Having read both achievements and challenges of engineering mentioning in two articles namely “Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering“ and “The expanding world of engineering”, I have acquired invaluable incentives and orientation for my future prospective profession as an engineer in twenty-first century. Those challenges stated in both articles are visible and require the inter-disciplinary knowledge ranging from science, engineering, political to governmental and most importantly, environmental as environmental-involved issues has virtually affected many aspects of our life.
Among mentioned challenges posed by the development of civilization over the shoulders of engineers, I consider the fact that the distribution of engineering accomplishments evenly in the world (“Introduction to the Grand Challenged for Engineering”) as the most significant and undoubtedly, it requires instant response. As we are living in the planet where globalization has made it smaller and more inclusive, the interaction among people would vitally affected the movement of mankind civilization. As such, if in the world there existed any country or region where technology advances have not been updated to the sophisticated level to deal with local problems, surely the rest of the world would be impacted accordingly more or less. Take, as an example, the food scarcity and hygiene issue in Africa resulting from the shortage of technology investment. In this continent, many countries have been forgotten in the world map and the people here must live with a minimum living standard. Agriculture activities are made by hands or primitive tools due to lack of concern as well as technology aid from the rest of the world and this leads to an obvious aftermaths: millions of people are died every year of hunger, deadly diseases occurred and spread like wild fire because of poor hygiene condition, the economy falls far away behind the development of civilization and many others. More importantly, loving in such horrible condition for a long time is most likely drive the people here to the armed conflicts for food and, thus, putting Africa in incessant turmoil and moreover, posing a threat over the world security. Since a significant issue, distributing of engineering achievements should be concerned and carried out with a long-term consideration and involves inter-disciplinary attempts so as to yield the highest possible result and partly contribute to make the world a better place to live
