It’s all spelled out in the article. An incredible opportunity for the state and the University of Hawai’i to become an integral part in the burgeoning world of semiconductors, optics, alternative energy, and computer science. A grand opportunity to plant our flag in development (alongside Silicon Valley and other choice locations) of a lucrative, clean, forward-looking, vital industry.
The article mentions Motorola, Intel, and others looking at UH labs for the best and brightest students along with sharing ideas from top scientists (a/k/a professors) at our world-class university up in the Mānoa hills. The article proffers that UH’s physical electronics labs are superior to those at Cal and Stanford. It sounds so grand, within reach, and real! So what happened? Good question. That article, by consultant/advisor/entrepreneur Ray Tsuchiyama (A Farrington HS graduate), appeared in the Hawaii High Tech Journal in the summer… of 1984.
Was there a lack of political will? A lack of financing or grant opportunities? Were we too fixated on tourism, agriculture, and the military as our big three economic pillars to push the incredible potential of these teaching visionaries and their students? Computer science was already a pretty big deal then, so where was our homegrown Big Brother in 1984 to nurture and push this alternative economic engine forward? Surely people realized the goal to keep our best and brightest home back then… I assume. As an aside, Arkansas is now a leading state in computer science, because it pushed.
Can we push harder to bring computer science further along at UH and in our high schools? Perhaps a public-private partnership? Equitably… pushing merit-based programs. Too much humbug? Robotics have become a big deal in Hawai`i in this century, true, and maybe the tech boat hasn’t sailed away on microchip design, lab work, electrical engineering as a trade, or Hawai`i in general as a computer sciences center.
It might not be worth much, but U.S. News & World Report ranks UH-Manoa tied at #135 among colleges/universities in the nation for computer science offerings. Again, this opportunity gone awry is much more complicated than any current numbers, missed opportunities, or even original hopes and realities expressed in a 1984 article. But it is a concrete example where we weren’t just hypothesizing, but were actually succeeding in an area that held great promise for economic diversity and providing well-paying jobs for our own, until it wasn’t.
Think about it…