A Decade of Innovation: Technology from the First Decade of the 21st Century

Between 2000 and 2009, I had the privilege of writing a monthly column for Scientific Computing & Instrumentation magazine. I was able to provide additional detail about the latest innovations appearing in the trade news, connect these developments with historical inventions, and generally geek out by using vocabulary and terms from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Throughout the decade I was developing and teaching new courses for our nascent B.S. degree in Integrated Science, Business, and Technology. I was able to incorporate information and trends from these columns into the classroom and simultaneously feedback our classroom discussions into the column. As a collection, these expositions track the discovery and development of technology throughout the decade. It is my hope that fellow scientists and engineers would enjoy reading this collection for its familiar jargon and wide range of topics and that fans of technology would find the articles approachable and written as an extended conversation with a practicing scientist.