Electronics and telecommunications in Poland - issues and perspectives

Electronics is under development in this country in an organized and institutional way since the beginning of 30-ties of the previous century. It grew up from electrical engineering of weak currents and its first name used popularly was communications. It was time when television was born and the radio was maturing. Electronics is a branch of research and technology which deals with generation and processing of electrical and electromagnetic signals. A subject of telecommunications is signal transmission for a distance. Electronics and telecommunications (ET) includes or is combined with other branches like: microelectronics, radioelectronics, optoelectronics, photonics, acoustoelectronics, magnetronics, bioelectronics, energoelectronics, material engineering, semiconductor physics, automation and robotics, mechatronics and microsystems, informatics, teleinformatics, software engineering and other. Devices and functional systems of ET such as computers, data warehouses, cell phones, TV sets, Internet, GPS are build of electronic components and circuits. ET is a branch which belongs to hi-tech area, where the products gather a large load of knowledge of value overcoming frequently the price of work and material. ET has recently turned to an active participant of the processes of generation, storing, processing, transportation, distribution and usage of knowledge in the society. ET started to create artificial intelligence, co-creates intellectual property, searches for knowledge in big data sets, aids medicine, extends virtual/augmented reality, builds Internet of persons and things, strengthens security, protects natural environment, facilitates our life, aids our decisions, activates individuals, equalizes chances, provides convenient personal communications and access to data, starts building a penetrating ubiquitous infrastructure, ceases to be only a branch of technology, grows into the social space, touches culture, sociology, psychology and art. Such an important role of ET is combined with the existence in the society of an adequate infrastructure which recreates the full development cycle of high technology embracing: people, institutions, finances and logistics, in this also science, higher education, education, continuous training, dissemination and outreach, professional social environment, legal basis, political support and lobbying, innovation structures, applications, industry and economy. The digest of chosen development tendencies in ET was made here from the academic perspective, in a wider scale and on this background the national one, trying to situate this branch in the society, determine its changing role to build a new technical infrastructure of a society based on knowledge, a role of builder of many practical gadgets facilitating life, a role of a big future integrator of today’s single bricks into certain more useful unity. This digest does not have a character of a systematic analysis of ET. It is a kind of an arbitrary utterance of the authors inside their field of competence. The aim of this paper is to take an active part in the discussion of the academic community in this country on the development strategy of ET, choice of priorities for cyclically rebuilding economy, in competitive environments. The review paper was initiated by the Committee of Electronics and Telecommunications of Polish Academy of Sciences and was published in Polish as introductory chapter of a dedicated expertise, printed in a book format. This version makes the included opinions available for a wider community.