WHEN I was a kid, I always thought I would become a scientist when I grew up. That was actually my original dream, though my paternal grandfather Lolo Nardo and my Ninang Lulu (the elder sister of my dad) thought I’d become a lawyer. Mainly because Lolo Nardo was a lawyer (he went to the UP College of Law and joined Sigma Rho), and Ninang Lulu also became a lawyer. Heck, I almost enrolled after passing the UP Law Aptitude Examination, heh

But science was my first love. I actually find it somewhat ironic that I became a journalist, because while I was always an avid reader, I didn’t start writing outside school work till third year high school — and that was mainly because I had a crush on our English teacher Miss Natalie Nebit haha.

I loved the young scientist’s encyclopedia collection my parents bought me and the “scientific experiments” I conducted. And in 1980, I learned to love science even more when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos started airing on TV. If you can find a DVD, get it, and get a copy of the book that accompanied the TV series while you’re at it if you don’t have one. In 2005, The Science Channel aired “Cosmos” with updated computer graphics and footage for the 25th anniversary of the series.

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TODAY’S world revolves around information and communications technology (ICT), with many people becoming dependent on their computers, the Internet, mobile phones and portable devices. Students are taking up computer-related courses in college after seeing the promise of fat paychecks and traveling abroad. Not since the early 70s have we seen this kind of surge in enrollment in computer-related courses, largely due to the increase in ICT requirements across industries and nations.

But what few young people know or even understand is that all underlying principles behind ICT hardware and software are rooted in the most basic of all developments — and that is science and technology and mathematics. It is the laboratory scientists and researchers who toiled long and hard to find the best type of materials and best processes to make any equipment work. Metallurgists and chemists find the right raw materials for any hardware. Electrical and electronics engineers come up with the integrated chips. Mathematicians develop the software embedded in these chips. Even environmental scientists are part of the growing ICT industry as they come up with strategic routes where huge fiber optic cables will be laid across land and sea. These are the men and women who work behind the scenes to make ICT come to life.

But ICT is just one industry that benefits from researches in science. Agriculture, education, energy, medicine, earth sciences, and meteorology are just a few of the many areas where scientific research can have full effect. The list could just go on and on but the basic argument is that science and technology is a huge, integral part of society.

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