"I can understand that, my parents are nice people but I'm not planning to follow their path in life either," she paused. "What's the difference between mechanical and general engineering?"

"Specialization. I'd learn less bits-and-pieces of other disciplines and more kinematics, 3D modelling, strain analysis, and so on. But I'm not sure I want mechanical specifically, really..."

"A diverse skill set is often useful, although do make sure you're not taking dumbed down courses that are more 'diverse' without actually having more useful content. I made that mistake with physics back in high school."

"I've pushed my way past the stupid 200-level courses, yeah. Doing an interesting one on electronic circuits and signal processing this semester."

"Interesting, I'm kinda fascinated by the recent move towards using re-programmable chips for more efficient computation of neural nets, do you think your class will get to cover that at all?"

"...Nope!"

"Solid state chips are kind of a stupid idea, anyway. It's just that they're cheaper, and price is king for public business."

"So you think that re-programmable chips will be more common for other purposes? I would expect that specialized chips have some advantages in performing specific types of computation, at least on the miniaturization front."

"Speaking as if price is only a factor in public businesses is an odd assumption. Are you suggesting that this is a problem with time horizons for the investment or is there some more fundamental criticism you have of the way businesses tend to be run?"

"In general, a cheaper design or material source that fulfills the same function is often taken, is what I was observing. Why use a full ALU when a simple decade counter and timer chip would work just as well, be smaller on the board, and cost less?"

"If by ALU you mean something usefully turing complete, I think that depends a lot on how up upgradeable you plan to make something. If you're trying to be optimal I think that erring more on the side of upgradability and repairability is pretty wise, but I do understand why most businesses don't."

"I know folks in the consumer electronics business, and the big assembly plants go for cost effectiveness. You can't upgrade ten thousand microwaves in folks' houses. So you make them with the minimum they need the first time around."

"I wonder if you couldn't get some of the same scaling benefits by making things more modular. If you had a common set of standards and drivers you could switch components in and out. I guess most people aren't tech savvy enough to mess everything up doing that though." She chuckles and blushes slightly. "I'm not sure I am tech savvy enough to upgrade my appliances without breaking them. I could get Zahn to do it for me though."

"It'd also make it easier to install cover surveillance devices in people's homes. That seems like an advantage to you Alice."

Alice sighs, "Zahn and I used to play spy games when we were younger. He still likes to tease me about them."

"Spy games can be fun. They can also go too far. Have you heard of the whole modular smartphone thing? Doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I think the section of the population that wants to snap bits of their phones in and out is just too small to make it worth the overhead to do stuff like that."

"I feel like it works better for household appliances than something where weight and bulk are nearly as much a factor as cost."

"You won't see me lining up to invest in that, though."

"Mass production exists for a reason, ya know. When robotics gets better I can see more customization coming into our products, I suppose."

"I think I'd point more to 3D-printing than robotics."

"Hard to say what will be big in the future, isn't it?"

"Yep, the future is a much more reliable and unpredictable, final frontier than space." Zahn laughs.

Alice rolls her eyes but laughs a little too.

"As interesting as this stuff is, allow me to give a non-sequitor... What kind of music do y'all like?"

"I tend to go for sorta Melancholy stuff with an uplifting bent. So I like a bunch of Christina Perri's stuff and other stuff like that."