Engineers generally do not know where technology is taking us and how it relates to their future. Neither does anyone else! Engineer’s creative skills provide significant value to the world as everyone buy products and services. Recent advances in technology is outpacing the ability of users to integrate newer products into their lifestyle, many of which may become becomes obsolete within a short period of time. Do we even know the power available in hand phones if one buys this only for the purpose of making phone calls, texting or using a browser to search the Internet. An example of the ability to incorporate advanced applications, because technology now allows us the ability to do things in a manner that is different or improved from past years, is wireless communication.
We now have 4G networks. There are many portable products still using 2G and 3G technology. In today’s wireless environment, 2G and 3G systems still work yet some manufacturers, service providers and marketing professionals believe they are a burden on our infrastructure and that everyone must upgrade to newer technology, because they can. Support for legacy products is being discontinued in lieu of driving the current customer base to a higher level of functionality, whether they need it or not, with marketing hype generating significant revenue for those companies that sell these types of products. Why is it that everyone year or so, many upgrade their phones at significant expense for silly reasons such as to show off their newest toy. In reality, it is only applications that change and maybe a few features. What we have now is advances in applications, not technology such as a newer way to transfer data faster or to incorporate 1 TB of memory in a phone?
Let’s assume for purpose of discussion, that 5G or 6G becomes available in the future. Customer support for outdated technology may be discontinued although billions of wireless devices are still in use worldwide. What new technological advanced can we expect in the future, if only incremental increase in performance is being achieved with today’s level of engineering and lack of support for existing products as it cost money to provide support for 2G, 3G and now possibly 4G systems? The most widely used aspect of technology in wireless communication is delivery of content or the ability to have instant access to information anywhere in the world. Engineers in the future already know that having a faster processor gives only incremental improvement yet users still demand more content delivery, such as high-speed or 3D streaming video on a small screen that one can barely see. Try to imagine the technology, both features and capabilities, that we will use 25 or 50 years from now. Engineers in all disciplines must look forward to an exciting career of creating unique products that provide a quantum leap in functionality and performance, instead of incremental increases that we see now.
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