• Question: Would your work be impossible without computers/modern technology? How dependent is your job on technology?

    Asked by anon-201906 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      I think it would be impossible. I rely on programmable controllers for my furnace and technology like xrays and electron microscopy for measurements. Plus all my analysis is computer based. The only thing I do by hand is note taking. I’d be lost without modern technology

    • Photo: George Fulton

      George Fulton answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Our jobs in a way drive new technology. It would be possible to do my job without technology, think of all the amazing things that were discovered without computers, but they definitely make things a lot easier.

    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Like George said, “Our jobs in a way drive new technology”. When a particle physicist’s job wouldn’t be possible without a particular technology, they invent that new technology! For example, the World Wide Web was invented at a particle physics research lab, to deal with the huge amounts of data we get when we smash particles together at really high energies. Now, the World Wide Web is a technology used by a lot of people outside particle physics.

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      I think totally impossible to do my job without computers: I do high-volume data processing that could never be done by human hands — thousands of terabytes of compressed data — and work on theories whose maths is too complicated to be solved directly so we have to use computer-code solvers that try millions of potential solutions to find the right answers. This needs not just one computer, but thousands of them. I don’t think humanity can handle these really big problems without being able to automate an awful lot of the grunt-work.

    • Photo: Emily Lewis

      Emily Lewis answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      My work is purely on computers, including a supercomputer cluster so it would be 100% impossible without modern technology! Or it would take forever to do, years and years of writing equations.

      As these guys have said, science and technology push each other forward. The internet was invented by a computer scientist working at CERN, though they also told him that it was a misuse of funds so lets not give them too much credit…
      And modern camera phones and laptops were invented by NASA. Technology is applied science really, they go hand in hand!

    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      I’m the same as the others. My work wouldn’t be possible without computers. I run a lot of simulations over our computer cluster that I wouldn’t be able to do my work without. I also can’t imagine how scientists worked before the internet when they would have to go and get a physical copy of loads of published papers and look through them to try and find an answer to something, instead of just being able to google it!

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