It's not immaterial after all.

The popular saying when I was in school was people doing material science engineering would never get to savor material pleasures (read money!) given there was a severe dearth of jobs in that field. You want to be an idealist, this is the field for you was the popular adage. While there was a frenzy to get into Computer science there was a severe drought of students in fields like Material science. A number of students used to jump ship to computer science and the university promptly banned this practice. Well , fast forward to 2007 and now we are beginning to hear and entirely different story. This article seems to indicate that the folks who stuck it out potentially stand to gain and actually make a difference to our lives. If you want an example, all of Apple's latest innovations have been possible on account of the work of material scientists and device physicists. So the next time you listen to a tune on your shiny Ipod pay a silent tribute to those hardworking Material scientists.