Often, in social conversations, I listen to people saying that the solution to our Energy Crisis lies in discovering or creating new Technology that will enable us to be more efficient, greener, or produce safe/clean energy cheaper. More often than not these people are nor scientists or engineers. More often than not I get the feeling people think technology grows in trees.
On behalf of all of us Technical People (euphemism for Geek) I must say:
Scientists and engineers are doing what we can do to advance science. Some of us do it in green energy initiatives (yes, I am a software engineer and I am working on green energy initiatives also).
Unfortunately, We The Geeks can’t do it alone. Why?
- There aren’t enough of us. People aren’t studying the Geek careers. Maybe it is because they are difficult. Maybe is because they are out of fashion. But people don’t study them.
- Import More. Import more Geeks from other countries. Make the immigration policy flexible for those with Geek-ish careers.
- Produce More Geeks. Tell your kid that being a Geek is not too bad. We are not perceived as the sexiest, but our decent salaries make family oriented females chase and hunt us down until they get us married.
- Provide Grants / Scholarships. If a kid is going to college, he/she may be more interested in an easier career. The government / student loans will pay the same regardless of the career they choose. So why waste beer drinking time studying if you can avoid it. That’s why we need help from people in motivating kids to study science and engineering degrees. Let’s make more scholarships that motivate them to study these careers.
- We work for food. Yes, the non geeks have to pay out of their pocket so that the geeks can get pizza and caffeine. We can’t work without either. And we need to be paid if we are to buy them.
- We are proud of what we do. Try to say good things about the green products we build. Please, hug your closest Geek and tell him how much you appreciate the technology he/she builds for you. Even better: buy them – - so that they increase our salaries by 5% next year instead of the usual 4%. Sometimes the first generation of our technological inventions are a bit crude and a lot more expensive. But if they do not sell, they fire us – and we end up in less green, but safer jobs.
The moral of the story is: If you want more, green technology, you will need to help us find more geeks to create this technology!