Get real

5. Use the Internet to find college information or contact a college in your area and ask for leaflets about their courses. Is the information helpful? How do you get more details or apply for a course?

Text 6

1. Read the text. Use the dictionary if necessary. Do the translation of the text.

The 21^st century Engineer By Joseph Bordogna U. S. National Science Foundation

What does a 21st century engineer need to know? To attempt an answer, let’s briefly examine some of the new capabilities that are shaping the future of engineering: terascale, nanoscale, complexity, cognition, and holism.

Because science and technology are transforming forces, it will be these emerging fields, the unpredicted territories, that will change and expand our capabilities as engineers and innovators. Reasonable people will argue about whether or not these are the right ones, but they seem an appropriate starting point.

Terascale. This new capability takes us three orders of magnitude beyond present general-purpose and generally accessible computing capabilities. In the past, our system architectures could handle hundred of processors. Now we are working with systems of l0000 processors. In a very short time, we’ll be connecting millions of systems and billions of "information appliances" to the Internet, crossing that boundary of one trillion operations per second will launch us towards new frontiers.

For example, the protein-folding problem, the Holy Grail of computational biology, has withstood countless attacks, undertaken by many bright minds and argumented by years of scientific supercomputer time. On current systems, the simulation of a millisecond of protein folding the longest undertaken to date requires two months. In the real world, typical protein folding times are 20 ms. That means some 4O months of processor time are needed to run a full-scale simulation on current systems. With new terascale systems, we may be able to reduce this time one thousand -fold. That means one day instead of three years.

Nanoscale. This advance will take us three orders of magnitude below the size of most of today's human-made devices. Nanostructures are at the confluence of the down smallest of human-made devices and the large molecules of living systems, letting us imagine connecting machines of living cells. Nanotechnology lets us manipulate matter one atom or molecule at a time. It could lead to amazing breakthroughs- for example, to molecular computers that could store the equivalent of the U.S. Library of Congress in a device we could wear.

Complexity. Mitch Waldrop writes in his book “Complexity, about a point " where the components of a system never quite lock into place and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either..." If we look at science and engineering, we discern this zone of transformation at many places.

For example, researchers are trying to wed polymers to silicon-a marriage of opposites, because plastics are chaotic chains while silicon consists of orderly crystals. The resulting electronic devices would have marvelous flexibility, be less expensive to make, and, therefore, empower more people. Again, it comes down to managing order or disorder, all at once. Perhaps there ought to be a term for it-how about "chaotic engineering"?

Cognition. The dictionary defines cognition as " the mental process or facility by which knowledge is acquired». Because of new knowledge, methods and tools, I believe we are on the verge of a cognition revolution that may dwarf the information revolution. We are poised for many exciting new discoveries in this area. These breakthroughs will lay the foundation for progress in many areas of national importance, from teaching children how to read to understanding learning processes; from building human-like computers and robots to designing networks and system capable of cognition.

Holism. According to the dictionary, again, holism is "the concept that an entity is greater than merely the sum of its parts». It refers to new capabilities to put things together- how to integrate seemingly disparate things into a great whole. This includes social as well as physical and virtual engineering systems. I believe the hallmark of the modern engineer is the ability to see connections among seemingly disparate components, and to integrate them in ways that exceed the sum of their respective capacities.

All told, progress in these areas - tera, nano, complexity, cognition, and holism-will lay out the capacity for an integrated design field far beyond what is imaginable with today's technology.

Taken together, this means that 21st century engineers will need to be astute
makers, trusted innovators, agents of change, master integrators, enterprise
enablers, technology stewards, and knowledge handlers. They will need more than
first -rate technical and scientific skills. They will need to embrace complex systems and the issues they present, and reach the right decisions about how huge amounts of time, money, people, knowledge, and technology are tasked to a common end.

IEEE SPECTRUM. January 2OO1

2. Tell your teacher or your partner what you have learnt about engineering.