Tuesday, September 29, 2009 2:46 AM,

A student writes, but since it has nothing to do with EE 306, you should feel 
free to put this on the stack of things to read when you have some free time, 
...or delete altogether :-)  I am sending it to you all since it may be 
something others of you have been concerned about.



	Dear Professor.

	    I have a question that's been on my mind for awhile but I hadn't 
	found the right person to ask. I sent an e-mail to Michio Kaku 
	(the physicist that's on the science channel all the time) but 
	surprisingly he neglect to reply. I think it intimidated him, so 
	much luck to you. The mystery that's kept me up at night is this: 
	with the rapid increase of technological capabilities, and all the 
	research going into nano technology, how long do you predict it will 
	be before a E/CE degree will be obsolete. Is it unreasonable to think 
	we will no longer be using the circuits we use today in 20 years and 
	everything will be replaced with superior nano technology 
	(which i believe is more biological than electrical).

        Thanks,
	<<name withheld to protect the student worried about his future>>



Good question, but if you get the right education in school, you should not 
waste time worrying.  First, this has happened many times in the past.
New technology makes old technology obsolete, but ECE majors have been equal 
to the task, learning the new stuff and continuing to be productive.
When I was an undergraduate we studied vacuum tubes, and in fact, the 12AX7 v-
i curve looked nothing like the corresponding curves for transistors that 
showed up later.  Nanotechnology will uncover new stuff for you to learn, 
mostly still electrical, but if there is bio in there, then ECE graduates will 
just learn the bio stuff, too.

When I first learned to program, the languages were Fortran II, and the IBM 
650 machine language.  Fortran was the language of choice.  That was a very 
long time ago, and many languages have come and gone since then.  Today the 
hype is about JAVA; by the time you graduate, it will probably be Microsoft's 
C#.
My guess: By the time you are four years out of school, C# will have given way 
to D-flat.

One of the great things about an ECE education is that even though we know the 
technology will change, the education, if done right, is such that you will 
know the fundamentals and quickly learn the new technology as it evolves.
ECE graduates have been doing this for over 100 years and there is no reason 
to expect that we can not continue to do this.  Perhaps that is one of the 
sources of pride in being ECE majors - that we are not being trained to later 
be obsolete, but rather we are building a foundation that will enable us to 
continue to learn for the next 40+ years.  (In my case, longer than that :-)

Bottom line: I think you should not waste time worrying.  You will have a job.
I do think, however, that you do need to be careful to really understand the 
material you are studying to make sure you have that solid foundation.  My 
exams will try to help you to do that in EE 306. :-)

Yale Patt