Photo credit: Flickr/ eblaser

I‘m writing this post mid-flight on a trip from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Fredericton, New Brunswick. It just occurred to me that the ability to do this is phenomenal. Isn’t it? I mean, when I was a kid, I remember getting our first Internet connection! Now I can dig out my iPad and type up a post from anywhere in the world. Engineers around the world have helped to create the reality we now have. By and large, that reality is a beautiful one.

So, to go along with my happy, pensive mood, here are my top five reasons engineering is a beautiful thing:

1. We bring people together – through the power of today’s communication technology and transit systems, the whole world is available to us. You can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time. It’s easier now to Skype someone half a world away than it was to place a call in rural Canada 20 years ago.
2. We make the world safer – One of the primary duties of any engineer is to keep people safe. This is evident in the cars we drive and the bridges we build. It makes national headlines when a bridge collapses – both because its a tragic event, but also because it happens so rarely. The cars my parents drove when they were kids didn’t even have seat belts. Now we have cars that will brake automatically so as to avoid a collision.
3. We help the world learn – Through the Internet and sites like Wikipedia, you can learn almost anything for free. You can read the news from any corner of the globe with the click of a button – Google will even translate it for you for free. Now, with sites like Coursera and MIT’s open courseware program, you can even get university-level training for free.
4. We keep people healthy – Medical research is highly dependent on tools developed by engineers. The same can be said for clinical medicine. My wife is an anesthesiologist, and it’s almost impossible to imagine her being able to give the level of care she can today without the various tools and diagnostic equipment she has at her disposal.
5. We keep the lights on – Engineers work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that your home has power, water, and other utilities. The fact that you can just flip a switch and have the lights come on is a beautiful thing. You might not have ever stopped to think about it, but it took decades of hard work to bring us to that point. It’s tough to think of a more complex system than the power grid.

In a lot of ways, I think of engineering as a bit like the audio-visual crew for a concert – if we do our job right, nobody should ever notice we were there. When an engineer does their job right, everything just works. I love that. I get a kind of smug satisfaction in knowing how important our work is, even if the average Joe doesn’t really get it. That’s just fine by me.

Whether anyone else knows it or not, engineers are making the world a beautiful place. Don’t ever stop.

What do you think?

What do you think makes engineering beautiful? Tell us about it in the comments section below!

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