about how technology and platforms will change the world, what tech trends and developments we’re likely to see, and even provide a glimpse into what our grandchildren can expect in future.

The Technology for a More Resilient World session featured Nicholas Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic; Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM Corporation; Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO, Accenture; and Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated.

Here’s a selection of what they had to say:

1. Technology is boosting productivity

Businesses are increasingly looking to digitally transform their operations amid an incredible demand for things to be more intelligent and connected, says Cristiano Amon , President and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “I think technology right now, probably more than ever – especially when we talk about the current economic environment – we see that there is this desire of companies to digitally transform and use technology to become more efficient and more productive,” he said.

2. Glasses will overtake mobile phones

The future of computing will become virtual as computing platforms continue to evolve – just as it evolved from personal computers to mobile phones, says Amon . What we now know as the video call, particularly post-COVID, will soon become a holographic image in front of you seen through smart glasses.

“The technology trend is the merging of physical and digital spaces. I think that’s going to be the next computing platform and eventually, it’s going to be as big as phones. We should think about that happening within the decade,” he adds.

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How to follow davos 2023, we are closing the gap between technology and policy, 3. the rise of quantum computing.

Quantum computing won’t replace classical computing but it will begin to solve problems in the physical world - materials, chemistry, encryption and optimization problems - within a few years, according to Arvind Krishna , Chairman and CEO, IBM Corporation. Indeed, quantum computing is already so good you may want to think about it now. “I would strongly urge everybody to invest in quantum-proof decryption now for any data, that you really, really care about,” he advises.

4. 5G will create lots more use cases

5G will create a lot of new use cases including drone management, robotic surgery and autonomous vehicles, says Sunil Bharti Mittal , Chairman, Bharti Enterprises. Industrial applications will particularly benefit due to their larger capacity. “In the meanwhile, people will get used to better connections, higher speeds, and lower latency for their regular devices as well,” he adds, before warning: “It’s going to cost a lot of money.”

5. ChatGPT-like tech will become the norm

Large language models will become a given because they lower the cost of artificial intelligence (AI) by allowing you to have multiple models over one base, giving you a speed advantage, says Krishna . “Beyond language is going to be a given, language because code can be a form of language and then you can go to, ‘what else can be a form of language?’ Legal documents, regulatory work etc,” he adds.

6. Great things will need good data

The recent excitement around ChatGPT has demonstrated the potential of having large amounts of data and the great things you do with it, but it has also highlighted the need for ‘good’ data, says Julie Sweet , Chair and CEO, Accenture. “We love what’s going on right now, with everyone talking about it. Because in many cases people have been doubters about why you need to have really clean data connecting to external data, use these then foundational models on specific use cases – a lot is going to be in digital manufacturing, in agriculture, industrial use cases – and it reminds everyone you have to get the data right.”

7. The metaverse is evolving very quickly

The metaverse is evolving faster than expected because it taps into human need while also creating something new, observes Sweet . “With human need, what we’ve discovered is that when you immerse yourself in an experience together, you learn better and you can also do things better,” she says. “We estimate there will be $1 trillion of revenue influenced by the metaverse by 2025.”

8. We will see a democratization of services

Our grandchildren will live in a very different world thanks to the democratization of products and services that are currently only available to the elite or wealthy, predicts Mittal . “Sitting like this, in the metaverse, you’ll probably have a few million people join from around the world, to experience what we’re experiencing today,” he says. “You’re going to see the benefit of technology really impacting people’s lives on a daily basis, and they will live a very different life to us.”

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Essay on Science and Technology

Science and technology are the driving forces behind the progress and innovations that shape our modern world. From smartphones to space exploration, these two fields have transformed the way we live, work, and interact. In this essay, we will explore the incredible importance of science and technology in our lives, demonstrating how they have improved our society and continue to hold great promise for the future.

Advancements in Healthcare

Science and technology have revolutionized healthcare, improving the quality of our lives. Breakthroughs in medical research and technology have led to the development of life-saving treatments and medications. According to the World Health Organization, advancements in medical science have increased life expectancy worldwide by six years in the last two decades.

Enhancing Communication

The evolution of technology has transformed communication. The invention of the internet, smartphones, and social media platforms has made it easier for people around the globe to connect and share information. For instance, the Pew Research Center reports that over 3.6 billion people use social media, fostering global connections and communication.

Fueling Economic Growth

Science and technology drive economic growth by fostering innovation and creating new industries. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the information technology sector alone has accounted for a significant portion of economic growth in recent decades, offering countless job opportunities.

Space Exploration and Scientific Discovery

Space exploration, made possible by advances in technology, continues to expand our understanding of the universe. NASA’s Mars rovers, for example, have sent back valuable data about the red planet, furthering our knowledge of space and potential for future colonization.

Environmental Conservation

Science and technology play a pivotal role in addressing environmental challenges. Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles are just a few examples of green technologies that help reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists notes that these technologies are essential for a sustainable future.

The Power of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another groundbreaking field driven by science and technology. AI applications like voice assistants and self-driving cars are becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives. According to Statista, the AI market is projected to reach $190 billion by 2025, revolutionizing various industries.

Advancing Education

Technology has transformed education by providing innovative learning tools. E-learning platforms, interactive educational apps, and online courses have made education accessible to people worldwide. UNESCO reports that technology has expanded learning opportunities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fostering Scientific Research

Science and technology enable scientists to conduct experiments and gather data more efficiently. High-tech laboratories and equipment, such as electron microscopes and gene sequencers, accelerate research. The National Institutes of Health emphasizes that these tools are essential for scientific progress.

Conclusion of Essay on Science and Technology

In conclusion, science and technology are the driving engines of progress and innovation in our world. They have improved healthcare, enhanced communication, fueled economic growth, and expanded our understanding of the universe. Moreover, these fields hold the key to solving pressing environmental challenges, revolutionizing education, and fostering scientific discovery. As we look to the future, science and technology will continue to play a vital role in shaping a better and more connected world for all. Embracing and supporting these marvels of human achievement is essential for our collective well-being and the advancement of society.

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Essay on Science and Technology for Students: 100, 200, 350 Words

• Updated on  
• Sep 20, 2023

Writing an essay on science and technology requires you to keep yourself updated with the recent developments in this field. Science is a field which has no limits. It is the most potent of all the fields and when combined with technology, then even the sky doesn’t remain a limit. Science is everywhere from the minute microscopic organisms to the gigantic celestial bodies. It’s the very essence of our existence. Let’s learn about Science and Technology in an essay format.

Also Read – Essay on Corruption

Essay on Science and Technology in 100 Words

Everything we do, every breath we take, every move we make, every interaction with any object, and even the thoughts we have, and the dreams we see, all involve science. Similarly, as the world is progressing, technology is getting intertwined with even the basic aspects of our lives. Be it education, sports, entertainment, talking to our loved ones, etc. Everything is inclusive of Technology nowadays. It is safe to say that Science and Technology go hand-in-hand. They are mutually inclusive of each other. Although from a broader perspective, Technology is a branch of Science, but still, each of these fields cannot be sustained without the other.

Essay on Science and Technology in 200 Words

Science and Technology are important aspects of life from the very beginning of the day to the end of it. We wake up in the morning because of the sound of our alarm clocks and go to bed at night after switching off our lights. Most importantly, it helps us save time is one of the results of advancements in science and technology. Each day new Technologies are being developed that are making human life easier and much more convenient.Advantages of Science and Technology

If we were to name the advantages of science and technology, then we would fall short of words because they are numerous. These range from the very little things to the very big ones.

Science and Technology are the fields that have enabled man to look beyond our own planet and hence, discover new planets and much more. And the most recent of the Project of India, The successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the south pole of the moon proves that the potential of Science and Technology cannot be fathomed via any means. The potential it holds is immense. 

In conclusion, we can confidently say that Science and Technology have led us to achieve an absolutely amazing life. However, it is extremely important to make use of the same in a judicious way so as to ensure its sustenance. 

Also Read – Essay on Noise Pollution

Essay on Science and Technology in 350 Words

Science and Technology include everything, from the smallest of the microbes to the most complex of the mechanisms. Our world cannot exist without Science and Technology. It is hard to imagine our lives without science and technology now. 

Impact of Science & Technology 

The impact of science and technology is so massive that it incorporates almost each and every field of science and even others. The cures to various diseases are being made due to the advancement in Science and Technology only. Also, technology has enhanced the production of crops and other agricultural practices also rely on Science and Technology for their own advancement. All of the luxuries that we have on a day-to-day basis in our lives are because of Science and Technology. Subsequently, the fields of Science and Technology have also assisted in the development of other fields as well such as, Mathematics , Astrophysics , Nuclear Energy , etc. Hence, we can say that we live in the era of Science and Technology. 

Safety Measures

Although the field of Science and Technology has provided the world with innumerable advancements and benefits that are carrying the world forward, there are a lot of aspects of the same that have a negative impact too. The negative impact of these is primarily on nature and wildlife and hence, indirectly and directly on humans as well.

The large factories that are associated with manufacturing or other developmental processes release large amounts of waste which may or may not be toxic in nature. This waste gets deposited in nature and water bodies and causes pollution. The animals marine or terrestrial living in their respective ecosystems may even ingest plastic or other toxic waste and that leads to their death. There are a lot of other negative aspects of the same.

Hence, it becomes our responsibility to use Science and Technology judiciously and prevent the degradation of nature and wildlife so as to sustain our planet, along with all its ecosystems, which will eventually ensure our existence in a healthy ecosystem leading to healthy and long life.

Science is something that is limitless. It is the most potent of all the fields and when combined with technology, then even the sky doesn’t remain a limit. Science is everywhere from the minute microscopic organisms to the most gigantic ones. It’s the very essence of our existence.

Science and Technology are important aspects of life. All of the luxuries that we have on a day-to-day basis in our lives are because of Science and Technology. Most importantly, it helps us save time is one of the results of advancements in science and technology. It is hard to imagine our lives without science and technology now. 

In any nation, science and technology holds a crucial part in its development in all aspect. The progress of the nation is dependent upon science and technology. It holds the to economic growth, changing the quality of life, and transformation of the society.

We hope this blog of ours on Essay on Science and Technology has helped you gain a deeper knowledge of the same. For more such informative and educational essays please visit our site:- Leverage Edu Essay Writing .

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introduction

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. Technology is a tool that can be used to solve real-world problems. The field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) “seeks to promote cross-disciplinary integration, civic engagement, and critical thinking” of concepts in the worlds of science and technology ( Harvard University, n.d.). As an aspect of everyday life, technology is continuously evolving to ensure that humanity can be productive, efficient, and follow the path of globalization . STS is a concept that encompasses countless fields of study. “Scientists, engineers, and medical professionals swim (as they must) in the details of their technical work: experiments, inventions, treatments and cures. “promotes cross-disciplinary integration, civic engagement, and critical thinking” It’s an intense and necessary focus” ( Stanford University , n.d.). On the opposite side of the spectrum is STS, which “draws attention to the water: the social, political, legal, economic, and cultural environment that shapes research and invention, supports or inhibits it — and is in turn shaped by evolving science and technology” ( Stanford University , n.d.). Technology is a crucial part of life that is constantly developing to fit the changing needs of society and aiding humanity in simplifying the demands of everyday life.

According to Oberdan (2010), science and technology share identical goals. “At first glance, they seem to provide a deep and thorough going division between the two but, as the discussion progresses, it will become clear that there are, indeed, areas of overlap, too” (Oberdan, 25). Philosophers believe that for a claim to be considered knowledge, it must first be justified, like a hypothesis, and true.  Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer, Galileo Galilei , was incredibly familiar with the obstacles involved with proving something to be a fact or a theory within the scientific world. Galileo was condemned by the Roman Catholic church for his beliefs that contradicted existing church doctrine (Coyne, 2013). Galileo’s discoveries, although denounced by the church were incredibly innovative and progressive for their time, and are still seen as the basis for modern astronomy today. Nearly 300 years later, Galileo was eventually forgiven by the church, and to this day he is seen as one of the most well known and influential astronomers of all time. Many new innovations and ideas often receive push back before becoming revolutionary and universal practices.

INNOVATION IN TECHNOLOGY

Flash forward to modern time where we can see that innovation is happening even more around us. Look no further than what could be considered the culmination of modern technological innovation: the mobile phone. Cell phone technology has developed exponentially since the invention of the first mobile phone in 1973 ( Seward , 2013). Although there was a period for roughly 20 years in which cell phones were seen as unnecessary and somewhat impractical, as society’s needs changed and developed in the late 1990s, there was a large spike in consumer purchases of mobile phones. Now, cell phones are an entity that can be seen virtually anywhere, which is in large part due to their practicality. Cell phones, specifically smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone , have changed the way society uses technology. Smartphone technology has eliminated the need for people to have a separate cell phone, MP3 player, GPS, mobile video gaming systems, and more. Consumers may fail to realize how many aspects of modern technological advancement are involved in the use of their mobile phones. Cell phones use wifi to browse the internet, use google, access social media, and more. Although these technologies are beneficial, they also allow consumers locations to be traced and phone conversations to be recorded. Modern cell phone technologies collect data on consumers, and many people are unsure how this information is being used. Additionally, mobile phones come equipped with virus protection which brings the field of cybersecurity into smartphone usage. The technological advances that have been made in the market for mobile phones have been targeted towards the changing needs of consumers and society. As proven by the rise in cell phones, with advancements in the field of STS comes new unforeseen obstacles and ethical dilemmas.

​Technology is changing the way we live in this world. Innovations in the scientific world are becoming increasingly more advanced to help conserve earth’s resources and aid in the reduction of pollutants . Transportation is a field that has changed greatly in recent years due to modernization in science and technology, as well as an increased awareness of environmental concerns. The transportation industry continues to be a large producer of pollution

due to emissions from cars, trains, and other modes of transportation. As a result, cars have changed a great deal in recent years. A frontrunner in creating environmentally friendly luxury cars is Tesla, lead by CEO Elon Musk. Although nearly every brand of car has an electric option that either runs completely gas free, or uses significantly less fuel than standard cars, Tesla has taken this one step further and created a zero emissions vehicle. However, some believe that Tesla has taken their innovations in the transportation market a bit too far, specifically with their release of driverless cars.

“The recent reset of expectations on driverless cars is a leading indicator for other types of AI-enabled systems as well,” says David A. Mindell,  professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at MIT. “These technologies hold great promise, but it takes time to understand the optimal combination of people and machines. And the timing of adoption is crucial for understanding the impact on workers” ( Dizikes , 2019).

As the earth becomes more and more polluted, consumers are seeking to find new ways to cut down on their negative impacts on the earth. Eco-friendly cars are a simple yet effective way in which consumers can cut back on their pollution within their everyday lives.

THE INTERSECTION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The way in which energy is generated has changed greatly to benefit consumers and the environment. Energy production has followed a rather linear path over time, and is a prime example of how new innovations stem from old technologies. In the early 1800s, the steam engine acted as the main form of creating energy. It wasn’t until the mid-late 1800s that the combustion engine was invented. This invention was beneficial because it was more efficient than its predecessor, and became a form of energy that was streamlined to be used in countless applications. As time has progressed, this linear path of innovation has continued. As new energy creating technologies have emerged, machinery that was once seen as efficient and effective have been phased out. Today, largely due to the increased demand for clean energy sources, the linear path has split and consumers are faced with numerous options for clean, environmentally friendly energy sources. Over time, scientists and engineers have come to realize that these forms of energy pollute and damage the earth. Solar power, a modern form of clean energy, was once seen as an expensive and impractical way of turning the sun’s energy into usable energy. Now, it is common to see newly built homes with solar panels already built in. Since technology develops to fit the needs of society, scientists have worked to improve solar panels to make them cheaper and easier to access. A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously, which is more than 10,000 times of the world’s total energy use ( Chandler , 2011). This information may seem staggering, but is crucial in understanding the importance, as well as the large influence that modern forms of energy can have on society.

Technology has become a crucial part of our society. Without technological advancements, so much of our everyday lives would be drastically different. As technology develops, it strives to fulfill the changing needs of society. Technology progresses as society evolves. That being said, progress comes at a price. This price is different for each person, and varies based on how much people value technological and scientific advancements in their own lives. Thomas Parke Hughes’s Networks of Power “compared how electric power systems developed in America, England, and Germany, showing that they required not only electrical but social ‘engineering’ to create the necessary legal frameworks, financing, standards, political support, and organizational designs” ( Stanford University ). In other words, the scientific invention and production of a new technology does not ensure its success. Technology’s success is highly dependent on society’s acceptance or rejection of a product, as well as whether or not any path dependence is involved. Changing technologies benefit consumers in countless aspects of their lives including in the workforce, in communications, in the use of natural resources, and so much more. These innovations across numerous different markets aid society by making it easier to complete certain tasks. Innovation will never end; rather, it will continue to develop at increasing rates as science and technological fields becomes more and more cutting edge.

Chapter Questions

• True or False: Improvements in science and technology always benefit society
• Multiple Choice : Technology is: A.   The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry B.  Tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems C.   Something that does not change D.   Both A and B
• Short Answer: Discuss ways in which technological progression over time is related and how this relationship has led to the creation of new innovation.

Chandler, D. (2011). Shining brightly: Vast amounts of solar energy radiate to the Earth constantly, but tapping that energy cost-effectively remains a challenge.  MIT News. http://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026 

Coyne, SJ, G. V. (2013). Science meets biblical exegesis in the Galileo affair.  Zygon® ,  48 (1), 221-229. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2012.01324.x 

Dizikes, P., & MIT News Office. (2019). MIT report examines how to make technology work for society. http://news.mit.edu/2019/work-future-report-technology-jobs-society-0904

Florez, D., García-Duque, C. E., & Osorio, J. C. (2019). Is technology (still) applied science? Technology in Society.  Technology in Society, 59.   doi: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.101193

Groce, J. E., Farrelly, M. A., Jorgensen, B. S., & Cook, C. N. (2019). Using social‐network research to improve outcomes in natural resource management. Conservation biology , 33 (1), 53-65. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cobi.13127

Harvard University. (n.d.) What is STS? .  http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/about/whatissts.html .

Union of Concerned Scientists. (2018). How Do Battery Electric Cars Work?   https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/how-do-battery-electric-cars-work .

Oberdan, T. (2010). Science, Technology, and the Texture of Our Lives. Tavenner Publishing Company.

Seward, Z. M. (2013). The First Mobile Phone Call Was Made 40 Years Ago Today . The Atlantic.   https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/the-first- mobile-phone-call-was-made-40-years-ago-today/274611/ .

Stanford University. (n.d.). What is the Study of STS? . https://sts.stanford.edu/about/what-study-sts .

Wei, R., & Lo, V.-H. (2006). Staying connected while on the move: Cell phone use and social connectedness. New Media & Society, 8 (1), 53–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444806059870

Winston, B. (2006). Media Technology and Society: A History From the Telegraph to the Internet . London: Routledge.

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To the extent possible under law, Kate Billingsley has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Science, Technology, & Society: A Student-Led Exploration , except where otherwise noted.

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Essay on Science and Technology for Students and Children

500+ words essay on science and technology.

Essay on Science and Technology: Science and technology are important parts of our day to day life. We get up in the morning from the ringing of our alarm clocks and go to bed at night after switching our lights off. All these luxuries that we are able to afford are a resultant of science and technology . Most importantly, how we can do all this in a short time are because of the advancement of science and technology only. It is hard to imagine our life now without science and technology. Indeed our existence itself depends on it now. Every day new technologies are coming up which are making human life easier and more comfortable. Thus, we live in an era of science and technology.

Essentially, Science and Technology have introduced us to the establishment of modern civilization . This development contributes greatly to almost every aspect of our daily life. Hence, people get the chance to enjoy these results, which make our lives more relaxed and pleasurable.

Benefits of Science and Technology

If we think about it, there are numerous benefits of science and technology. They range from the little things to the big ones. For instance, the morning paper which we read that delivers us reliable information is a result of scientific progress. In addition, the electrical devices without which life is hard to imagine like a refrigerator, AC, microwave and more are a result of technological advancement.

Furthermore, if we look at the transport scenario, we notice how science and technology play a major role here as well. We can quickly reach the other part of the earth within hours, all thanks to advancing technology.

In addition, science and technology have enabled man to look further than our planet. The discovery of new planets and the establishment of satellites in space is because of the very same science and technology. Similarly, science and technology have also made an impact on the medical and agricultural fields. The various cures being discovered for diseases have saved millions of lives through science. Moreover, technology has enhanced the production of different crops benefitting the farmers largely.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

India and Science and Technology

Ever since British rule, India has been in talks all over the world. After gaining independence, it is science and technology which helped India advance through times. Now, it has become an essential source of creative and foundational scientific developments all over the world. In other words, all the incredible scientific and technological advancements of our country have enhanced the Indian economy.

Looking at the most recent achievement, India successfully launched Chandrayaan 2. This lunar exploration of India has earned critical acclaim from all over the world. Once again, this achievement was made possible due to science and technology.

In conclusion, we must admit that science and technology have led human civilization to achieve perfection in living. However, we must utilize everything in wise perspectives and to limited extents. Misuse of science and technology can produce harmful consequences. Therefore, we must monitor the use and be wise in our actions.

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• © 2018

Futures of Science and Technology in Society

University of twente, enschede, the netherlands.

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• In-depth, original analysis of futures of science and technology in society and how they might be addressed
• Dynamics of science and technology and their embedding in society
• Contemporary issues of science and technology in a longer-term perspective

Part of the book series: Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft / Futures of Technology, Science and Society (TEWG)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Front matter, introduction, protected spaces of science: their emergence and further evolution in a changing world, science institutions and grand challenges of society: a scenario, processes of technological innovation in context – and their modulation, de facto governance of nanotechnologies, constructive technology assessment, the past and future of rri, technology as prospective ontology, interlocking socio-technical worlds.

• philosophy of science
• ethics of technology
• future of technology

Book Title : Futures of Science and Technology in Society

Authors : Arie Rip

Series Title : Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft / Futures of Technology, Science and Society

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-21754-9

Publisher : Springer VS Wiesbaden

eBook Packages : Religion and Philosophy , Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2018

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-658-21753-2 Published: 26 June 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-3-658-21754-9 Published: 06 June 2018

Series ISSN : 2524-3764

Series E-ISSN : 2524-3772

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : IX, 178

Number of Illustrations : 15 b/w illustrations

Topics : Philosophy of Science

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• Published: 03 April 2022

Young people’s technological images of the future: implications for science and technology education

• Tapio Rasa   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1315-5207 1 &
• Antti Laherto   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-7571 2  

European Journal of Futures Research volume  10 , Article number:  4 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Modern technology has had and continues to have various impacts on societies and human life in general. While technology in some ways defines the ‘digital age’ of today, discourses of ‘technological progress’ may dominate discussions of tomorrow. Conceptions of technology and futures seem to be intertwined, as technology has been predicted by experts to lead us anywhere between utopia and extinction within as little as a century. Understandably, hopes and fears regarding technology may also dominate images of the future for our current generation of young people. Meanwhile, global trends in science and technology education have increasingly emphasised goals such as agency, anticipation and active citizenship. As one’s agency is connected to one’s future perceptions, young people’s views of technological change are highly relevant to these educational goals. However, students’ images of technological futures have not yet been used to inform the development of science and technology education. We set out to address this issue by investigating 58 secondary school students’ essays describing a typical day in 2035 or 2040, focusing on technological surroundings. Qualitative content analysis showed that students’ images of the future feature technological changes ranging from improved everyday devices to large-scale technologisation. A variety of effects was attributed to technology, relating to convenience, environment, employment, privacy, general societal progress and more. Technology was discussed both in positive and negative terms, as imagined technological futures were problematised to differing extents. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of the results for the development of future-oriented science and technology education.

Introduction

Modern technology has had and continues to have an impact on human life and civilisation that is hard to overstate. While technology in some ways defines the ‘digital age’ of today, discourses of ‘technological progress’ may dominate discussions of tomorrow. Meanwhile, predicting the ‘real future’ and figuring out how to do it well is a field in itself, and experts within and outside specific technological fields project a wide range of predictions for the coming decades: technology has been predicted to lead us anywhere between human extinction [ 10 ] and planet-sized self-aware computers [ 32 ] within the timescale of a century, with more cautious predictions forecasting a ‘third industrial revolution’ by 2030 ([ 16 ], p. 33). Understandably, hopes and fears regarding technology may also dominate the images of the future for our current generation of young people (see, e.g. [ 3 , 36 ]).

Obviously, the fact that developments in science and technology can have great desirable and undesirable societal implications is reflected in science education. This element is central to research currents such as STSE (science, technology, society, environment—see, e.g. [ 6 ]), SSI (socioscientific issues—e.g. [ 49 ]) and the various visions of scientific literacy (e.g. [ 45 ]). Interestingly, however, these socioscientific leanings rarely address explicitly the temporal aspects of socioscientific thinking. Thus, even if local and global SSIs ‘are all related to important aspects of our future’ ([ 44 ], pp. 2–3) and environmental education should address ‘Where do we want to go?—knowledge about alternatives and visions’ ([ 28 ], p. 331), the connection to futures thinking is often unaddressed when contextualising science as societally relevant. For example, the focus of STSE has been applying science and technology in social (more or less real-world) contexts, understanding the sociocultural embeddedness of such activity and exploring holistic, value-centred approaches to evaluating technoscientific issues [ 39 ]. These aspects of scientific literacy certainly have a ‘time component’, but seem to lack a more nuanced relationship with futures. This oversight seems to reflect a general pattern in education (see, e.g. [ 24 ]).

Understandably this ‘blind spot’ has been criticised in the futures field: according to Gidley & Hampson [ 22 ],

[s]chool education seems to be mostly stuck in an outdated industrial era worldview, unable to sufficiently address the significance and increasing rapidity of changes to humanity that are upon us. An integrated forward-looking view should, now more than ever, be of central importance in how we educate. Yet there is little sign that – unlike corporations – school systems are recognising the true value of futures studies.

While the field of science education has seen some recent initiatives for developing students’ futures thinking [ 29 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 38 , 41 ], much work remains to be done in communicating between the two fields. One approach to strengthening the foothold of futures thinking in schools may be identifying practical contexts for future-oriented education and joining with natural ‘allies’ within the range of educational fields [ 23 ], or formalising the concept of ‘futures literacy’ in education, eliciting students’ images of the future, and supporting their agency [ 24 ]. A further goal may be formalising relevant capacities to also enable evaluation of learning processes and outcomes, where constructions such as ‘futures consciousness’ [ 1 ] may prove useful.

Meanwhile, young people’s future thinking has been analysed in several studies (e.g. [ 3 , 15 , 43 ]), revealing both pessimistic and optimistic future outlooks. Such studies also support the notion that technology is strongly associated with imagined future worlds—a connection embodied in science fiction, which arguably could also be called ‘technology fiction’ or ‘future fiction’, demonstrating a strong association between the concepts. Within futures studies, this link may seem obvious (see, e.g. the role of technology in the ‘future archetypes’ of [ 27 ]), but it is underrepresented in science education literature; students’ hopes, fears and expectations regarding the future are rarely addressed.

There may also exist a discontinuity between the approaches taken when addressing socioscientific thinking within education, and those taken when studying young people’s perceptions of the future. Namely, societally oriented science education research and practice may tend to be based on individual issues [ 6 ] and case studies, while research on young people’s perceptions of technology may look at technology more generally [ 7 ].

Thus our goal in this paper is to explore the following question:

What kinds of technology and what desirable and undesirable impacts of technology are present in upper-secondary school students’ images of the future?

Specifically, we examine a set of Finnish upper secondary school students’ essays that describe imagined future worlds, set in years 2035 and 2040. We analyse what technologies are present in these essays, what aspects of the world and human life are affected by technology and whether these effects are framed as positive, negative or in neutral or conflicted terms.

Our goal is to diversify the meaning of the term ‘technology’ in (young) people’s futures thinking by providing an exploratory study on expectations, hopes and fears associated with specific envisioned technological developments or the processes of technologisation in general. Finally, we conclude by discussing potential implications of the results for the development of science and technology education, and the potential of using socioscientific and sociotechnical issues as a context for futures thinking in education.

Definitions and rationale

In this paper, we examine the role of technology in upper-secondary school students’ images of the future. By images of the future we mean ‘snapshots of the major features of interest at various points in time’ ([ 42 ], p. 14). Images of the future do not necessarily contain ‘an account of the flow of events leading to such future conditions’ (Ibid., p. 14); this temporal perspective would turn an image into a scenario (which are more commonly explored in futures studies and also in future-oriented science education—see, e.g. [ 35 ]).

Images of the future are widely addressed in futures studies. However, as they exist in people’s imaginations and are by nature complex, they are difficult to fully pin down. Perceptions about the future are an integral part of one’s worldview [ 36 ], and at least in the case of nonexpert futures thinking, they can be expected to lack some systematicity. Imagined futures are often inconsistent [ 30 ] and can perhaps be better understood as reflecting the present [ 9 ]. An example of inconsistency is the common finding of a disconnection between optimistic personal and gloomy global futures [ 15 , 43 , 47 ].

In the case of images of technological futures, one’s understanding of technology is naturally a component, but only one of many. To quote Zeidler et al. [ 49 ], p. 360, ‘knowledge and understanding of the interconnections among science, technology, society, and the environment (...) do not exist independently of students’ personal beliefs’. For our purposes, no attempt to separate these components is necessary: our goal is to give voice to the image that emerges from these influences.

Defining technology is something of an arduous task, partly because the meaning of the word seems to vary greatly between contexts—it is a ‘slippery term’ ([ 5 ], p. 7). Thus for example the ‘T’ of STS (Science and technology studies) may be different from the ‘T’ of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The students who wrote the essays that form the dataset for our study were asked to address the role of technology in their image of the future, and no theoretical definition was provided with this prompt. We expect students to have relied on some commonsense meaning of the word, and for the purposes of our study, we consider technology to be related to artefacts, tools, methods and systems that are based on the application of knowledge specific to STEM subjects. We expect this meaning to correspond to some extent with students’ thinking.

This study uses a unified view of science and technology education, or scientific and technological literacy (see, e.g. [ 33 ]) that is typical in current trends of interdisciplinary and societally oriented science education, or STEM education (see, e.g. [ 12 ]). As a clarification, we do not wish to convey the idea that the relationship between science and technology is obvious and uncomplicated (see, e.g. [ 4 ]). However, this is a context-dependent issue: firstly, technology experts and technologically literate citizens are expected to gain much of their education within science education, and secondly, the boundary between science and technology tends to disappear (or lose some of its meaning) in societal and future-oriented contexts [ 26 ]. Thus, studies of students’ images of technological futures can be expected to provide insight into the expectations, opportunities and sociotechnical thinking that will eventually be reflected in both the practice of technology experts and the actions of nonexpert citizens [ 31 ].

Perceptions of (technological) futures

Research on young people’s futures thinking has shown that science and technology are typical ingredients in young people’s dystopian views [ 13 ] but also central to their hopes of sustainable or otherwise progressive futures [ 15 , 36 ]. According to Cook ([ 15 ], p. 528), young people may generally feel ‘a loss of faith in the notion that humanity is progressing towards a positive future’—and thus society is ‘due for another break through’ with the help of technology.

Similarly, according to a study by Heikkilä et al. [ 25 ], Finnish people aged 16-20 seem to feel positively about technology amid a general trajectory of societal decline—while being reserved towards many areas of technology or new technologies in general, and feeling mostly optimistic about their own futures. In their study, young people’s images of the future involved robots, entertainment technology, home automation and new ways to travel, but also considerations against using robots as workforce, and in favour of ecological energy production and general ‘high technology’. It is notable that while such attitudes towards technology may be vague and inconsistent, they are nearly universal: in a nationwide survey, the increasing significance of technology was the most common future belief for Finnish 15- to 29-year-olds [ 37 ].

In Angheloiu et al.’s [ 3 ] paper, young people (ages 16-17) were found to mostly see an optimistic future where technology is strongly embedded in people’s daily lives, improving their quality of life and creating sustainability. However, optimism was not universal: some youth were found to e.g. fear environmental or health crises that would give rise to totalitarian regimes. In fact, the authors (p. 5) recognised the motif of “trade-offs between tech that makes our lives convenient at the price of ‘ethics and morals’”. This corresponds with the common discourses of technology as a ‘double-edged sword’ or ‘Faustian bargain’ (see, e.g. [ 14 ]). Across many outlooks, young people in Angheloiu et al.’s [ 3 ] study shared worries of accelerating inequality and increasing social isolation, also caused largely by technology, with similar findings reported by e.g. Kaboli & Tapio [ 30 ].

At a population-wide scale, van der Duin et al. [ 48 ] analysed Dutch adults’ views of the year 2040 (similarly to the present paper). They focused especially on societal, economical, environmental and technological issues. In the last category, questions of robotisation, digitisation and biotechnology were specifically addressed in both likelihood and desirability. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dutch people (88%) believe science and technology to greatly advance in the next few decades, while their attitude towards technology was almost evenly split between positive, neutral and negative. Expectations of ‘making life easier’ and ‘having a positive impact’ were reported: examples include electric transport and automatised household tasks, but to a lesser extent also advances such as teleportation and colonisation of other planets. The respondents’ technological worries related to cybersecurity, privacy, behaviour prediction systems, robotisation, diminishing human contact and ‘unnatural’ outcomes, among others.

At an even wider scope, Special Eurobarometer 419 [ 18 ] found that Finnish people and Europeans in general (aged 15 and over) expect technology (or ‘science and innovation’) to contribute to many important issues in the near future. These included health, jobs, education, skills, environment, energy supply, security and inequality. Interestingly, with the exception of inequality, in all of these issues, Europeans expect ‘science and innovation’ to contribute more to progress than ‘people’s actions’. In a similar manner, general opinion on futures was more divided than the role of technology in futures, which was seen in mostly positive light (opinions were most divided on cybersecurity). This connects well with Cook’s [ 15 ] notion of technology as a ‘refuge of hope’.

More recently, in Standard Eurobarometer 94 [ 19 ] it was found that Europeans’ general future perspectives are somewhat gloomy, even if inconsistent: future generations are expected to face more difficulties, and nations are seen as going downhill, even if these feelings coexist with ‘confidence in the future’ (p. T118 in Data Annex).

Most people indeed believe that ‘science has a positive impact on society’, and especially young people feel informed with technological developments ([ 17 ], p.5). Technology is expected to make life easier, more comfortable and healthier, even if the rapid pace of development is perceived somewhat negatively by the majority. However, as Kerschner & Ehlers [ 31 ] have pointed out, these attitudes seem to be diversifying, and Eurobarometer surveys may address this issue too superficially. To quote Kerschner & Ehlers (p. 139):

In the past any diversion from unquestioned optimism was interpreted as a bad sign and attributed to the public's ignorance. Today it is often welcomed as a sign of an increasingly emancipated public.

Accordingly, we emphasise the point that critical attitudes are not simply ‘luddite pessimism’, nor are hopeful attitudes always ‘sci-fi romanticism’—and attempt in this paper to give adequate voice to both critical and enthusiastic views.

Some scholars have also argued that attitudes towards technology may be different from attitudes towards any specific area of technology [ 7 ], or that there is no single direction in which sociotechnical transitions can take us, or metric by which to judge them [ 46 ]. In this paper, we address both general and specific views of future technology with the explicit intention of diversifying discourses of sociotechnical conceptions.

Thus there is considerable even if in some ways limited literature on how people perceive technology and technological futures. Similar questions have been a matter of some discourse in educational research as well, even if not as exhaustively. For instance, Clough [ 14 ] has noted that the pedagogies around the nature of technology should address how technology may impact behaviour, thinking, privacy and values among other facets of life, Hodson [ 26 ] has discussed connections between technological and scientific literacy and sociopolitical action, and Aikenhead & Ryan [ 2 ] have long before suggested researching students’ conceptions on the many impacts technology has. Equipping students with tools to understand how socioscientific and sociotechnical issues shape their lives is certainly one of the goals of modern science education. However, as Facer ([ 20 ], p. 99) has argued,

[r]hetoric about young people’s ‘ownership’ of future socio-technical change is a familiar part of much educational and political discourse. This does not, however, translate in practice into a meaningful dialogue with young people about the sorts of futures they might wish to see emerge.

We wish to argue that while emphasising the societal relevance of science and allowing students to practice socioscientific argumentation in the classroom is worthwhile, these questions should be adequately linked to students’ perceptions of the future, and specifically their own future.

Data collection

The data for this paper consists of 58 student essays. These were collected from 57 Finnish upper-secondary students from schools in the Helsinki region. 20 essays were collected in 2018 with the title ‘A typical summer day in 2035’ and 38 in 2019 with the title ‘A typical summer day in 2040’. One student wrote two different essays in two consecutive years.

In addition to the topic, students were given the instruction to describe what kind of general and technological environment they would like to live in (i.e. a preferable future—see, e.g. [ 8 ]). They were prompted to approach this task by addressing the topics of what one’s life is like, the problems one and one’s communities face, the opportunities one perceives, what items and objects are present, what kind of the city or country lives in and the social life one leads. Finally, they were asked to fill in sentences beginning with ‘my dream is’, ‘my dream place is/has’, ‘my ideal world is/has’, and ‘my biggest fears and concerns are’.

The data collection took part within the European Erasmus+ project ‘I SEE’ (2016-2019) [ 35 ]. The essays were collected as prerequisites for volunteers attending experimental courses, i.e. before any teaching intervention took place. All essays were translated into English before analysis, with student names replaced with pseudonyms. All these students (or with underage students, also their guardian) gave written consent to participate in the research.

In order to analyse what technologies and effects of technology are present in students’ images of the future, we employed thematic analysis [ 11 ] with inductive coding. We began by cataloguing passages in the essays based on the subject matter. A total of 385 passages relating to technology were identified, forming the set of our analysis units. Typically, an analysis unit would be one to five sentences long, and describe one (although sometimes more) technology, and one (or more) effects of the technology in one continuous argument. Many passages were also found to discuss technology generally without further specification.

The effects of technology were identified strictly by what was addressed in the essays. For example, a unit that mentioned ‘greener air travel’ was seen as discussing ‘transportation technology’ with effects relating to ‘the environment’ while another passage that described casual commuting between Finland and Italy was seen linking transportation technology to increased mobility. As these examples also demonstrate, by ‘effect of technology’ we mean aspects of life, society and the world that are influenced in some way by technology or technological change. The focus on ‘technology’ and ‘effect’ is employed here for analytic simplicity: for some students, technology seemed to drive change, but for some, expectations of sociotechnical transformation were also drivers of technology. Thus ‘effect’ covers a range of causal systems. By definition, every unit of analysis discusses either one or more specific technologies or technology in general. However, in some cases, no clear effects were addressed within the text. An example is the short unit ‘I own an electric car’.

These categories were formed inductively based on multiple rounds of coding, which included some redefinition, combination and subdivision of initial coding categories. The specificity of each technology or effect (e.g. coding both greener aeroplanes and electric cars under the technology code ‘transportation’) was done by the authors with the intention of creating codes with meaningfully different contents.

Finally, we separated the analysis units into three categories, based on whether the effects of the technology were phrased in terms that convey these effects as desirable, undesirable or whether they are discussed in neutral terms. To be precise, we checked each unit against the following criteria:

Positive: Changes described or framed as mostly positive—improvement, desirable effects, solved problems

Neutral: indifference; neutral descriptions; positive and negative aspects balance out

Negative: Changes described or framed as mostly negative—problems, reluctance, disequilibration

The authors negotiated codes for unclear units until consensus was found. In addition, every unit was checked against coding criteria to eliminate mistakes and inconsistencies. The codes with less than eight occurrences were also merged with other, similar codes. Finally, to structure the presentation of our results, the final set of technologies, as well as the set of effects of technology, were grouped into 5 and 6 sections respectively (see Tables 1 and 2 ).

General observations

A somewhat wide range of images of the future presents itself in our data. Ranging from highly imaginative to conservative, and simplistic to highly detailed, the essays cover many societal transformations and systemic interactions within society, but focus mainly on technology and the routines of adult life. Derek (all student names given here are pseudonyms) imagined a post-scarcity world, Andre thought that ‘most problems are solved’ in 2035, and Damian imagined himself in the future, missing the ‘old days’ before overtechnologisation. Some students described worlds where climate change is ‘solved’, while in others’ images increasing climate issues serve as a looming backdrop. Quite interestingly, a ‘typical summer day’ in a preferable future also included a wealth of worries related to technology.

Almost all students described in some detail the technological advances apparent on a day in 2035 or 2040. For some students, these were creative, fantastic or narratively distant (ranging from a hub of sky-high glass tubes that serves as public transport to living on a Mars colony ruled by AI). For others, advances were more modest, such as longer-lasting smartphone batteries. Interestingly, a few students stated or implied that technology will likely not impact their lives: Thomas likened new innovations to useless things like ‘electric nailclippers’, while Robyn focused solely on changes in social issues such as human rights and (non-technologically) sustainable lifestyles. We also noted that some students addressed, even in length, aspects of the social construction of technology, such as risk-benefit analysis or democratisation of technological development. Such meanings students gave to technology in their essays will be presented elsewhere [ 40 ]—here we focus on the types of technology and the fields of influence, as described above.

Future technology and its effects

Overview of the analysis.

Various types of technology were identified from the data, ranging from general discussion of technology to smartwatches and from fusion reactors to neural implants. All the technology types in our coding are shown in Table 1 .

In essence, discussions of technology typically focused on everyday devices (e.g. phones, cars, household machines), technological systems and broad categories of technology (e.g. vague or general use of the word ‘technology’, energy production systems, large-scale automation of service jobs). Elements resembling typical science fiction scenarios were found to be relatively rare: these included advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and a few mentions of spacefaring or brain-computer interfaces. The full range of technologies present in students’ images was thus found to be somewhat conservative, perhaps reflecting the given time span of two decades, or perhaps due to the context of imagining one’s own future.

Despite students’ restraints in describing more imaginative or fantastical technological changes, the effects of technology show notable variation. Technology was usually seen as affecting everyday convenience (often specifically household activities), the structure of job markets and environmental issues. Technology was also associated with social life, equality, health and privacy, or connected with larger issues such as overtechnologisation or general progress (for a full list of our effect codes, see Table 2 ).

As the examples selected for Table 2 demonstrate, technology was depicted influencing the world in both positive and negative ways, again showing considerable range: at one extreme are nuclear wars and ‘loss of humanity’, at the other are happiness and ‘a better future’. In total, 244 units were coded as positive, 55 as negative and 86 as neutral. However, it is notable that students were instructed to focus on a preferable future. Thus, while valence counts are reported in Tables 1 and 2 , the goal of our exploratory study is to analyse qualitatively various themes identified in the dataset.

Let us now look at how the technology and effect codes interconnect. Our analysis revealed a somewhat complex web of connections between technology, impacts of technology, and the desirability of such developments. This is illustrated by Fig. 1 , a Sankey diagram of the entire coded dataset. As one notices by looking at the diagram, due to constraints of space we cannot in this paper give examples of every type of connection in the data. Instead, we will present some key findings in the following sections, moving from more obvious roles of technology (practical uses) to more complex ones (societal challenges and the systemic effects of technology).

The connections between technologies and their effects. The width of the lines indicates the frequency of the connection. Green colour indicates positively, yellow neutrally and red negatively depicted change

Everyday life and relationships

Some of the connections are rather unsurprising, such as the idea that smart home technology has a positive effect on everyday convenience. In fact, the ‘easier everyday life’ of the future is one of the most salient features in our data. These imagined technological advances were related to handing tasks such as household chores over to robots, paying purchases with one’s phone more often, faster commuting and self-driving cars, wireless phone chargers or a more general expectation of adult life that is not limited or burdened by mundane tasks.

Laptops would also be paper-thin and easy to carry with you. (Willow)

Unless I wanted to, I would not have to do anything to maintain my house. In the modern world, everything revolves very closely around technology. Life is easy, because everything that is ‘unpleasant’ is handled by artificial intelligence. (Andre)

While in students’ visions technology often makes life easier and frees up time for more fulfilling activities, self-actualisation was rarely seen as stemming directly from technology. Similarly, technology was depicted providing an easy way of managing one’s social life, but it could not replace social activity not mediated by technology. In fact, some students saw technology as a force driving people apart: either by creating a culture of superficial acquaintances or by allowing people to retreat into lonely virtual worlds. However, the technologies students proposed as future ways of communication were typically not radically different from technologies that exist today.

I would like to live in a technologically advanced environment where a single lightweight, easy-to-carry device could be used to accomplish a lot of things. (...) one downside to this may be that our social life is likely to become more distant. (Oliver)

Environment

Alongside hopes of easier everyday life, other technological impacts that were seen positively were those relating to the environment. As Fig. 1 clearly shows, the connection between technology and environment was overwhelmingly positive. This was sometimes discussed as ‘solving’ climate change, and sometimes simply as a more incremental move towards greener technologies:

Climate change and other environmental problems have already been solved successfully, and all energy production is renewable or utilizes, for example, fusion power. (Manuel)

Electric cars are used for long-distance travel, since they are ecological. (Claire)

Technologies relevant in overcoming environmental unsustainability included energy production, recycling, production and transportation, but also geoengineering. While some students regarded fighting climate change as a hopeless battle against indifference, in most students’ essays climate and sustainability issues were discussed as either ‘solved’ problems or tackled by ongoing action:

However, new technologies have solved many climate-related problems, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur emissions. These can now be removed from the atmosphere to the surrounding space in a controlled way. (Natalie)

Despite technological development efforts, climate change is still a very relevant problem, and we will probably have had to create global technological solutions to slow it down. (Lily)

Not all efforts to mitigate climate change were based on new technologies—other kinds of sociotechnical change, such as banning cars and increased demand for green energy production were also mentioned. However, while students often discussed climate change mitigation in their essays, almost none of them imagined any technologies related to adapting to a changed climate, with the following exception:

While the worst of the predicted climate catastrophe is yet to come, these new automated fans that follow along with you are just not enough. (Isabella)

Employment, equality and privacy

While students saw potential in technology impacting environmental issues positively, in many other societal issues technology was linked to worries and fears. These included questions of privacy, the risks and vulnerabilities of digital systems, people becoming passive consumers of entertainment or losing the ability to concentrate, increasing social inequality (often caused by the automation of entire professions) and sometimes an AI catastrophe, technological weapons or misuse of mind-reading technology. For example, in Nina’s vision, society was still recovering from ‘the big data leak of 2037’, a nationwide data security catastrophe, and in Derek’s future, people ‘spend their time brainlessly staring at the screen’.

A large portion of the essays depicted a society dealing with impending or ongoing mass unemployment of people in automated service or manual work sectors:

There are not so many jobs these days, so many people are working in research and technology, just like me. Many of the professions that required human contact in the past have been replaced by robots that do the work as well as humans, except they are cheaper and more efficient. (Zelda)

Typically more intellectual jobs were expected to remain viable, including those in science, design, cybersecurity, innovation, programming or undefined ‘new professions’. In these visions, working life was often portrayed as competitive and hectic, with a constant need to keep up with changing demands:

Through social media, you are in contact with every organization in the world, and every organization is in contact with you. If you know what is expected of you (…) you can be very successful in this world. (Aurora)

Many students foresaw technology causing inequality in the future. This effect took place mostly through the unemployment in large work sectors discussed above. Students also expressed fears that technology could marginalise less educated people or ‘widen the gap between the rich and the poor and enable the latter to be oppressed on a global scale’. In fact, even in more positive visions, the connection between technology and equality was sometimes phrased in ways that seem to imply concern:

I want to live in a place where technology benefits everyone, not just those who are more fortunate than others. (Mel)

Divisions, overtechnologisation and progress

Technology (and the increasing embeddedness of technology in human life) was also connected with what appear to be technomoral questions. In other words, technology was not only seen benefiting various stakeholders or communities differently, but also as an issue where values and beliefs surface, creating societal and cultural tensions and polarisation:

By 2040 (...) technology used to study the brain and the functional systems of digital devices will be tightly integrated, and information technology can often be used just by thinking a few thoughts. (...) Our society is divided into groups: those who see nothing bad or unpredictably dangerous in this technology, and those who oppose it completely. (Aurora)

Curiously, similar mind-reading technology was described in solely positive terms by other students, but in these cases it was contextualised as easy-to-use interfaces for smart devices. This illustrates how some students seemed to concentrate on new possibilities, while others (even in a ‘desirable future’ framing) seemed to be more trade-off oriented, especially in larger, society-wide contexts. A similar pattern is seen in the way individual innovations were often discussed as positive developments, while forecasts of larger technological trends were more often paired with some worry. This is most clearly reflected in discourses of ‘overtechnologisation’:

The biggest fear is that with the advancement of technology and electronics, we might lose our humanity (…). (Brian)

(...) I do not want to live on technology’s terms in a world that is chock-full of technology. (Emilia)

Similar developments are possibly implied by students who emphasised that they wanted to live in cities where greenery has ‘not been replaced’, or surrounded by nontechnological objects. In fact, many students had written about a balance between technology and nature (or humans), whether in conjunction with overtechnologisation or not. Relatedly, students pictured futures in which one needs to consciously ‘unplug’ from time to time to retain connection with other facets of life:

It is important to me to not spend my entire life surrounded by machines, even though they make my life easier. (Mel)

Thus, technology was associated with a dangerous allure that individuals or humankind as a whole should guard against. However, the general fear related to the direction of humanity’s technological progress is in stark contrast to ideas centred on possibilities and progress. Several students expressed general trust or hope in technology being a part of a better future, or even a sign of humanity’s success:

I am sure we will live in the era of amazing technology. We can expect huge breakthroughs in physics and information technology that can benefit everyone. The place where I want to live is a place where you can clearly see the development of technology and humanity as a whole (...). (Malcolm)

I would wake up in the morning and, instead of waking up to the news of how humanity is failing, I would wake up to news of new technology being invented. (Lianna)

Lianna’s comparison between humanity’s failings and new technology—as well as Malcolm’s pairing of development of technology and development of humanity—seems far removed from fears of overtechnologisation or loss of humanity. Furthermore, Lianna described only exponential positive progress, while in Malcolm’s image of the future technology also creates unemployment. This exemplifies how students’ images of technological futures seem to reflect views of technology in general, hopes and fears of the overall future of humanity, and mediation between such elements.

Systems perspectives and complexity of sociotechnical change

The causal links between technology and effects also showed diversity. A contrast can be seen, for example, in two quotations provided earlier: Aurora’s complicated narrative of computer-brain interfaces stirring cultural polarisation and Manuel’s straightforward recounting of solving climate change. Technological change was not always seen influencing the world in immediate and instrumentalist ways, but also through systemic, higher order effects. This is a key observation and is well worth another example. Caden saw the future becoming even more globalised via technology-driven location independence and explained this process in some depth:

As communication and traffic systems evolve, I believe that travelling and exchanging thoughts and information across the world will be very common in the future. As a result of globalization, cultures and states will become more and more alike in the future, citizens will continue to move from place to place, and states will no longer exist in their traditional form. (Caden)

These somewhat ‘historical’ narratives were constructed around both positive and negative developments. On the clearly positive side, Lex imagined technology creating prosperity which allows universal basic income, ushering in a new age of people working for passion rather than money. However, for some students the intended use of technology and its direct effects were overshadowed by collateral damage to society, as in this rather dystopic vision:

(...) our society is unstable and environmental problems are a major problem, but people are not interested, because they are locked into their own bubbles. In their own virtual worlds. Sometimes I miss the old days. (Damian)

This quotation was extracted from a relatively rich context: the rather unrecognisable sci-fi cityscape in Damian’s vision and his portrayal of himself as a protagonist who is ‘ready to change the world’ (through his scientific career, in a time where most jobs are automated) is a powerful representation of the range of meanings science and technology may take in young people’s futures views. For some students, these meanings seemed to cause some dissonance that was sometimes addressed or resolved in the essays, for example by weighing the excitement of robot waiters against the perspective of the unemployed service staff. In the case of conflicted feelings towards technology, some students reflected on their positions either by identifying as their future self or explaining their hopes and fears from the present perspective:

I am grateful for all the inventions and technologies that I get to use today. But at the same time I am a little worried – for example life is no longer as private as it used to be. In the past, I might have been somewhat shocked if I had seen the present-day society. I talk a lot about this with my friends and family, and they, too, completely agree on both the opportunities and concerns. (Claire)

I believe there are both good and bad aspects to technology, and I cannot imagine a future where only one or the other would occur. (Natalie)

Conclusions

Discussion of results.

In our study, we examined Finnish upper-secondary school students’ images of desirable technological futures. As Tables 1 and 2 and diagram 1 summarise, students’ futures thinking shows a somewhat wide range of technological futures thinking. While students’ images involve an arguably limited perspective of areas of technology that may be relevant for their futures, these technologies, and technology in general, were associated with a fairly wide range of effects. Of these effects, most salient were hopes of easy day-to-day life, advances in environmental issues, and the automation of jobs.

Students’ views correspond to a large extent to the results of earlier studies on images of the future. Technological points of interest that students examine in their essays included robots and automation, smart homes, transportation and energy (cf. [ 25 , 48 ]), technology for sustainability (cf. [ 3 , 15 ]), the role of technology in everyday life (cf. [ 3 , 17 , 48 ]), inequality and isolation (cf. [ 30 , 48 ]), privacy and cybersecurity (cf. [ 18 ,  48 ]), and technology as progress as opposed to fall or stagnation (cf. [ 15 , 25 ]). Our study builds on these results firstly by not predetermining what technologies should be addressed in imagined futures, thus allowing respondents to construct a vision based on their own ideas, and secondly by explicitly addressing the difference and the associations between technological change and its societal or individual effects. Furthermore, by utilising a written assignment as the basis of the study, we were able to elicit students’ own sense-making of these connections both in the context of specific technologies that they associated with their own future, and the wider trend of technologisation.

Our results demonstrate how some students quite readily problematise sociotechnical change, identifying moral questions, considering trade-offs, stakeholder perspectives and systemic long-term effects. Technology was given both instrumentalist and unproblematic meanings (such as increased convenience) and much wider and more abstract meanings such as general progress or a dangerous trajectory leading to overtechnologisation of life. Interestingly, positive effects were commonly attributed to incremental improvements of existing technologies or specific new innovations, while the larger trends of automation, digitalisation and technologisation were seen in more conflicted terms.

These elements in students’ essays form a somewhat multifaceted picture of the roles technology may take in young people’s futures thinking; no single element captures the multitude of these roles and meanings. For example, it is not straightforward to determine whether students’ images of technological futures are overall ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Given that students were asked to describe the kind of technological future they would like to see, it is worthwhile to note the frequency of both negative expectations and the ‘Faustian bargain’ discourse. On some level, many students seem to share the belief that positive and negative aspects go hand in hand. However, it is equally worthwhile to note that 24 student essays did not contain any negative effect codes, and of these eight discussed only positive effects. For example, Violet’s technological future featured smooth everyday life, the tools ‘to cure deadly diseases’, an atmospheric cleaner, fusion power and superhuman AI with endless uses.

The difference between purely positive and mixed images of technological futures could be attributed to variation in students’ views, but it is equally arguable that the difference may stem from students focusing to different degrees on ‘preferable’ (as opposed to ‘probable’ or ‘plausible’) futures—i.e. whether students focused on possibilities or critical perspectives. It is partly because of this interpretative ambiguity that we have here focused on analysing the ‘micro-level’ roles of technology in images of the future rather than the overall sociotechnical futures (i.e. each essay as a whole), with the intention of capturing the diversity of students’ ideas, hopes and fears about technology.

Limitations of this study and opportunities of further research

As the writing prompt given to students asked for a description of a desirable future, the strong leaning on positive effects of technology does not necessarily signify technological optimism. Similarly, asking students to think of a typical day may have primed students to think primarily of familiar (i.e. conservative) future worlds. However, perceptions of the future are complex, and any singular image is only a component of a larger whole. Further research is needed on the way individuals navigate various or even contradicting ideas about the future that they may simultaneously hold. As a related challenge, the essays analysed here can be seen exhibiting varying degrees of perceived ‘realness’ to the students. For example, one very short essay described the author living on a Mars colony ruled by an AI system. For us, this entry seemed unserious, possibly indicating some challenge in imagining (or writing about) one’s actual future. Thus, further research may need to gauge how likely students believe their imagined futures are to actually manifest.

Our study tentatively indicates that there are multiple layers of the entanglement of technology and futures that may exist in young people’s thinking: the everyday devices and general technological landscape of one’s life, various positive and negative societal transformations related to technological change, and general trends of technologisation that indicate whether humanity is ‘headed in the right direction’. Further research is needed to identify and operationalise how images of the future are constructed with relation to specific and general beliefs, hopes and fears about technology. An additional key issue unexplored by the present study is the sources from where young people draw elements of their images of the future.

Accordingly, there is much room for similar work to be carried out with various focus points. Here we have operated on the level of individual connections between technology, its effects and their desirability in order to reveal some of the complexity of students’ images of the future. Further studies could investigate students’ beliefs regarding the agents that drive sociotechnical change, the values they associate with these changes (see, e.g. [ 21 ]), and how they connect larger trends to their own lives and their own agency. For this end, this paper lays groundwork for further work carried out in the FEDORA project to discuss the desirable effects of technology in the light of students' values [ 40 ].

In addition, it may be worthwhile to examine what kinds of (science) pedagogies could meaningfully address students’ future views. Such initiatives have been carried out, for example the I SEE project (2016-2019) (see e.g. [ 35 , 41 ]) and the FEDORA project (fedora-project.eu). The implications of the present study for science education are discussed in the following section.

Finally, we note that the sampling is very likely not representative of Finnish youth, as the participants of the study were volunteers enrolling for an additional science course on futures thinking. Thus, they were likely to be interested in science subjects and think positively about scientific ideas. Our study may underrepresent views of the future that are common to other cohorts. The frequency of various perceptions among different age groups, genders and cultural backgrounds also demands broader samples and is left for further investigations.

Implications for science education

As our results demonstrate, images of the future provide a rich perspective into the interaction of students’ futures thinking and sociotechnical thinking. However, as we have shown, images of technological futures differ in many ways from each other. Therefore, science education oriented towards socio-scientific issues (SSIs) [ 49 ] should not address the future as a separate SSI but integrate it in a variety of scientific, social, cultural, ethical, environmental and economic aspects. Our results on the breadth and connectedness of students’ sociotechnical future visions give support and contribute to the holistic type of SSI teaching suggested by Rundgren and Rundgren [ 44 ] and invite science education researchers and practitioners to develop tools to help students connect their technological and socioscientific reasoning with their future outlooks and their futures thinking skills.

Such tools have already been developed for science classrooms in a few initiatives during the past two decades [ 29 , 36 , 38 ]. In Europe, future-oriented science education has been advanced in the I SEE project. The research presented here lays the groundwork and contributes to initiatives of this type by building a more nuanced understanding of students’ images of the future with relation to science and technology.

For science educators, a particularly interesting phenomenon seen in the data reported here concerns the depth of students’ spontaneous socioscientific thinking. In vastly different ideas such as Caden’s technologically united globe, Aurora’s polarising neurotechnology and Damian’s world of VR-induced indifference, a seemingly limited area of technology has effects that range well beyond the immediately obvious. This illustrates how complex and multilayered one’s future perception can be: even a singular and tightly expressed image of the future may contain a wealth of interacting beliefs and ideas. When constructing an image of the world students went beyond addressing simplistic cause-effect socioscientific discourse and engaged in thinking of systemic, higher order effects of sociotechnical change.

Thus, our results imply that constructing images of the future can be a pedagogically rich and meaningful task that taps into the transversal learning objectives in science curricula. While such future-oriented pedagogies face the challenge of addressing the inherently unknowable, in the context of science education they can also harness students’ curiosity about the future, their existing futures thinking skills, and the prevalent idea that scientific and technological ideas may come to determine the future to a great extent. As Facer (2012) [ 20 ] has argued, framing the future as ‘lived’ and ‘local’ seems to encourage students to think meaningfully and critically of sociotechnical change. This approach could also address the need to help students contextualise the ‘core knowledge’ of science, which is a focus of STSE and SSI education (see, e.g. [ 6 ]), to promote scientific literacy (see, e.g. [ 45 ]), and to give students a more nuanced representation of the nature of technology (see, e.g. Clough et al., 2013).

Our results also brought out a variety of technology-related hopes and fears that students may typically hold. In order to foster students’ agency, science and technology education should find ways to address and elaborate such feelings and escape simplistic visions that may be either dystopian, utopian or static. Teachers should help students perceive both opportunities and pitfalls in technology and, for example, problematise the naïve expectations of ‘technological fix’ for sustainability challenges. Relatedly, the diversifying attitudes towards technology should be linked to a belief in the malleability of (sociotechnical) futures through informed agency.

Our study offers evidence that upper-secondary students can be quite capable of engaging in futures thinking in a manner that combines creativity, value-based evaluation, a systems perspective and scientific literacy. However, for the purposes of science education, and the goal of understanding young people’s futures perceptions, it may prove useful for educators and researchers to distinguish between different types of sociotechnical transformations, such as complex systemic transformations (relevant from the SSI perspective) and more incremental and limited technological change (e.g. from a problem-solving, instrumentalist perspective).

Finally, it seems reasonable that practicing formulating images of desirable futures is necessary to acquire the skills needed for technology experts’ reflective practice (see, e.g. [ 4 ]), or steering technology towards sustainability. After all, ‘[w]hen students’ images of possible futures are elicited, valued and acted upon students are empowered to work towards a future they would prefer’ [ 36 ]. This goal requires further exploration of young people’s conceptions and pedagogies inspired by futures studies to evoke and evolve these conceptions—a task that we hope to have demonstrated to be feasible, fruitful and necessary. However, for this purpose there needs to be much more dialogue between the fields of futures studies and educational research.

Availability of data and materials

The dataset analysed during the current study is available in the Zenodo.org repository, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5517595 .

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Elina Palmgren for organising the data collection, Paula Pekkala for assisting in the coding process and Pia Erkko for translating the essays. We also thank Prof. Jari Lavonen for some helpful comments on the manuscript and the partners of the FEDORA project, coordinated by Prof. Olivia Levrini in University of Bologna, for their helpful comments on the design of the study. We also thank Steve Bogart for the free SankeyMATIC tool that was used for Fig. 1 . Finally, our warmest thanks to the upper secondary school students who participated in the research.

The collection of the data analysed in this study was supported by the European Commission Erasmus+ programme under Grant Agreement no. 2016-1-IT02-KA201-024373 (project "I SEE").

The analysis of the data and writing of the manuscript was supported by the European Commission Horizon2020 programme under Grant Agreement no. 872841 (project "FEDORA"). Open access funded by Helsinki University Library.

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TR carried out the data analysis and was the main contributor in all parts of the manuscript. AL planned and lead the data collection in the I SEE project and framing the research in the FEDORA project and helped with writing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tapio Rasa .

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Rasa, T., Laherto, A. Young people’s technological images of the future: implications for science and technology education. Eur J Futures Res 10 , 4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-022-00190-x

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• Images of the future
• Science education
• Technology education
• Student perceptions
• Future-oriented science education

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• How the Earth was shaped: tectonic plates’ movement. A long time ago, the continents used to be shaped differently. Their shape depended on the direction of tectonic plates. It is believed that they once formed Pangaea—a supercontinent that broke into many pieces and created the modern continents.
• Can humans create new continents and change the existing ones? Humans contribute to shaping the planet in many ways. Agriculture and the search for resources change the terrain, while urban development leads to climate change. Also, various islands are constructed by people from natural and artificial materials.
• What is the air that we breathe made out of? The air in the Earth’s atmosphere is unique. It allows nature to thrive and live. Air contains more than just various gases. It also holds water and particles that affect pollution, climate, and nature’s health.
• The layers of the atmosphere : why mountain air is different. The Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere with layers. Each of them has a different composition and pressure level. That is why people say that the air on the top of a mountain feels different. This variety affects many aspects of the natural world.
• How the Earth is shaped today: volcanoes , earthquakes, and tsunamis. Different natural phenomena contribute to changing the shape of the planet. For example, volcanic eruptions make lava spill onto land and water. Over time, this lava hardens and turns into rock. These events can create whole new landforms or destroy existing ones.
• Which animals can live in the outer layers of the atmosphere? Almost all living beings on Earth require oxygen to survive. However, some of them may need less oxygen than others. Interestingly, a small group of creatures needs almost no air. Various microorganisms can even be found as high as the troposphere.
• The dangers of oxygen. Everybody knows that oxygen is a source of life on Earth . But it is also a part of many dangerous chemical reactions. For example, breathing in pure oxygen is harmful for the body.
• The internal layers of Earth: their chemical composition and state. Earth’s inner structure is as layered as its atmosphere. Each component has unique properties and a different physical state. The movement of one layer can result in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes .
• What are the purpose and special status of navigational stars? Celestial navigation means finding one’s location using stars. It is an ancient practice that is still used today. Some stars, however, play a more important role than others. They serve as marks for easy navigation. The most well-known navigational star is the Polaris, but there are many more.
• The history of weather forecasting in ancient cultures. Today, people can look at a weather forecast for weeks ahead. In ancient times, different cultures searched for the best ways of predicting the weather . Some interesting sources of information were the stars, the color of the sky, the lunar phases, and animal behavior.

Science Essay Topics for High School Students

• Printing food: will you be able to download a pizza?
• Why are there so many programming languages ?
• Can computers create meaningful and original art?
• The place of creative professions in an AI-powered future
• Is distance learning effective, or does it hinder studying?
• Are there any alternatives to plastic that benefit the environment?
• Can everyone stay inside forever with the help of technology?
• The common mistakes that AI continues to make to this day
• Enhancing the quality of school education with virtual reality
• The effect of social media on building relationships and making friends
• The research of artificially produced foods and its environmental impact
• Which devices do students and teachers need to introduce into the classroom ?
• The rise of distance learning : the best methods of studying remotely
• Is translation software equally developed for all languages of the world?
• How people in small communities can find each other with social media
• The impact of unrecyclable materials on oceans. Pollution is on the minds of many scientists today. Ocean animals are often injured or killed by plastic debris . Coral reefs and vegetation also struggle with materials that cannot be recycled. You may suggest ways of cleaning the ocean and making it a better environment for its flora and fauna.
• The use of big data in predicting people’s everyday choices. Big data refers to collecting enormous amounts of information. The data is taken from open online sources. It is then analyzed for different industries to use. How can companies use big data to predict what people need?
• How does marketing use Internet-of-Things? Marketing specialists are always searching for new technologies to explore. They want to surprise their clients and make them interested in their company’s product. The Internet-of-Things connects devices and saves valuable data. Advertisements may use this interconnectedness to their advantage.
• The differences between traditional and digital art . Many of today’s artists are skilled in using software to create art. They use digital painting programs to produce unique works. But how does digital art differ from traditional methods? What negative and positive sides does it have?
• Why do search engines show different results for the same search term? When entering a keyword into Google , Bing, or other search engines, one can get an array of different responses. This essay can explore different companies’ strategies to provide the best answers to their users’ queries.
• What are the disadvantages of clean energy sources ? With the issue of climate change on the rise, many scientists suggest using eco-friendly energy sources . Such options have many benefits for the world. However, they also pose some risks.
• The history of global nuclear energy development. Nuclear energy is a controversial topic among scientists. On the one hand, it is an alternative to fossil fuel use. On the other, the devastating effects of nuclear plant catastrophes expose many risks of this option. This energy source is an excellent topic for an exploratory or argumentative science essay.
• Benefits and drawbacks of wind and solar power for everyday use. Comparisons between solar and wind power are at the center of many debates about clean energy. Both options are considered environmentally friendly, but they are very different. A compare-and-contrast essay on this topic is sure to provide many points of discussion.
• Is it possible for people to produce more freshwater than there currently is? The freshwater supply is limited, and science searches for new ways to produce it. Some organizations collect rainwater and make it safe for consumption. Others try to invent more effective seawater filters. The goal of this search is to support the growing water demand.
• Can science prolong our lives or even let us live forever? Many people think about mortality and try to prolong their lives. Some researchers may believe that there are ways to make people live longer by slowing down aging. A scientific essay can explore people’s search for life extension strategies.

🔭 Space Exploration Essay Topics: Science and Technology

Science and Technology Topics in Space Studies

• What is the role of NASA in space research?
• How relevant is the problem of space debris?
• Describe the dynamics of space flights
• What is the role of dogs in space travel ?
• History and evolution of space research
• What is the purpose of planetary science ?
• The first man to travel into space
• Top 10 interesting facts about space
• Explain the concept of wormholes
• Ecological problems of space exploration
• Exploration and effects of dark matter
• Discuss the process of human adaptation to space conditions
• What have we learned from space research over the last decade?
• How do you understand and define spacetime?
• How does the James Webb Space Telescope work?
• What are some of the most prominent contributors to space research?
• Discuss possibilities of manned trips to other planets
• The evidence that proves the existence of black holes
• What is significant about the Solar System?
• What are gravitational waves , and how can we measure them?
• Describe the first 50 years of the space age
• Compare and contrast different space exploration techniques
• Discuss Space Exploration Day, its origin, and relevance
• The effect of space weather on the planet Earth
• Current trends and news about space exploration
• Who are the most famous American astronauts and researchers?
• What are the benefits of space research for society?
• The use of standard candles in measuring distance in space
• What are the economic benefits of space exploration?
• What are the space programs of major countries ?
• The history of non-human animals in spacecraft testing. Before the first human was sent into space, many animals were used to test spacecraft. Some of them successfully reached their goals and returned home. Countries such as the US and USSR sent various animals into space, ranging from dogs to chimpanzees.
• What is the connection between a planet and its moons ? Many planets, including the Earth, have one or several moons. In total, there are more than 200 moons in the Solar System . These natural satellites orbit their planets and influence their weather. Although Earth has only one natural satellite, the Moon , it plays a significant role in its climate.
• The biological effects of space travel and its long-term outcomes. Astronauts who spend time in space report changes in their behavior. For example, they get accustomed to the lack of gravity on the spaceship. Their health is also affected—even a short trip leads to “space adaptation syndrome.”
• What are the prospects of exploring space beyond the Solar System? Currently, human-led expeditions aim for nearby space segments. However, robotic spacecraft and powerful telescopes help people see beyond the Solar System. Voyagers 1 and 2 are the only NASA’s spacecraft that can cross interstellar limits. They still have enough power to collect more data.
• Gravity on Earth and in the Solar System. The role of gravity on Earth is vital for every system and occurrence. A gravitational pull that keeps planets in their orbits, but gravity can do much more—it creates stars, moves matter, and heats planetary cores.
• How far have the scientists reached in their exploration of space? People’s view of the universe has expanded dramatically since the first theories about space. Now, it appears endless, and people use the best technology to see its remotest corners. The Solar System is no longer the limit of exploration, and many vital discoveries contributed to this knowledge.
• The history of exoplanet research. Extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) move through space outside the Solar System. The first evidence of their existence appeared as early as the 1910s. However, it was confirmed scientifically only in the 1980s. Since then, researchers have discovered more than 4000 exoplanets.
• Why is Mars the primary goal of many missions? Mars is the center of space exploration news. Since 1933, NASA has led the Mars Exploration Program (MEP) to investigate the planet’s resources. It also has a solid surface that allows exploration robots to roam Mars in search of life.
• The international legacy of space exploration. During the Cold War , space exploration was a part of the US and the USSR competition. Since then, astronauts from many countries have participated in missions. Space programs have a national purpose, but cooperation between countries leads to better results.

Technology Essay Topics about Space Exploration

• History of space telescopes
• How is a sub-orbital rocket constructed?
• Describe any type of modern spacecraft
• How does a rocket engine work?
• Discuss the relevance of space weapons
• How does an artificial satellite work?
• The Cassini mission and its legacy
• The cultural impact of Curiosity rover
• What are safety measures on spacecrafts?
• What are the modern targets of space exploration?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of uncrewed spacecraft?
• Can space technology help to combat the avian influenza virus ?
• How long will it take for a spaceship to get to a nearby planet?
• Prospects for the development of space technologies
• Who are the pioneers of rocket and space technology?
• Spacecraft classification according to their missions
• What happens at the International Space Station ?
• Can space technology solve the energy crisis ?
• Project Orion: origin, challenges, and its impact
• The journeys of NASA’s robotic spacecraft around and beyond Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s history of space exploration includes many exciting expeditions. Human-led missions were grand and are remembered in history. However, unmanned probes have brought lots of information about space to NASA. They were able to collect samples for investigation and photograph remote planets.
• Why is gravity important in space explorations? Everyone knows that astronauts live in space with no gravity . Weightlessness is an issue that affects the human body. Some space objects have gravity, but it is different from Earth’s. Understanding this aspect of space exploration is vital for designing future missions.
• Elon Musk’s dream of building a rocket. The whole world follows the news of how scientists at Space X tried to reinvent spacecraft. They failed many times, but only to succeed and partner with NASA. Explore the timeline of their innovations in your essay.
• What is the role of experimentation in space travel improvement? Space exploration is a complicated field where a slight miscalculation can lead to dangerous results. Many space ships and probes have failed in decades of testing. That is why experimentation is a core part of exploration. Without failure, success cannot be achieved.
• How did the safety of spacecraft evolve over the years? Human spaceflights pose many dangers to the ship’s crew. People cannot survive in outer space, so the spacecraft must be safe from radiation and hostile environments. Moreover, astronauts who go into outer space or step on the surface of other planets have to be equipped to handle the harsh conditions.
• The history of communication in space. Communication between astronauts and Earth is crucial for all space missions. It is also a remedy for space travelers’ isolation from their families and loved ones. A special Space Network was developed to connect the researchers on Earth with the astronauts.
• The successes and failures of “space gardens.” Aboard the International Space Station , astronauts have entire gardens for various vegetables and flowers. However, the process of finding how to grow these plants was long. Space researchers had to solve problems with gravity, water delivery, fertilizer intake, and much more.
• Which technologies allowed people to mimic their daily activities in space? Even in space, people have to eat, sleep, and keep up with their hygiene. However, the lack of gravity turns these simple daily tasks into a challenge. Much of the space-related research was dedicated to creating freeze-dried food, no-rinse shampoo, and other interesting inventions to resolve this issue.
• The differences and similarities between types of spacecraft. Robotic spacecraft have unique characteristics that correspond with their missions. For example, flyby spacecraft explores the Solar System without landing. Some probes are designed to land on a planet and send data back to Earth . Others are made to penetrate the surface of a comet to measure its properties.
• How did crewless spacecraft evolve? The creation of uncrewed spacecraft has changed with the world’s technological advancement . At first, spacecraft only left the Earth’s atmosphere to observe space. Robots and rovers were eventually designed to land on other planets . These machines need to survive harsh environments to collect data.

Space Race Essay: Scientific Topics

• Cold War , space research, and diplomacy
• What were the consequences of the space race?
• Was the space race a result of the Cold War ?
• The failures and successes of the US in the space race
• Soviet vs. American rocket development
• Compare and contrast Sputnik and Explorer satellites
• How were space discoveries affected by the Cold War ?
• Timeline of space investigation during the Cold War
• How did the space race affect other spheres of scientific development?
• The state of US and USSR’s space programs after the end of the Cold War
• Why was the Moon chosen as the destination for both nations during the space race?
• The role of US/Soviet spacecraft cooperation in reducing Cold War tensions
• Planned trips to other planets of the Solar System during the space race
• What are the positive and negative consequences of the space race for the countries?
• How did the competition between the US and the USSR start? In the early 20 th century, the tensions between the United States and the USSR were combat-based. However, the arms race after World War II transformed it into a space race. Both nations wanted to be the first in achieving space exploration milestones.
• Was the creation of NASA a consequence of the Cold War? NASA was established in 1958. Its earlier projects show that the space race influenced the organization. For instance, the operation Man in Space Soonest (MISS) name reveals the competitive nature of early space exploration.
• The influence of the USSR’s space exploration achievements on American politics . The US was the first country to put a man on the Moon. Nevertheless, the USSR made several important discoveries as well. This fact undoubtedly affected American politics during and after the Cold War . It inspired political ideas rooted in scientific superiority and academic achievement.
• What did the Apollo missions achieve? The Apollo program lasted from 1968 until 1972, including six successful missions. Some spacecraft were launched to orbit the Moon and photograph its surface. During the Apollo 11 mission, two astronauts landed and walked on the Moon .

• Did the space race contribute to other tensions between the US and USSR ? The competition surrounding space exploration led to many domestic and foreign political changes. Both countries set ambitious goals and cultivated a sense of pride in their achievements. It may be argued that the space race was a continuation of a long tradition of seeking leadership in technology .
• The first woman in space and the history of female astronauts. The story of the first man in space is well-known to most people. However, the USSR also sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space in 1963. After that, no flights included women up until the 1980s. Nowadays, female astronauts come from many countries, but men on spacecraft crews still outnumber them.
• The role of Germany in the advancement of rocket technology in World War II . The space race usually mentions two key players—the US and the USSR. However, Germany also affected this competition during and after World War II. Missiles created in Nazi Germany showed that sub-orbital spaceflight was possible. Soviet and American rocket engineers used their military knowledge and transferred it into spacecraft design.
• The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. In 1972, the US and USSR leaders decided to push for cooperation rather than competition in the space race. As a result, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) began its development. It was the first international mission; in 1975, two spacecraft docked in space to symbolize unity.
• How did the first men in space contribute to space exploration? Both the US and the USSR were able to send people to space. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first human to fly in Earth’s orbit. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon. Both events significantly contributed to the countries’ national development and interest in space exploration.

Science and Technology Essay Ideas in Space Innovations

• Why should we continue space exploration ?
• How much money is spent on space research today?
• What are the future perspectives of space investigation?
• What are the major challenges in geodesy?
• The main types of space telescopes
• Is colonization of the Solar System possible?
• Should more money be invested in spacecraft innovations?
• What space innovations do you think will be invented in the future?
• Do you think humanity can survive an asteroid impact?
• Compare and contrast the colonization of outer space planets in 2 science fiction novels
• What can the previous crashes of spacecraft teach engineers? Many of the space missions failed across the globe. Crewless probes, drones , and spacecraft with a crew can fail at any stage of the flight. However, previous unsuccessful efforts are very useful for scientists.
• The potential for recreational space travel. Millions of people dream of going into space, but the astronaut profession is not for everyone. Recreational travel is a chance for tourists to experience space. It is a question of whether it will be possible.
• Key participants in space exploration innovations in the 21st century. In the last century, the US and USSR were the key countries in space exploration. Now, many nations contribute to innovations and develop new technologies. For example, the International Space Station (ISS) program includes Japan, Canada, Germany, and other countries.
• Elon Musk’s reusable rockets. Currently, most spacecraft cannot be reused for space missions. Many factors lead to aircraft degradation, making it dangerous for second use. One of the goals of Space X, created by Elon Musk , is to develop fully-reusable spacecraft.
• The ideas of space colonization in movies: are any of them realistic? Films such as The Martian , Interstellar , and Alien introduce exciting ideas about space travel. Although they are fictional, they may depict certain devices or scenarios that will be real in the future.
• What are the reasons behind people’s renewed interest in space travel? The end of the Cold War also marked diminished interest in space exploration. For some years, people didn’t pay much attention to it. However, now it appears that the passion for exploration has been sparked again. Many countries are currently working on their own spacecraft, and people see Mars as the new destination to conquer.
• Space drones and other crewless spacecraft for interplanetary exploration. Scientists were able to create various spacecraft to go beyond the limits of the Solar System. One of the latest ideas is to make interplanetary drones that will leave the Earth and gather information in a new way.
• Does the Moon present any potential for travel and colonization? Historically, the Moon landings are considered to be outstanding achievements. Now, the Moon is again the center of discussions. You can explore interesting concepts for colonizing the Moon.
• Technological advancements in creating safe and comfortable spacesuits for different environments. Space travel requires scientists to develop spacesuits that protect people from various harsh environments. For example, landing on Mars would require a suit that withstands great and rapid temperature changes.

💡 Science and Technology Essay Topics: Other Ideas

• The new Face ID technology: is it a revolutionary invention?
• What will technical schools look like in the future?
• Is the human brain more productive than a computer?
• The temperature on the surface of exoplanets
• Thomas Edison’s contribution to technological advancements
• How do sun rays affect people’s health?
• Revolutionary technologies and famous inventions from Japan
• Technologies that make driving safer
• How will people study exact sciences in the future?
• New technologies in modern architecture
• Stephen Hawking’s black holes hypothesis
• Is there a possibility that people’s manual labor might not be necessary for any manufacturing processes in the future?
• Do new technologies influence people’s appearance ? How do they do it?
• What would today’s world be like without cellphones and computers?
• What could Leonardo da Vinci possibly invent in the 21 st century?
• Will professions that don’t require the human factor remain in demand in several decades?
• What impact do new technologies have on people’s beliefs and personal philosophies ?
• New technologies and equipment that helps farmers during the wheat harvest
• Will hover drones replace helicopters in the future?
• What are the top 5 alternative energy sources?
• What technologies should be implemented to stop pollution on Earth?
• Social media’s  impact on the populations of different countries
• If people colonize Mars , what means of communication between two planets might be fast enough to share information?
• How can the problem of lack of Internet connection in some parts of the world be solved?
• A scientific approach to the problem of alcoholism
• NASA’s space projects that will be realized in the next decade
• Spheres in which computer technologies cannot replace human workers
• The history of computers: how was the first computer invented?
• A scientific approach to global warming: the most efficient methods of the catastrophe prevention
• Useful features in the new generation of computers and smartphones
• Ernest Rutherford’s scientific career and achievements
• The most technologically advanced country in the world
• Technologies implemented for cleaning the oceans from garbage
• Innovative methods of charging electronic devices
• Scientific research in spaceships: are travels at light speed possible?
• Modern automobiles and technologies that help drivers control their vehicles
• The furthest object that humanity managed to observe with the help of a telescope
• Is teleportation possible, or should people stop spending money on its development?
• The most ridiculous and useless scientific experiments
• The human brain and a  computer : differences and  similarities
• Gravity, temperature, and living conditions on the Moon
• What can be possibly found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? Will humanity ever reach its deepest point?
• Technologies used in nursing for delivering appropriate medication to patients in hospital settings
• Scientific research on the topic of protecting nature and the environment: ecologic technologies and policies
• Does the popular minimalist movement contribute to new technologies in any way?
• The tallest plants on Earth and where they grow
• Innovative technologies in  producing and reserving electricity  all over the world
• New technologies that prevent ships from falling over during storms
• Apple’s approach to the safety of their clients’ personal data
• How will the Solar System’s planets’ orbits change in the next century?
• The universe: how big can it possibly be?
• Nanotechnologies used in medicine to heal people with AIDS and cancer
• Earth’s collision with an asteroid in approximately 600 years: actual threat or a hoax?
• Is it ever going to be possible for humanity to travel outside the limits of our galaxy?
• Will humans terraform Mars instead of saving the Earth from an ecological catastrophe?
• Use of nanotechnologies in reducing the amount of garbage on the planet
• New technologies in sports and how will they influence people’s health
• Modern bicycles with reduced risk of accidents on the roads
• The safest means of transport in the world
• Virtual reality  and its use in art
• Can disabled people live a full life with the help of virtual reality?
• The best way to travel across the universe and galaxies
• Robots and their use in the mining industry
• Is there a possibility of human clones’ production?
• The most impressive innovations that people expect scientists to develop in the next century
• Nanotechnologies in biology: Is it possible that people might install microchips in their heads to record every memory and valuable data?
• Is it necessary to support human brain activities with the help of technology?
• Social media vs. television : will people stop watching TV altogether?
• New technologies in education: what new methods of teaching and studying might be helpful in colleges and universities?
• How does the world of electronic devices influence people’s relationships with one another?
• A new trend in Japan : marriages with virtual characters
• The effectiveness of physical exercises supported by new technologies
• How long does it take scientists to develop a vaccine against a virus that emerged unexpectedly?
• The diffusion of the Ebola virus and various methods of its prevention in healthy people
• Benefits of the 3D printing technology in healthcare
• In what ways did computers change people’s lives?
• Products that make people’s night rests healthier and their daily activities more productive
• The  environmental pollution’s impact on people’s health: toxic gases, dirty water, and GMO foods
• New technologies that help pilots control and land the aircrafts
• The role of drones in the modern world: how can people use this technology to save finances and prevent traffic jams?
• Vehicles of the future: how will people travel in several decades?
• What technologies should scientists develop for people to survive on Mars ?
• New technologies’ impact on people’s health, lifestyle, and values
• The technology of controlling computers and mobile phones using only brain activity
• New technologies that balance people’s nervous systems and prevent stresses
• Nanotechnologies in ophthalmology : helping children with visual impairments
• People’s mental health and how modern devices influence it
• New technologies in sustainability: recycling methods
• China’s rapid development : technologies that the country uses for its economic system’s growth
• Ways of producing oxygen on Mars in the future

• Technologies that filter water and make it suitable for consumption
• Apps and programs for effective remote work
• Oil drilling technologies and their impact on the environment
• How will the Internet change in 100 years, and what technology might replace the World Wide Web in the future?
• Apps and programs that help students in accomplishing and organizing scientific research
• The advantages of using the cloning technologies in household cares
• Undesirable outcomes of people’s dependency on their electronic devices: computers, mobile phones, and gaming consoles
• New technologies in language learning: innovative methods to expand one’s vocabulary
• New technologies used for transplanting vital organs
• The role of video games in people’s lives
• The possible harm that robots might cause to humanity
• Is it possible to travel through time, and what technologies might help develop a time machine ?
• How ecological fuel that might replace  natural gas , petrol, and diesel
• Perpetual motion machine: attempts of different scientists to create an engine with endless resources of energy
• Technologies that Americans use daily
• Scientific inventions or decisions that might save the world from an ecological catastrophe
• How far can people travel from Earth in outer space ?
• Automobiles’ aerodynamic qualities and how they have changed since the 1950s
• How do technologies change people’s mentalities and cultures?
• What is the purpose of inventing new warfare technologies if some countries have enough power to destroy our planet?
• The impact of new technologies on military establishment and relationships among countries
• Does the Internet make people more intelligent, or is it the other way round?
• Technologies restricted by law in the territory of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
• Do Internet search engines such as Google , Ask, and Bing make people less attentive to what they learn?
• If new software requires more memory space on computers, how many terabytes will an average user need to work online in 20 years?
• How can robots help humanity to increase people’s daily productivity?
• New Apple devices that can change people’s lives
• Alternative ways of finding and sharing necessary information in the future
• Will robots coexist with people in 100 years?
• Will translation software ever be able to replace professional interpreters?
• How can robots and other programmed machines provide medical treatment to hospital patients?
• New technologies in the taxi business
• Is technological progress a good thing, or should we deliberately slow it down?
• What technologies cause harm to the environment, Earth’s population, and the oceans?
• Technologies in the tattoo business: the most effective methods of putting colored pigments under the skin
• Does the US government use any technologies that allow them to wiretap people’s private calls? Is it ethical?
• What technologies should be implemented to create wireless access to the Internet worldwide?
• Do values of contemporary people focus on new technologies more than on everything else?
• What technologies should be implemented to reduce the possibility of overpopulation on Earth?
• Are  electric cars  more cost-effective and productive than vehicles that run on gasoline, diesel, and natural gas?
• Do Face ID and Touch ID technologies protect people’s data from hackers?
• Can any technology reduce the time required for night rests?
• How intelligent are dolphins and whales ?
• Newly emerged research areas and branches of science
• The role of synthetic biology in medicine
• Bionics: the main principles and purposes of the new science
• Nutrigenomics: food values and other factors that influence people’s health
• The main principles and objectives of the memetics study
• Neuroeconomics: the ability of the human brain to make wise decisions
• Sonocytology: the study of the sounds and impulses that the human cells make
• Technologies that help people socialize and rehabilitate after long-term
• How can zero gravity in outer space be used for people’s benefit?
• Which countries are known for their achievements in the sphere of chemistry ?
• Leading countries in the sphere of technology.
• How long will it take Earth to restore all its resources and energy consumed by humanity?
• Machine learning in restaurant and hotel businesses: Improved methods of cooperating with clients
• The ethics of implanting microchips in animals
• AI in online shopping : is it cost-efficient regarding both time and money?
• New technologies that reduce various health risks in polluted areas
• Innovative methods of completing medical operations are more accurate and reduce the possibilities of unfortunate outcomes
• Process automation aimed at cleaning eggs and removing bacteria from the natural products’ surfaces
• How can the implantation of microchips in the human brain help paralyzed individuals?
• Autopilot installed in heavy trucks
• Payment systems that require people’s eye or face scans: is this technology safer than ordinary passwords ?
• Camera options that allow people to film in the 360-degree mode
• Solar batteries and their significance in the modern age
• Smart computers that don’t require a person’s intervention to complete tasks or collect information
• Robotic chefs: the device’s functions and other options that make cooking easier
• The technology of modular phones: why did the idea of creating a phone that consists of multiple blocks fail?
• VR technology that might allow people to feel and touch virtual objects
• Water recycling technology that filters the water people use for showering
• Advanced fishing technologies: sensors, drones, and artificial intelligence
• Gyroscope and various devices based on its working principle
• New technologies in web design
• Newton circle and its spheres of use
• Scientific facts that prove the existence of other life forms in the outer space
• Active volcanoes that can erupt at any moment: preventative technologies and safety measures
• Technologies that make people healthy and fit without effort: are they possible?
• Augmented reality use in the cosmetics business
• Potential branches of science that might lead to the creation of new occupations in the future
• The most valuable resource on Earth and technological methods of its extraction
• Internet-of-Things: how is it used in agriculture ?
• Synthetic foods: do they contain any nutritional components?
• What technologies can help people reduce the cost of utilities ?
• Entertainment: how will VR technologies influence people’s hobbies in the future?
• How long will it take people to travel between Earth and Mars?
• The temperature on Mars: is it possible for humans to survive on the Red Planet without additional heating devices?
• What will people eat on Mars, and how will they get their food?
• Professions that humanity might need on Mars during colonization
• Messages sent by society in outer space: will they ever be answered?
• If there are other forms of life in different galaxies, how will humans understand and contact them?
• Satellites on our planet’s orbit: what do these devices do, and why are they important for people?
• Is it possible for a human being to stay in a deep freeze for an extended period?
• What do cosmonauts research and observe in the orbit of Earth?
• The main problems of modern science: what issues are scientists trying to solve?
• How dangerous can new technologies be for our environment?
• How do different professions change and improve due to technological development ?
• Ethical aspects of genetic engineering for humans
• Egyptian pyramids : technologies that ancient Egyptians used to build their pharaohs’ graves
• Contemporary achievements in genetics
• How have helicopters developed since the 1950s?
• Controversial issues of stem cell research
• German technologies in road building: how is it possible to build a high-quality road for decades?
• Wireless technologies that maternity hospitals use
• What is antimatter, and how can it be used in the medical field?
• How has  technology changed our lives compared to people living a century ago?
• The technology you cannot live without
• What are  the advantages  and disadvantages of genetic engineering?
• Experiments on humans: can they be justified for the sake of science development?
• Can alternative energy technologies provide humanity with sustainable energy resources?
• What technologies can limit the adverse human impact on the environment ?
• Smart devices that can help you reduce your carbon footprint
• Is there a connection between human activity and natural disasters ?
• Military technology advancement: a way to safety or a global threat?
• Robot army: a scene from a movie or our near future?
• Science and technology for personal safety
• Advances in science and technology for  cybersecurity
• Development of technologies for safe online purchases

📝 Science and Technology Essay Prompts

Writing science and technology essays might be a challenging task. Our essay prompts are here to inspire you. Keep reading to make your essay writing even more effortless.

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Science in Everyday Life Essay Prompt

Every day we are surrounded by marvelous inventions that can be described in your paper:

• Anything made of plastic. Today numerous industries rely on the production of plastic, from packaging and electronics to aerospace and industrial engineering.
• Anything charged with electricity. The work of people like Alessandro Volta or Andre-Marie Ampere lies at the foundation of the electrical industry.
• Any food item in front of you. Science has revolutionized our approach to food cultivation and raised agricultural productivity to a new level.
• Any modern medicine. At the end of the 18th century, scientist Edward Jenner established that vaccination works. And in the 19th century, the germ theory of disease emerged, which saved millions of lives over two hundred years.

Technology in the Future Essay Prompt

If you choose to write a paper about technology in the future, you can consider describing the following technologies:

• Vision-improving technology . Artificial cornea or iris can provide vision to people with impairments.
• Small living robots . These robots can deliver medicine to different body parts or collect microplastic from the oceans.
• Internet everywhere . Companies such as Google or Facebook use helium balloons, drones, microsatellites, and other technology to provide the Internet to inaccessible areas.
• Dairy products made in a lab . Biotech companies are searching for a way to make dairy products more available and less damaging to the environment. There are already some lab-made dairy products available in the US.

Interest in Science Essay Prompt

If you wish to tell about your interest in science or make your reader interested in it, take a look at these ideas:

• Factors that influence one’s attitude towards science. You can analyze reasons for students’ interest or indifference towards science.
• Parents’ role in children’s attitude towards science. Discuss how parents, their social status, or education level affect their children’s interests.
• How does one’s faith affect their perception of science? Some religious beliefs don’t support scientific ideas about life and the universe.

Importance of Science Essay Prompt

Science is essential for our society, environment, and many other parts of our lives. In your essay about the importance of science, you can include the following points:

• Science is solving the mysteries of our universe. One of the main goals of science is to gain knowledge about the world. It helps us understand different phenomena and find solutions to numerous problems.
• How science benefits society . Science is also used to improve our life quality. Education and knowledge allow us to make our lives easier and more enjoyable.
• The way science helps solve global challenges . Health, agriculture, and other spheres rely on science. Governments also use science to combat issues, such as climate change.

✍️ How to Write a Scientific Essay

To achieve academic prowess in science and technology studies, you will need to get good at writing scientific essays. Here are the general principles of essay writing:

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Essay on Science and Technology Outline

The structure of a science and technology essay remains the same as basically any other essay type. It includes the following points:

Science & Technology Essay Introduction

In your introduction, you should make your reader interested in your topic. Start with a hook, and don’t forget to include some background information. You can consult our article about writing a good introduction for more info.

An introduction of a science and technology essay about the disadvantages of space exploration can look like that:

Space exploration’s contribution to environmental science is impossible to deny. However, it might also be damaging to the environment itself. Space exploration produces hydrochloric acid and carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming.

Thesis Statement about Technology & Science

Close your introduction with a thesis to state the main point of your essay. Make sure to support your point with evidence throughout the text.

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There should be ways to make space exploration less damaging to the environment since the pollution caused by it is getting worse every year.

Science and Technology Essay Body

The body paragraphs are the central part of your essay. There you show your investigation results and support them with solid arguments. Don’t forget to open each of the paragraphs with a topic sentence that can let your reader know the main idea of the passage (you can learn more from this article about topic sentences by Rochester Institute of Technology.)

Aluminum oxide particles produced during rocket launches absorb the radiation and contribute to global warming. NASA uses fuel that consists of aluminum powder and ammonium perchlorate in their solid booster rockets. They form aluminum oxide when combined. As a result, these rocket launches are damaging to the environment and are one of the causes of climate change and global warming.

Science and Technology Essay Conclusion

The conclusion closes your essay by restating your thesis statement and making your reader want to dive further into your topic. Keep in mind that just saying that “more research on the subject is required” is not what the conclusion should be about. Make sure to include plenty of details in addition to summarizing the articles.

To sum up, although space exploration allows us to know more about our universe and makes our life easier, it also negatively affects the environment. Less damaging ways are needed in order for us to continue gaining knowledge and improving our life quality without hurting our planet.

Choosing Topics Related to Science and Technology

The field of science and technology is so broad that it is not very easy to decide on good science and technology topics right away. That is why we will explain the main issues to pay attention to while picking out a topic for your scientific essay:

• It must be interesting for you as a writer;
• It should be of current importance for readers;
• It has to shed light on some scientific innovations.

If you consider these three points, you’ll have an excellent opportunity to succeed in writing your essays on science and technology.

If you feel lost and unsure what is a worthy topic, try thinking about something down-to-earth and present in our daily lives. For more tips on choosing good topics, check out some brainstorming techniques in our Guide to Academic Writing or use our topic generator .

Scientific Essay: Bonus Tips

• Be sure you correctly understand the chosen problem.
• Formulate your sentences well.
• Use linking phrases within paragraphs and the text as a whole.
• Ensure that your text is cohesive and logical.
• Write in a language that would be clear even to an audience of non-professionals.
• Mind the tone and wording of your technology essay.
• Be careful not to make mistakes in spelling, grammar, style, and format.
• Sound formal but not moralizing.
• Foresee possible questions from your readers and answer them beforehand.
• Call your readers to action and push them toward an adequate response.

Although essays might be one of the most common writing assignments, our free tips are here to make your studies even more enjoyable! We hope the information presented here will help you create an excellent scientific essay. Let us know what you think about our guide in the comments below!

Further reading:

• Funny Informative Speech Topics and Ideas for Presentation
• A List of Informative Speech Topics: Best Creative Topic Ideas
• Good Informative Speech Topics: How to Get Thunders of Applause
• Social Studies Topics for Your Research Project
• Satirical Essay Examples and Best Satire Essay Topics
• Evidence: UNC Writing Center
• What Is STS: Harvard University
• An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies: London’s Global University
• What is the Study of STS? Stanford University
• Science and Technology: Gale
• Essay Structure: Ashford Writing Center
• 100 Technology Topics for Research Papers: Owlcation
• A CS Research Topic Generator: Purdue University
• Research Topics List: NASA
• 11 of The Biggest Innovations Shaping The Future of Spaceflight Today: Insider
• Space Exploration Timeline: ALIC
• Science and Technology: Academia
• Modern Technology: ScienceDirect
• Are Space Launches Bad for the Environment?: Science Focus
• The Future of Space Exploration: University of Central Florida
• The Space Race: Digital History
• Sputnik, 1957: United States Department of State
• Space Exploration and Innovation: UNOOSA
• Benefits of Science: University of California, Berkeley
• Technology in Space Exploration and Beyond: Experimental College
• US Views of Technology and the Future: Pew Research Center
• The Development of Interest in Science: NCBI
• Science for Society: UNESCO
• Science and Technology: RAND
• The Relationship between Science and Technology: ScienceDirect
• Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) and Culture for Sustainable Development and The MDGs: United Nations
• Religion and Science: The Atlantic
• Writing the Scientific Paper: Colorado State University
• International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking: Space.com: NASA, Space Exploration and Astronomy News
• Screaming Yeast: Sonocytology, Cytoplasmic Milieus, and Cellular Subjectivities: University of Chicago
• What is Nanotechnology?: University of Wisconsin–Madison
• 5 Influential NASA Inventions: Ohio University
• GMO Crops, Animal Food, and Beyond: US Food and Drug Administration
• Hydroponics: Oklahoma State University
• The Science of Virtual Reality: The Franklin Institute
• How Important Is Technology in Education? Benefits, Challenges, and Impact on Students: American University, Washington, DC.
• What was Pangea?: USGS
• Renewable Energy Explained: US Energy Information Administration
• Deep Space Communication and Navigation: European Space Agency
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Well, I like your tips and suggestions, but please give us some topics that are related to our issues nowadays. Also, give us some specific and eye-catching title to help us with our article. Thank you : )

Thanks for the advice, Barbie, I’ll keep that in mind 🙂

Excellent post. I’m going through a few of these issues as well.

I hope to write my Science and Technology essay successfully. I read your post and think to complete my essay on Science and Technology without any problems.

Fascinating topics for my essay on Science and Technology! Hm, don’t know which one to choose for my paper… but now this is not a big problem) Thanks!

Science and Technology Essay for Students

• 1 Science and Technology Essay 100 words
• 2 Science and Technology Essay 150 words
• 3 Science and Technology Essay 200 words
• 4 Science and Technology Essay 250 words
• 5 Science and Technology Essay 300 words
• 6.1 The Role of Science in Society
• 6.2 The Role of Technology in Society
• 6.3 The Relationship between Science and Technology
• 6.4 Ethical Implications of Science and Technology
• 6.5 Future of Science and Technology
• 7.1 Introduction
• 7.2 The Role of Science in Society
• 7.3 The Impact of Technology on Society
• 7.4 Ethical Considerations in Science and Technology
• 7.5 The Future of Science and Technology
• 8 Science and Technology Essay 10 Lines
• 9 Science and Technology Essay 20 Lines
• 10.1 What is a science and technology essay?
• 10.2 What are the key elements of a science and technology essay?
• 10.3 What is the purpose of a science and technology essay?
• 10.4 What are some tips for writing a good science and technology essay?

Science and Technology Essay 100 words

Science and technology are important for our daily lives. Science helps us understand how things work and technology helps us use that knowledge to make our lives easier.

For example, we use science to understand how plants grow and technology to make machines that help us grow more food. We also use science to understand how our bodies work and technology to make medicine that helps us stay healthy.

Science and technology are constantly improving, and new inventions are being made all the time. This is why it’s important to learn about science and technology, so that we can keep making our lives better and better!

Science and Technology Essay 150 words

Science and technology are all around us, from the phone in our pockets to the medicine that makes us feel better when we are sick. Science is all about discovering new things about the world, while technology is about using those discoveries to make our lives easier.

One of the most important things that science has taught us is that everything is made up of tiny things called atoms. These atoms combine to form everything around us, from the air we breathe to the food we eat.

Technology has allowed us to use these discoveries to create amazing things like computers, cars, and airplanes. We can even explore outer space and learn more about our universe because of technology.

Science and technology are constantly changing and improving, which means that there are always new things to learn and discover. Who knows what amazing things we will be able to do in the future because of science and technology.

Science and Technology Essay 200 words

Science and technology are two important aspects of our lives. Science is a way of exploring and understanding the world around us, while technology is the practical application of science to make our lives better. Science and technology have made our lives easier and more comfortable.

Science has helped us to learn about the human body, the universe, and the natural world. It has given us knowledge about how things work and has helped us to invent new things. Science has helped us to cure diseases, create new medicines, and develop new technologies.

Technology has given us machines and tools that have made our lives easier. We use technology to communicate with others, travel to different places, and access information. Technology has improved the way we work, learn, and live. We use computers, smartphones, and other devices to stay connected with the world.

Science and technology have also helped us to address many environmental challenges. We have developed technologies that help us to reduce pollution, conserve energy, and protect our natural resources.

Science and Technology Essay 250 words

Science and technology have greatly impacted human civilization in numerous ways. From the discovery of fire to the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, humans have always sought to improve their lives through innovation and invention. Science has helped us understand the world around us and has enabled us to develop new technologies that make our lives easier, more comfortable, and safer.

The advances in medical technology have improved healthcare, enabling us to cure and prevent many diseases. The development of the internet and communication technologies have revolutionized how we communicate and conduct business. Transportation has been transformed with the invention of cars, airplanes, and other vehicles, making travel faster and more convenient. Energy technologies have enabled us to harness energy from the sun, wind, and other sources, reducing our reliance on non-renewable sources of energy.

However, with every new technology, there are also potential risks and ethical considerations. We must consider the impacts of technology on the environment and how it may affect our health and safety. We must also consider the ethical implications of technologies such as artificial intelligence and gene editing, and ensure that they are developed and used in a responsible and ethical manner.

Science and technology have transformed human society and will continue to do so in the future. It is important that we continue to innovate and develop new technologies, but also consider the potential risks and ethical implications. By doing so, we can create a better world for future generations.

Science and Technology Essay 300 words

Science and technology have revolutionized the world in countless ways. Science involves the study of the natural world and its phenomena, while technology refers to the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. Both science and technology are closely interconnected and have greatly contributed to the progress and development of human society.

One of the most significant contributions of science and technology is in the field of medicine. Advances in medical science and technology have led to the development of life-saving medicines, medical equipment, and surgical procedures, which have significantly improved the quality of life for people around the world.

Science and technology have transformed the way we communicate and share information. The internet, smartphones, and social media have made it easier than ever before to connect with people across the globe and access information from anywhere.

Another important area where science and technology have made a huge impact is in the field of transportation. The development of cars, airplanes, trains, and other modes of transportation has made travel faster, more convenient, and accessible to a larger number of people.

In the field of energy, science and technology have also played a major role. Advances in renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, and hydro power have helped reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and contribute to a cleaner and more sustainable future.

The impact of science and technology on our lives is immeasurable. From healthcare to transportation, communication to energy, these fields have transformed our world and will continue to shape our future. It is essential that we continue to invest in research and development to drive innovation and progress forward for the betterment of humankind.

Science and Technology Essay 500 words

Science and technology are two of the most important aspects of modern society. Science refers to the study of the natural world and the phenomena that occur within it. Technology, on the other hand, is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. The significance of science and technology cannot be overstated as they have revolutionized the way we live our lives. In this essay, we will examine the role of science and technology in society, the relationship between science and technology, the ethical implications of scientific and technological advancements, and predictions about the future of science and technology.

The Role of Science in Society

Science has played a significant role in shaping society. Scientific discoveries and inventions have revolutionized medicine, transportation, communication, and agriculture, among other fields. For example, the discovery of antibiotics has saved millions of lives, while the development of the internet has transformed the way we communicate and access information. Science has also helped us understand our place in the universe and the natural world, leading to new discoveries about the cosmos, evolution, and the environment. Furthermore, science has enabled us to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges, such as climate change and pandemics.

The Role of Technology in Society

Technology has also played a vital role in shaping society. Technological advancements have transformed the way we live our lives, from smartphones and laptops to electric cars and renewable energy. These advancements have increased productivity, improved communication, and made life more convenient. They have also opened up new opportunities for entrepreneurship and economic growth. For example, the rise of e-commerce has enabled businesses to reach customers worldwide, while the development of renewable energy has the potential to address the world’s energy needs sustainably.

The Relationship between Science and Technology

Science and technology are closely interrelated. Science provides the knowledge and understanding that underpins technological advancements. Technology, on the other hand, allows us to apply scientific knowledge to practical problems. For example, the development of vaccines requires knowledge of microbiology and immunology, but it also involves the application of engineering and manufacturing techniques to produce the vaccine at scale. Similarly, the development of solar cells requires knowledge of physics and chemistry, but it also involves the application of engineering and design principles to create efficient and cost-effective solar panels.

Ethical Implications of Science and Technology

Scientific and technological advancements have the potential to improve our lives significantly, but they also raise ethical concerns. For example, the use of genetic engineering to edit human embryos raises questions about the ethics of altering the human genome. The development of artificial intelligence raises concerns about job displacement and the potential for AI to become uncontrollable. Furthermore, the use of technology for surveillance and social control raises concerns about privacy and individual rights.

Future of Science and Technology

The future of science and technology is exciting and full of possibilities. Emerging technologies such as quantum computing, gene editing, and nanotechnology have the potential to transform our world in ways we cannot yet imagine. However, the future also presents significant challenges, such as addressing climate change, ensuring equitable access to technology, and managing the impact of technological disruption on society.

Science and Technology Essay 1000 words

Introduction.

Science and technology have revolutionized the way we live, work, and communicate. In today’s world, they are the driving forces behind almost all aspects of modern society. From medicine and transportation to communication and entertainment, science and technology have brought about a paradigm shift in our lives. In this essay, we will explore the importance of science and technology in modern society, their impact on various aspects of our lives, ethical considerations, and future implications.

Scientific discoveries and innovations have played a pivotal role in shaping our modern world. From electricity and automobiles to space exploration and computers, science has enabled us to achieve feats that were once considered impossible. The discoveries of scientists like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton have changed our understanding of the universe and paved the way for modern physics. In addition, science has played a critical role in healthcare and medicine, leading to the development of life-saving vaccines, surgical techniques, and treatments for various diseases.

Technological advancements in communication and transportation have enabled us to connect with people from different parts of the world and travel to places that were once unreachable. The invention of the telephone, radio, television, and the internet have transformed the way we communicate, making it easier and faster to share information and ideas. Similarly, advances in transportation have made it possible to travel faster and more efficiently, connecting people and places like never before.

The Impact of Technology on Society

Technology has brought about significant changes in our lives, both positive and negative. On the positive side, technology has increased efficiency and productivity, making it easier to perform tasks and accomplish goals. It has also improved access to information and education, making it possible for people to learn new skills and acquire knowledge from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, technology has enhanced communication and collaboration, making it easier for people to work together and share ideas.

On the negative side, technology has contributed to social isolation and addiction. With the rise of social media and other digital platforms, people are becoming more disconnected from each other, leading to feelings of loneliness and depression. In addition, technology has resulted in job displacement and economic inequality, with many low-skilled jobs being replaced by machines and automation. Finally, technology has contributed to environmental degradation and climate change, with the overuse of natural resources and the production of harmful emissions.

Ethical Considerations in Science and Technology

The development and use of science and technology raise ethical concerns that must be addressed. Ethical principles guide scientific research and ensure that it is conducted in an ethical and responsible manner. For example, researchers must obtain informed consent from participants before conducting any experiments, and they must ensure that their research does not harm people or the environment.

Similarly, the development and use of technology raise ethical concerns that must be addressed. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering raise questions about privacy, human rights, and social justice. Governments and other stakeholders must ensure that technology is developed and used in an ethical and responsible manner, and that it benefits all members of society, not just a privileged few.

The Future of Science and Technology

The future of science and technology is both exciting and challenging. Emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and robotics have the potential to transform our lives in ways that we cannot yet imagine. However, they also raise significant ethical, social, and environmental concerns that must be addressed. For example, the rise of artificial intelligence and automation raises questions about the future of work and the impact on jobs and the economy. Similarly, the use of biotechnology raises questions about the ethical implications of genetic engineering and the potential for misuse.

Strategies for ensuring equitable and sustainable technological progress include investing in education and research, promoting responsible innovation and entrepreneurship, and strengthening regulation and governance frameworks. By doing so, we can ensure that the benefits of science and technology are accessible to all members of society and that their development and use are guided by ethical principles and values.

Science and technology have transformed our lives and brought about significant changes in modern society. While they have brought about significant benefits, they also raise ethical concerns and challenges that must be addressed. The future of science and technology is both exciting and challenging, and we must work together to ensure that technological progress is equitable, sustainable, and guided by ethical principles. By investing in education and research, promoting responsible innovation and entrepreneurship, and strengthening regulation and governance frameworks, we can build a better future for all members of society.

Science and Technology Essay 10 Lines

• Science and technology have played a crucial role in shaping human civilization, leading to the development of tools, machines, and systems that have transformed every aspect of our lives.
• The scientific method involves the systematic observation, measurement, experimentation, and analysis of data to gain knowledge and understanding of natural phenomena.
• Technology refers to the application of scientific knowledge and engineering principles to solve practical problems and create new products, tools, and processes.
• Advances in science and technology have led to numerous benefits, such as improved healthcare, more efficient transportation, and increased access to information.
• However, they have also created new challenges, such as the ethical implications of emerging technologies and the potential for negative environmental impacts.
• Some of the key scientific and technological innovations of the past few centuries include the steam engine, electricity, telecommunications, computers, and the internet.
• The development of new materials and manufacturing processes has also enabled the creation of more advanced products and systems, such as microchips, solar panels, and biotechnology.
• The pace of scientific and technological advancement has accelerated rapidly in recent decades, driven in part by globalization, increased investment, and collaboration across disciplines.
• To fully realize the potential benefits of science and technology, it is important to ensure that they are developed and used in a responsible and sustainable way that takes into account the needs and well-being of individuals, communities, and the environment.
• Science and technology are essential components of human progress and development, but their impact must be carefully managed to ensure a positive future for all.

Science and Technology Essay 20 Lines

• Science is the study of the natural world, while technology is the application of scientific knowledge to create useful products and services.
• The two fields are closely related and often work hand-in-hand to achieve progress and improve people’s lives.
• Science and technology have played a crucial role in human history, from the discovery of fire to the development of the internet.
• Advances in science and technology have led to major changes in society, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age.
• The scientific method is a key component of science, which involves observing, hypothesizing, testing, and analyzing data to draw conclusions.
• Technology development relies on a similar process of experimentation and iteration.
• One of the most important benefits of science and technology is their ability to solve problems and improve living standards.
• Medical advances have extended lifespans and improved quality of life, while transportation technology has made it easier to travel and connect with others.
• Communication technology has also played a significant role in bringing people closer together and enabling global exchange of information and ideas.
• Science and technology have also contributed to environmental improvements, such as renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.
• The downside of science and technology is that it can also create new problems and risks, such as nuclear weapons and climate change.
• Scientists and engineers have a responsibility to consider the potential ethical and social implications of their work.
• Collaboration between different scientific fields and between science and industry is important for maximizing the benefits of scientific research and technological innovation.
• The public also has a role to play in supporting and engaging with science and technology, through education and public discourse.
• Access to scientific knowledge and technology is also important for promoting social and economic equality.
• Science and technology education can prepare people for a wide range of careers, from research and development to engineering and entrepreneurship.
• The pace of technological change is accelerating, with new developments in fields like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and space exploration.
• As science and technology continue to shape our world, it is important to consider their impact on society and the planet.
• Collaboration between government, industry, and academia is essential for addressing global challenges and maximizing the benefits of science and technology.
• Science and technology have the potential to create a better future for all, but it requires responsible stewardship and ethical decision-making.

What is a science and technology essay?

A science and technology essay is an academic composition that discusses the advancements, challenges, and impacts of scientific and technological innovations on society.

What are the key elements of a science and technology essay?

A science and technology essay typically includes an introduction, body paragraphs that discuss the topic in detail, and a conclusion. The body paragraphs should be structured around a clear thesis statement, and they should use evidence, data, and examples to support the arguments made.

What is the purpose of a science and technology essay?

The purpose of a science and technology essay is to inform and persuade the reader about the significance of scientific and technological innovations in our lives. A well-written essay can help readers understand complex concepts, evaluate different perspectives, and make informed decisions.

What are some tips for writing a good science and technology essay?

Some tips for writing a good science and technology essay include choosing a topic that is interesting and relevant, conducting thorough research, organizing your ideas in a clear and logical way, using evidence to support your arguments, and proofreading carefully to avoid errors in grammar and spelling.

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Future of Science and Technology Essay

A Future of Science and Technology essay is a great way to show your talents in the field of science. If you are looking to get into college or university, you may want to consider taking a course on science. If you are not very good at math or science, you may be able to find a course that will help you along the way.

Future of science and technology essays are often very interesting and will allow the reader to see all sides of an issue. These essays can also be written for either a teacher or a student. When writing a science and technology essay, it is important to think of the audience you are writing for. This will help you write in a more interesting manner that will give your audience something to look forward to.

Future of science and technology essays are usually written on a topic related to an important upcoming event in the world of science. One of the biggest concerns today is global warming. If you want to take a stand for the environment, then consider writing an essay on global warming. There are many people who believe that global warming is just a myth. However, there are those that believe that it is real.

The Future of Science and Technology essay can cover many different things. One of the most popular topics of science and technology is nanotechnology. nanotechnology is when materials are used in their smallest pieces. Nanotechnology is a very new field and scientists are just beginning to figure out what is involved in nanotechnology. If you want to write a Future of Science and Technology essay on nanotechnology, you should really get to know this topic.

If you are interested in the future of science and technology, you may want to start by thinking about some of the more futuristic ideas that have been around for years. Some of these ideas include things such as space colonies, and flying cars. If you are interested in the future of science and technology, you will want to write an essay on this topic.

Future of science and technology essays can also be written on topics such as artificial intelligent robotic androids and artificial super intelligence. One of the greatest challenges that humans face today is how to keep up with the ever advancing technology that we have come across. Computers will soon be more advanced and able to do more than just play chess.

In order to write a Future of Science and Technology essay, it is important to know where you are going in the future. If you are someone who is very optimistic and loves science, you will want to write an essay about the future of science and technology. However, if you are someone who is very pessimistic, then you may want to write an essay that is more critical.

Future of science and technology essay examples can be found online and can be very helpful for both students and teachers. When you are writing a Future of science and technology essay, make sure you pay attention to the information that you learn. This will help you gain insight into the future of science and technology.

Future of science and technology is something that is likely to be around for a very long time and will affect everyone in one way or another. It will be something that can affect people from different cultures, countries, and even different countries in different parts of the world.

In order to write a Future of Science and technology essay, you will want to think about things that you are passionate about and write about them in an essay. The essay can contain facts and figures but also can include some of your opinions and your thoughts on how this future is going to affect people in the future. The essay is the best way that you can give the reader an idea of your opinion on the future of science and technology.

When you are preparing to write a Future of Science and technology essay, you should be open to suggestions and criticism. This is the best way to find out how the Future of Science and Technology essay is going to turn out. There are so many ideas out there and it will be easier to come up with an essay that makes sense to the reader and the student.

Pros and Cons of Technology in the Classroom Essay

Writing an Evolution of Technology Essay

AI’s Transformative Impact on Art, Science, and Media: A Comprehensive Overview

T he advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may be put to use for a revolution in art, science, and media. This prospect of the future may change; it may lead to a future where AI takes over from human capabilities in the area of creativity, innovation, and productivity. With huge steps that could have a significant reach, it will be soon that, as experts suggest, the influence of AI has permeated every facet of these industries.

AI in art and bridging creativity and technology 

The boundary of conventional norms is also broken as AI moves forward in the world of art and allows for the generation of unique pieces of work that have been considered impossible in the past.

Innovations such as Inkflow, an AI application, now make it possible for one to write a 25,000-word non-fiction eBook in a matter of 12 minutes, proving how fast and flexible AI is in producing content. Similarly, companies such as Suno, an AI-generated music platform, are really pointing to where this space might go, with the ability to not only curate but literally craft their tracks across the entire genre of music—all personalized just for the listener. These advances further solidify the role AI has in democratizing the creation of art.

Revolutionizing science and material discovery

It is thus with much utility to the scientific community, especially in material science, where the discovery process has been well hastened. Works like the Google Research GNoMe and A-Lab at Berkeley Labs reveal that AI use may be applicable for boosting of our understanding of developing new material. That is, such AI-driven systems would be able to analyze and test thousands of samples on a daily basis, thus letting scientists make new material discoveries at the speed of activity that cannot be reached even by the most hardworking of human researchers. 

The potential of AI to drive scientific development is outlined by the fact that quick progress could bring breakthroughs to many diversified fields, from renewable energy to medical technology.

Media production redefined by AI

In media production, AI is set to redefine content creation, from literature to movies and beyond. Platforms like Sora from OpenAI show the kind of capabilities user-tailored content may entail, such as creating short video clips of text. This is the technology that promises a future where full-length movies can be made to your exact specifications but without the resources of traditional film production.

In video production, other AI applications—like EMO’s deepfake videos, for example—literally realize the threat of producing hyper-realistic content from minimal inputs. These very developments thus seem to presage a media environment in which the ease of access to personalized content could threaten traditional models of creation. 

Navigating the future in opportunities and challenges

What a very big implication the development of AI has on the workforce and norms of society. The prospect that AI could be used for automation raises the question of job displacement across several sectors. A report that has just emanated from Goldman Sachs gives a fairly grim outlook: It offers odds of 18-47% of jobs being at risk from AI and automation across the world. Moreover, as the report outlines, most industries are bound to suffer complementation rather than substitution of AI over human jobs, which would replace the given labor. For both the above improvements in AI, there is a need for more cautious management of the transition, wherein there seems to underline the importance of adapting to the new technological landscapes. An important focus, as AI shapes industries, should be the use of these technologies to increase human ability and further innovation. 

The final goal is to navigate through the changes that the AI tidal wave promises to bring, benefiting society at large in a way that “AI for good” becomes more than mere rhetoric. Overall, the influence of AI is very deep on art, science, and media, which will find distinctive opportunities for innovation and scopes for creativity that were impossible before. As we stand on the brink of such transformative changes, the challenge is to bring AI’s potential to responsible and ethical use. In that way, we will ensure that the new automated world into which we venture is assured, confidently, that the future, far from bright, is, as it ever was, inclusive and equitable to all.

Exclusive: Behind the plot to break Nvidia's grip on AI by targeting software

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Japan approves $3.9 billion in subsidies for chipmaker Rapidus

Japan's industry ministry said on Tuesday it has approved subsidies worth up to 590 billion yen ($3.9 billion) for chip foundry venture Rapidus as Tokyo pushes forward with plans to rebuild the country's chip manufacturing base.

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March 22, 2024

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Top computer scientists say the future of artificial intelligence is similar to that of Star Trek

by Meg Cox, Loughborough University

Leading computer scientists from around the world have shared their vision for the future of artificial intelligence—and it resembles the capabilities of Star Trek character "The Borg."

Experts from the likes of Loughborough University, MIT, and Yale say we are set to see the emergence of "Collective AI," where numerous artificial intelligence units, each capable of continuously acquiring new knowledge and skills, form a network to share information with each other.

The researchers—who unveiled their vision in a perspective paper in Nature Machine Intelligence —recognize the striking similarities between Collective AI and many science fiction concepts. One example they cite is The Borg, cybernetic organisms featured in the Star Trek universe, which operate and share knowledge through a linked hive-mind.

However, unlike many sci-fi narratives, the computer scientists envision Collective AI will lead to major positive breakthroughs across various fields.

Loughborough University's Dr. Andrea Soltoggio, the research lead, explained, "Instant knowledge sharing across a collective network of AI units capable of continuously learning and adapting to new data will enable rapid responses to novel situations, challenges, or threats.

"For example, in a cybersecurity setting if one AI unit identifies a threat, it can quickly share knowledge and prompt a collective response—much like how the human immune system protects the body from outside invaders.

"It could also lead to the development of disaster response robots that can quickly adapt to the conditions they are dispatched in, or personalized medical agents that improve health outcomes by merging cutting-edge medical knowledge with patient-specific information.

"The potential applications are vast and exciting."

The researchers acknowledge there are risks associated with Collective AI—such as the swift spread of potentially unethical or illicit knowledge—but highlight a crucial safety aspect of their vision: AI units maintain their own objectives and independence from the collective.

Dr. Soltoggio says this would "result in a democracy of AI agents, significantly reducing the risks of an AI domination by few large systems."

The computer scientists arrived at the conclusion that the future of AI lies in collective intelligence following an analysis of recent advancements in machine learning .

Their research revealed global efforts are concentrated on enabling lifelong learning (where an AI agent can extend its knowledge throughout its operational lifespan) and developing universal protocols and languages that will allow AI systems to share knowledge with each other.

This differs from current large AI models, such as ChatGPT, which have limited lifelong learning and knowledge-sharing capabilities. Such models acquire most of their knowledge during energy-intense training sessions and are unable to continue learning.

"Recent research trends are extending AI models with the ability to continuously adapt once deployed, and make their knowledge reusable by other models, effectively recycling knowledge to optimize learning speed and energy demands," says Dr. Soltoggio.

"We believe that the current dominating large, expensive, non-shareable and non-lifelong AI models will not survive in a future where sustainable, evolving, and sharing collective of AI units are likely to emerge."

He continued, "Human knowledge has grown incrementally over millennia thanks to communication and sharing.

"We believe similar dynamics are likely to occur in future societies of artificial intelligence units that will implement democratic and collaborating collectives."

Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University, Professor Nick Jennings, is an internationally-recognized authority in the areas of AI, autonomous systems, cyber-security and agent-based computing. He said, "I'm delighted to see Loughborough researchers leading in this important area of AI research.

"This paper helps set the agenda for the next wave of AI developments, based upon multiple, interacting agents. I look forward to seeing this vision becoming a reality in the coming years."

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NASA Is Recruiting a New Class of Astronauts

Victor Glover, a nine-year veteran of the astronaut corps who will fly around the moon in 2025, said the search for excellence and diversity were not mutually exclusive.

By Kenneth Chang and Emma Goldberg

The reporters interviewed a NASA official and an astronaut in The Times’s newsroom for this article.

Do you dream of leaving the planet?

NASA is looking for its next group of astronauts, and you have until April 2 to make a pitch for yourself .

“Typically, it’s a very popular application,” April Jordan, NASA’s astronaut selection manager, said.

The odds that you will be chosen are slim. The last time NASA put out a call for applications, in 2020, more than 12,000 people applied.

It took the agency a year and a half to go through the applications. NASA selected just 10 of the hopefuls, or 0.083 percent. That makes Harvard’s 3.5 percent acceptance rate among high school applicants appear bountiful.

“So when I say ‘popular,’” Ms. Jordan said, “it’s probably an understatement.”

Ms. Jordan is on a media tour to spread the word that “ the right stuff ” for being an astronaut in 2024 is not the same as what it was in the 1960s, when astronauts were all white men, almost all from the military.

Joining her on that tour, which included a stop at The New York Times, was Victor Glover, a nine-year veteran of the astronaut corps who offered a glimpse into how he made it through the rigorous selection process.

To become a NASA astronaut today, you have to be a U.S. citizen and you must pass the astronaut physical exam.

NASA does set a fairly high bar for education — a master’s degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, followed by at least three years of related professional experience.

Beyond that, the agency tries to keep an open mind. (There is no age limit, for example, or a requirement for 20/20 vision.)

“We want the group of astronaut candidates that we select to be reflective of the nation that they’re representing,” Ms. Jordan said.

Take, for example, Mr. Glover.

In some aspects, he fits the historical archetype. Before NASA, he was a Navy aviator and trained as a test pilot.

He is also breaking historical barriers.

In 2020, he became the first Black astronaut to serve as a crew member on the International Space Station after 20 years of astronauts living there. In 2025, he will become the first Black astronaut to fly around the moon for the Artemis II mission .

To stand out in NASA’s competitive application process, Mr. Glover knew he would need more than a strong résumé. He was particularly set on landing a good joke.

The night before one of Mr. Glover’s interviews at NASA for the 2013 class, he was asked to write an essay. The title: “Girls Like Astronauts.”

“They’re sitting in this room all day listening to all these dry answers,” he recalled thinking. “I’m going to try to make them laugh.”

The essay pivoted from a punchline to poignancy, reflecting on the ways he has tried to inspire his four daughters. He also decided to be vulnerable during the interview, sharing a “bone-headed” moment when he risked nearly hitting the water during an air show demonstration.

“You have to be able to share that information with the interview panel when you come in, because you’re inevitably going to fail at something,” Ms. Jordan said. “And so there’s a humbleness that you have to bring in even if you’ve achieved great things.”

As part of the application process, Mr. Glover wrote a limerick that concluded: “This is all dizzying to me, because I gave so much blood and pee.”

Mr. Glover set his sights on going to outer space as a child, when he saw his classmates moved to tears by the Challenger disaster.

His space ambition deepened years later when he heard a speech from Pam Melroy, a former space shuttle commander. Ms. Melroy, now NASA’s deputy administrator, recounted how her crew had scrambled to fix a damaged solar array on the International Space Station.

“I thought, ‘Wow, she just talked about something really technical, really logistically challenging,’” Mr. Glover said. “But the emotion in it was about the people.”

He realized, then, that just as astronauts need technical ability, they also need something that is more difficult to teach: social skills.

“You’re going to live in this tin can with somebody for six months,” he said of a stay on the space station. “We’re almost picking family members.”

Mr. Glover proudly points to the diversity of backgrounds among current astronauts. “If you compare our office to the country’s demographics, we match the country very well,” he said.

Indeed, the diversity within NASA outpaces that of the private sector in some aspects. The percentage of Black astronauts is higher than the percentage of Black people in the broader science and technology work force, Mr. Glover said.

That is the direct result of NASA’s sustained efforts over a couple of decades to recruit astronauts beyond the traditional archetype, he said.

“Our office looks the way it looks because of this intentionality, and thinking about our biases and how it may affect who we hire,” he said. “I think that’s a huge victory.”

But Mr. Glover acknowledged that diversity as a hiring goal was becoming increasingly fraught .

Critics include Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs SpaceX, the rocket company that NASA relies on to transport cargo and astronauts — like Mr. Glover — to the International Space Station. NASA has also hired SpaceX to land astronauts on the moon .

“His perspective on some things is a little disturbing,” Mr. Glover said of Mr. Musk.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment by Mr. Musk.

Mr. Musk has repeatedly called for the end of programs that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I. “D.E.I. is just another word for racism,” he posted in January on X, the social media network that he owns.

Mr. Glover said he had just listened to a contentious interview that Don Lemon , a former CNN anchor, recently conducted with Mr. Musk. “My mom sent it to me and she goes, ‘Does he remember you rode in his spaceship?’” he said. “I’m like, ‘Ma, he probably remembers very vividly.’ He’s a great intellect, but he probably just doesn’t care.”

People ask him how he feels about becoming the first Black person to go on a lunar mission next year when Artemis II will swing around the moon without landing.

“Actually, I’m sad,” Mr. Glover said. “It’s 2025, and I’m going to be the first? Come on.”

He recounted the story of Ed Dwight , the only Black Air Force pilot in the 1960s who met the restrictive requirements that NASA had for astronauts then. But Mr. Dwight was never selected.

“Ed Dwight could have done this in the ’60s,” Mr. Glover said. “How much better would our country be if he actually got the chance? Society wasn’t ready. It’s not him. He was ready.”

While Mr. Glover has heard some of the pushback to D.E.I. initiatives, he feels firmly that seeking diversity is not about lowering standards and accepting less qualified candidates. “I think it should just be excellence,” he said. “As long as you don’t equate whiteness or maleness with excellence, then we’re good. We’re speaking the same language.”

Many applicants are drawn by the potential glory of being the first astronauts to walk on Mars, an accomplishment that NASA is aiming for in the 2030s.

But Mr. Glover said they should also contemplate the sacrifices that they and their families might have to make along the way.

“The trip to Mars is six to nine months,” he said. “You’re going to be away from familiar for more than a year, one to three years. Are you really ready for that?”

Kenneth Chang , a science reporter at The Times, covers NASA and the solar system, and research closer to Earth. More about Kenneth Chang

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter covering workplace culture and the ways work is evolving in a time of social and technological change. More about Emma Goldberg

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Voyager 1, the 46-year-old first craft in interstellar space which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth, may have gone dark .

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

The End of Foreign-Language Education

Thanks to AI, people may no longer feel the need to learn a second language.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

A few days ago, I watched a video of myself talking in perfect Chinese. I’ve been studying the language on and off for only a few years, and I’m far from fluent. But there I was, pronouncing each character flawlessly in the correct tone, just as a native speaker would. Gone were my grammar mistakes and awkward pauses, replaced by a smooth and slightly alien-sounding voice. “My favorite food is sushi,” I said— wo zui xihuan de shiwu shi shousi —with no hint of excitement or joy.

I’d created the video using software from a Los Angeles–based artificial-intelligence start-up called HeyGen. It allows users to generate deepfake videos of real people “saying” almost anything based on a single picture of their face and a script, which is paired with a synthetic voice and can be translated into more than 40 languages. By merely uploading a selfie taken on my iPhone, I was able to glimpse a level of Mandarin fluency that may elude me for the rest of my life.

HeyGen’s visuals are flawed—the way it animates selfies almost reminded me of the animatronics in Disney’s It’s a Small World ride—but its language technology is good enough to make me question whether learning Mandarin is a wasted effort. Neural networks, the machine-learning systems that power generative-AI programs such as ChatGPT, have rapidly improved the quality of automatic translation over the past several years, making even older tools like Google Translate far more accurate.

At the same time, the number of students studying foreign languages in the U.S. and other countries is shrinking. Total enrollment in language courses other than English at American colleges decreased 29.3 percent from 2009 to 2021, according to the latest data from the Modern Language Association, better known as the MLA. In Australia, only 8.6 percent of high-school seniors were studying a foreign language in 2021—a historic low. In South Korea and New Zealand , universities are closing their French, German, and Italian departments. One recent study from the education company EF Education First found that English proficiency is decreasing among young people in some places.

Many factors could help explain the downward trend, including pandemic-related school disruptions, growing isolationism, and funding cuts to humanities programs. But whether the cause of the shift is political, cultural, or some mix of things, it’s clear that people are turning away from language learning just as automatic translation becomes ubiquitous across the internet.

Read: High-school English needed a makeover before ChatGPT

Within a few years, AI translation may become so commonplace and frictionless that billions of people take for granted the fact that the emails they receive, videos they watch, and albums they listen to were originally produced in a language other than their native one. Something enormous will be lost in exchange for that convenience. Studies have suggested that language shapes the way people interpret reality. Learning a different way to speak, read, and write helps people discover new ways to see the world—experts I spoke with likened it to discovering a new way to think. No machine can replace such a profoundly human experience. Yet tech companies are weaving automatic translation into more and more products. As the technology becomes normalized, we may find that we’ve allowed deep human connections to be replaced by communication that’s technically proficient but ultimately hollow.

AI language tools are now in social-media apps, messaging platforms, and streaming sites. Spotify is experimenting with using a voice-generation tool from the ChatGPT maker OpenAI to translate podcasts in the host’s own voice, while Samsung is touting that its new Galaxy S24 smartphone can translate phone calls as they’re occurring . Roblox, meanwhile, claimed last month that its AI translation tool is so fast and accurate , its English-speaking users might not realize that their conversation partner “is actually in Korea.” The technology—which works especially well for “ high-resource languages ” such as English and Chinese, and less so for languages such as Swahili and Urdu—is being used in much more high-stakes situations as well, such as translating the testimony of asylum seekers and firsthand accounts from conflict zones. Musicians are already using it to translate songs , and at least one couple credited it with helping them to fall in love.

One of the most telling use cases comes from a start-up called Jumpspeak, which makes a language-learning app similar to Duolingo and Babbel. Instead of hiring actual bilingual actors, Jumpspeak appears to have used AI-generated “people” reading AI-translated scripts in at least four ads on Instagram and Facebook. At least some of the personas shown in the ads appear to be default characters available on HeyGen’s platform. “I struggled to learn languages my whole life. Then I learned Spanish in six months, I got a job opportunity in France, and I learned French. I learned Mandarin before visiting China,” a synthetic avatar says in one of the ads, while switching between all three languages. Even a language-learning app is surrendering to the allure of AI, at least in its marketing.

Alexandru Voica, a communications professional who works for another video-generating AI service, told me he came across Jumpspeak’s ads while looking for a program to teach his children Romanian, the language spoken by their grandparents. He argued that the ads demonstrated how deepfakes and automated-translation software could be used to mislead or deceive people. “I'm worried that some in the industry are currently in a race to the bottom on AI safety,” he told me in an email. (The ads were taken down after I started reporting this story, but it’s not clear if Meta or Jumpspeak removed them; neither company returned requests for comment. HeyGen also did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its product being used in Jumpspeak’s marketing.)

The world is already seeing how all of this can go wrong. Earlier this month, a far-right conspiracy theorist shared several AI-generated clips on X of Adolf Hitler giving a 1939 speech in English instead of the original German. The videos, which were purportedly produced using software from a company called ElevenLabs, featured a re-creation of Hitler’s own voice. It was a strange experience, hearing Hitler speak in English, and some people left comments suggesting that they found him easy to empathize with: “It sounds like these people cared about their country above all else,” one X user reportedly wrote in response to the videos. ElevenLabs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ( The Atlantic uses ElevenLabs’ AI voice generator to narrate some articles.)

Read: The last frontier of machine translation

Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, told me that part of the problem with machine-translation programs is that they’re often falsely perceived as being neutral, rather than “bringing their own perspective upon how to move text from one language to another.” The truth is that there is no single right or correct way to transpose a sentence from French to Russian or any other language—it’s an art rather than a science. “Students will ask, ‘How do you say this in Spanish?’ and I’ll say, ‘You just don’t say it the same way in Spanish; the way you would approach it is different,’” Deborah Cohn, a Spanish- and Portuguese-language professor at Indiana University Bloomington who has written about the importance of language learning for bolstering U.S. national security , told me.

I recently came across a beautiful and particularly illustrative example of this fact in an article written by a translator in China named Anne. “Building a ladder between widely different languages, such as Chinese and English, is sometimes as difficult as a doctor building a bridge in a patient's heart,” she wrote. The metaphor initially struck me as slightly odd, but thankfully I wasn’t relying on ChatGPT to translate Anne’s words from their original Mandarin. I was reading a human translation by a professor named Jeffrey Ding, who helpfully noted that Anne may have been referring to a type of heart surgery that has recently become common in China. It's a small detail, but understanding that context brought me much closer to the true meaning of what Anne was trying to say.

Read: The college essay is dead

But most students will likely never achieve anything close to the fluency required to tell whether a translation rings close enough to the original or not. If professors accept that automated technology will far outpace the technical skills of the average Russian or Arabic major, their focus would ideally shift from grammar drills to developing cultural competency , or understanding the beliefs and practices of people from different backgrounds. Instead of cutting language courses in response to AI, schools should “stress more than ever the intercultural components of language learning that tremendously benefit the students taking these classes,” Jen William, the head of the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Language Departments, told me.

Paula Krebs, the executive director of the MLA, referenced a beloved 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to make a similar point. In “Darmok,” the crew aboard the starship Enterprise struggles to communicate with aliens living on a planet called El-Adrel IV. They have access to a “universal translator” that allows them to understand the basic syntax and semantics of what the Tamarians are saying, but the greater meaning of their utterances remains a mystery.

It later becomes clear that their language revolves around allegories rooted in the Tamarians’ unique history and practices. Even though Captain Picard was translating all the words they were saying, he “couldn’t understand the metaphors of their culture,” Krebs told me. More than 30 years later, something like a universal translator is now being developed on Earth. But it similarly doesn’t have the power to bridge cultural divides the way that humans can.