Teen tech expectations: Study

Did we parents not know this? Teenagers are "completely comfortable with rapid technological change," MIT found in a survey of Americans' attitudes toward innovation. Among the findings, 33% of US teens predict the demise of gasoline-powered cars by 2015, 26% expect CDs to be obsolete by then, and 22% say desktop computers will be out of the picture. They're also optimistic about invention and innovation being able to solve global problems like hunger, disease, pollution, and needs for energy and clean water. However, Merton Flemings, head of the Lemelson-MIT program that conducted the survey, told USATODAY that he "wonders whether enough of today's teens are in position to invent such solutions, noting that engineering was teens' third-most attractive career choice, picked by 14% as the field that most interested them — and just 4% of girls. Only 9% of all teens said they were leaning toward science." Teen respondents' top two career picks were the arts and medicine (each got 17%).