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Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL 8' NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. campus@technewsiit.com | Tuesday, November 1st, 2016 Waking up 20 years later; thoughts on technological professions in the consumer era Alexander Cole Eisenherg TECHN EWS WRITER Among the many things that clutter the shelves of my room is a toy Sitting among my other knickeknacks and thrift store detritus, it is totally and utterly unremarkable. This toy, a Furby to be precise, was merely one of many 'mechanical pet' style toys that were produced in the millions during the 90's before falling out of style and subsequently into the cultural dustbin It is only insignificant, however, in the abstract idea of the thing: that is to say, it's only insignificant as an old toy, a fuzzy little gremlin from a darker, drearier age before tablets. If, however, you pull aside the dull platitudes of the dusty fur and the more, creepyethanecute plastic body, you are left with a highly engineered combination of microprocessors, motors, and sensors. What you're left with is comprised of circuit boards that were designed by ECEs, programmed by CS experts, and running servos designed to exact specifications by MechEs. It is a device with speakers, microphones, IR transceivers, and motion sensors all in a casing that can fit in the palm of your hand. Oh, and let's not forget that this was in 1998. Think then, of the hundreds of man hours spent designing the shrill little abomination? The brand, of course, has lasted to the modern day 18 years of Furby, 18 years of constantly tweaking and rebra.nding a toy The teams of trained professionals spending their days figuring out how to coerce marginally smaller amounts of affection out of children that have long since stopped caring. The gargantuan efi’ort expended on determining how to lower the price per unit manufactured by some arbitrary amount for some arbitrary fiscal year. Most of all, however, think of those who were there from the beginning, those who have been solving the Furby problem for almost 20 years, the span of the most intellectually productive years of your life. Those who spent the better part of their talent and energy not plumbing the mysteries of the universe, not fixing the worlds problems, not even creating something they own the rights to. 18 years of someone's life spent perfecting something most of it's way into the garbage can. Career Fair has come and gone already, so perhaps whatever the point I'm trying to make is too little, too late. I also can't say I judge those Hasbro engineers too much for doing what they've done with their lives. I will say, however, that us, young STEM majors, don't have to fall into the same complacency of our predecessors, that we can be a force for positive change, that we don't have to burn away our intellectual labor in the trash fire of consumer culture. We are owed more than labor squandered to planned obsolescence. That is indisputable. Kemper Gallery opens student organization history exhibit in Galvin Library m. or an upswing in Student ' ' flielafierws am Photos by Soren Spicknall