2006 Issue

www.utahengineerscouncil.org 25 UECJOURNAL February 2006 INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS SOCIETY FORUM Welcome to Engineering Week 2040! We appreciate your attendance either in person or by Robotic Telepresence . By Gordon W. Young P.E., IEEE Senior Life Member We in electrical engineering would like to review the 21 st century up to our present time and explain why we continue to be optimistic for the future even though there are storm clouds on the horizon. Some of you will remember the history of the early years of the 21 st century when theGreat Digi- tal Revolution was sweeping the world. Electrical engineers who made it possible were among the first to feel the effects of author Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” para- digm when there were many cases of countries taking projects and employ- ment from engineers in the U.S.. This re- sulted in restructur- ing and closing a number of businesses and a precipitous and previously unknown high unemployment rate among members of our profession. There were many conflicting voices as to the cause and remedy of this prob- lem, but it did not receive the full atten- tion of the entire engineering profession until our fellow engineers in other engi- neering professions were affected in a simi- lar fashion. The problem was that any- thing which could be digitized was a pos- sible business for workers in other coun- tries who could do it for much less and perhaps even equally well. So it was that domestic civil, mechanical, structural, and other engineering work was bid on by overseas corporations at a lower price, with the bidder’s own engineers temporarily over- seeing projects in the U.S. while our own engineers looked on from the sidelines. The increasing din fromother engineering prac- titioners began to match our own cries as we all increasingly called for protection of U.S. jobs. Many other in- dustries were af- fected whenever there was intellec- tual work to be done with back office functions in ac- counting, design and all sorts of other record keeping ad- vertised at lower prices and fast turn around. There were pro and con state- ments regarding “off shoring” medical records and most basic office functions to other countries along withmuch introspec- tion on how to protect U.S. jobs in design areas because most manufacturing areas had already succumbed to foreign produc- tion. Only the military/industrial complex remained fully viable except for embar- rassing needs to buy some foreign items as these items were no longer made in the U.S. and aliens could not work in that in- dustry. There were also concerns about new foreign economic weapons such as a pos- sible “Nike” weapon available to China to pressure the U.S. wherein if we did not comply with their desires they would cut off our imports -whimsically including our continued on following page ▲ INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS http://ewh.ieee.org/r6/utah Cha i r Reuel S. Alder P.E. OO-ALC/ENA, Hill AFB Vice Chair David Allred Secretary Mark Christiansen Treasurer Scott Carter Software Maintenance Group, Hill AFB Newsletter Editor Rob Harker UEC Representative Paul C. Oestreich Oestreich@utahpatents.com Program Chair Randall G. Redondo PACE Chair Gordon Young gordon_young@comcast.net Contact Information Reuel S. Alder P.E. Phone: 801-586-3028 Email: sec.utah@ieee.org shoe requirements. Our domestic engineer- ing based industries were in decline. As time passed and engineering em- ployment decreased, there were those who wondered why engineering was not con- sidered a desirable profession for students attending colleges and universities – other than because engineers were being laid off, of course. The standard cry was there were various under represented groups who should be encouraged to enter the profes- sion because they were under represented statistically in the field. Various suggestions were made to provide incentives to these groups in the theory that just because they were good inmath and science they should become engineers with or without any par- ticular interest in the field.