3rd Speaker

3rd Speaker
Good afternoon Chairman and panel, ladies and gentlemen. The topic for discussion is “Science drives Technology”, clearly my team is here to today to negate that statement to indicate to you that it is not science which drives technology but the other way around.
People often confuse science and technology. Briefly, scientists (science) discover new aspects of Nature. Engineers and inventors (technology) use scientific discoveries to design and build new things.
Scientific endeavors rely on an inexhaustible number of technologies. These range in sophistication from as simple as a paint brush to magnetometers. Many of the tools available to collect and process data, make observations, record and share information and test hypotheses about the natural world were designed because there was a scientific need. In other words, there was a scientific endeavor that could not be pursued until the right tool existed.
According to the Oxford dictionary, Science can be defined as “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”
Now that this technology is available, many different scientists are now able to utilize the data obtained to pursue a range of questions. This technological advancement is thus driving science.
Science responds to the needs and interests of the societies in which it takes place. A topic that meets a societal need or promises to garner the attention of society is often more likely to be picked up as a research topic than an obscure question with little prospect for a larger impact. Science is done by people, and those people are often sensitive to the needs and interests of the world around them, whether the desired impact is more altruistic, more economic, or a combination of the two. The curiosity to develop technology to survive in modern life has made the topic arise “does science drive technology?” For example, the designing of a plane starts from the curiosity of mankind to see if humans can indeed fly like the birds up above. Scientist then engaged themselves in designing prototypes. This lead to discoveries for improving such designs, thus science gets involve with the designing of the models and what makes the areplane stay up in the air. Professor Paul Hewitt makes a point which states that and I quote “the effect that science has no direct impact on society, which technology does. One could infer from this that scientists are completely innocent of the sometimes horrible uses to which their discoveries are put. I think that this is a bit of editorializing that many people would certainly agree with this.
Well if you think about it, technology makes experiments easy to be tested. You don't really want to wait all day to prove that your hypotheses were right, so technology really helps science. If you’re trying to prove something or test something, technology makes your life way easier. They're different because technology deals with making life easier and then there's the technical stuff.
According to the Oxford dictionary, Technology is defined as” the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes especially in industries.” So, is technology dependent on science? NO. Science is dependent on technology - without new instruments and devices; the tide of new scientific discovery would soon disappear.
People, particularly politicians looking for media attention it seems, often wonder why scientists don't work on more useful topics - things that would be more immediately useful to society. An answer is that curiosity is the nature of a scientist. Scientists have a drive to understand what is going on. It is not the job of science to build useful devices; that is the job of technology. Historically, the bit of science that triggers some amazing technological advance has often come from an apparently unrelated discovery. I thereby conclude that technology does need to thrive off science, because technology has reached a level in society today which without it scientific discoveries would seized to exist.