Saturday, July 04, 2009
engineers of the future
Normally I try not to spend too much time working with anyone under the age of about ... 26. At a push, 23. (Though I do make an exception for the Debating Matters competition which is having its national and international finals this weekend.)
But I have just spent a great week working with the engineers of the future, doing a show called Alphabeat for teenage audiences at a Learning Grid event. And I'm starting to change my mind just a little.
The general idea was to rattle through as many aspects of engineering as we could in 45 minutes, a task that in last week's heatwave would have been frankly lethal without air conditioning engineers.
So we hurtled through animatronics, cosmetics, iris recognition, right through the alphabet to X-rays, making the final point that "You" (i.e. the audience) are the engineers of the future. By the time I'm the one needing the hip replacement (titanium coated with calcium phosphate to help the bone bind onto the new joint, since you ask), one of the audience would probably be designing it.
In rehearsals this felt like a cheesy point – and an easy way out of both "Y" and "Z", which we offload onto them for future solutions. But delivering it to around 2,000 kids in three days brought it home to me that it really will be them, sparky and smart, cheeky, sceptical or shy, attention-seeking troublemakers or giggling flirts eying up the young engineers from E-On, who shape the world of the future.
Not all of them will be engineers, obviously. But that doesn’t matter as much as their attitude to progress that’s technological as well as social.
The technology of 2049 will be as unexpected to us as today’s smartphones, sat-navs and internet connections would have been in 1969. But there were depressingly many things in the show that have been around for years without fundamentally changing, or appeared in science fiction before I was born but took this long to happen in reality. Concorde, the 1350 mph plane that got you to New York earlier than you left London, doesn’t even fly any more.
Not all of those 2,000 kids need to invent, improve or build the 21st century’s technology. But they need to care whether it happens. So I hope they noticed the air conditioning.
But I have just spent a great week working with the engineers of the future, doing a show called Alphabeat for teenage audiences at a Learning Grid event. And I'm starting to change my mind just a little.
The general idea was to rattle through as many aspects of engineering as we could in 45 minutes, a task that in last week's heatwave would have been frankly lethal without air conditioning engineers.
So we hurtled through animatronics, cosmetics, iris recognition, right through the alphabet to X-rays, making the final point that "You" (i.e. the audience) are the engineers of the future. By the time I'm the one needing the hip replacement (titanium coated with calcium phosphate to help the bone bind onto the new joint, since you ask), one of the audience would probably be designing it.
In rehearsals this felt like a cheesy point – and an easy way out of both "Y" and "Z", which we offload onto them for future solutions. But delivering it to around 2,000 kids in three days brought it home to me that it really will be them, sparky and smart, cheeky, sceptical or shy, attention-seeking troublemakers or giggling flirts eying up the young engineers from E-On, who shape the world of the future.
Not all of them will be engineers, obviously. But that doesn’t matter as much as their attitude to progress that’s technological as well as social.
The technology of 2049 will be as unexpected to us as today’s smartphones, sat-navs and internet connections would have been in 1969. But there were depressingly many things in the show that have been around for years without fundamentally changing, or appeared in science fiction before I was born but took this long to happen in reality. Concorde, the 1350 mph plane that got you to New York earlier than you left London, doesn’t even fly any more.
Not all of those 2,000 kids need to invent, improve or build the 21st century’s technology. But they need to care whether it happens. So I hope they noticed the air conditioning.
