Cutting-edge technology demands more care to ensure reliability and resilience.

Human nature is to invent, to create technological solutions to the challenges and problems we see. We are increasingly dependent on high-technology solutions as we address more complex issues. Some of these issues are of our own making. Others arise from our increasing expectations: what we want to do, where we want to go, how safe we want to feel.

All this keeps the electronics industry extremely busy. And the equipment we create – remote smart sensors, street-level broadband infrastructure, full-color digital signage, supercomputers on wheels (or wings) – is more and more likely to be required to operate faultlessly in extreme environmental conditions. Gone is the era when advanced electronics assemblies were mostly destined to spend their lives in air-conditioned telecom offices or otherwise benign environments. Now, they are out in the cold. And the heat. And the humidity. And this presents a major reliability challenge that needs to be addressed at every level from the installation and the enclosure down to the substrate.

Read more: Reliability Needs to be Designed-In from the Lowest Level

And matching materials to the equipment that will advance our world.

Whatever we may learn about the origins of Covid-19, and however inconclusive the information may be, we can be almost certain it had nothing to do with radio waves. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling disappointed about the attacks made on mobile phone masts during this crisis, carried out in the misguided belief that this kind of vandalism can halt the virus.

Fortunately, instances of such extreme technophobia have been few. It seems every new technology wins vocal detractors, however beneficial its effect on peoples’ lives. In recent years, our industry has had to deal with claims about grisly health risks associated with mobile phones, the effects of “wind turbine syndrome,” and the evil propagated by 5G.

Advanced technologies will hold the key to our defense against Covid-19. We will need the knowhow of pharmaceutical labs to create an effective and practicable vaccine, and engineering skills to develop new respirator designs better adapted to the needs of coronavirus patients than are conventional ventilators or CPAP devices. Moreover, effective virucides will be needed to enhance cleaning in places such as hospitals, waiting rooms, factories, warehouses, public transport vehicles, and aircraft. Irradiating at-risk areas using germicidal UV-C lamps could be an option and could easily be automated using mobile robots.

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Read more: Coping with the March of Technology