The future is firmly upon us and if Leonardo Da Vinci, the Florentine polymath, was to wake up from his grave, he would be proud at the levels at which we have arrived as humans, thanks to the diligent application of the scientific method in engineering great products which have had the cumulative effect of making all our lives easier, smoother and more fulfilling.

The whole world is at the point in which we are fully enjoying the fruits of electricity, thanks to the work of the pioneers in the field, greats such as Nikolai Von Tesla and James Watt, who pioneered the way for us to enjoy the current technological age, by firmly laying the groundwork for electricity to be readily available to all. This has subsequently led to the development of computers, the internet and space exploration.

Engineering’s Effect All Permeating

It is hard to point out which part of the human endeavor that has not been impacted positively by technology and this list will try to list some of the few areas in which engineering has made an outstanding contribution to our lives. Without much further ado, let us unveil this list, as a testimony to greatness of human achievement.

• The Internet – No one in their right mind or otherwise can deny the value that the internet has brought to our world. This is the one invention that sits up there among the greatest inventions of mankind, next to the invention of writing and the first use of language by humans.

The internet is at once the largest library, shopping mall (where you can buy equipment and parts), video store, communications channel; social meeting spot, music shop, research laboratory, educational institution and much, much more. This was invented by electronic and electrical engineers.

• Genetic Engineering – Watson and Crick gave us the structure of DNA Helix 6 decades ago and for which they received a Nobel Prize. Great work, they showed us that all life in made up of a double helix, which encodes how all forms of life develop. This code is the Tabula Rasa upon which all life in its entire diversity is predicated upon.

It was only a matter of time before engineers, biomedical and genetic engineers would come up with a way of figuring where which gene goes and what it does. The next logical step was to isolate disease carrying genes and reprogram them to come up with a novel way of treating illnesses, which have stumped science for a long time such as Cancer and Alzheimer’s.

• Digital Media- Another key invention which literally rocks the world and is a product of engineering is digital media. As a byproduct of computer and software engineering, the ability to digitize all forms of information, such as images, audio, video and text and edit them using a computer also ranks high up there on the radar of the greatest innovations that engineers have gifted the world.

Author Bio

Marcel Joseph is a technology writer and the founder of the tech blog Mohali. He has run tech blogs advising people on how to effectively use the internet to find bargains when buying equipment and parts. An MIT Grad, he currently works as a web engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.