William A. Wulf

President, National Academy of Engineering

Most Important Technology of the Last 40 Years:

The integrated circuit.

Most Important Technology for the Coming Decade:

Smart, intercommunicating everything.

Technology That has Evolved in a Surprising Way:

The World Wide Web.

"Over the life of a bridge, it costs more to check for corrosion than to build the bridge itself. So at the University of Virginia, we built a chip that had a small amount of computing power, a corrosion sensor, and a radio transceiver. The idea was to put a shovel-load of these chips in every mix of concrete, so that you'd be able to ask the sensors whether or not the reinforcing bars were corroding. It's hard to think of a more mundane product than a concrete bridge; yet we're talking about how to make it smart."