How can an average person contribute to science and technology?

donate your body to science!!!!!!!!!

offer to be research subjects for new drugs and treatment.

Raise children interested in science.

I guess one could become a memeber of PBS…or donate to scientific charities

Volunteer in fund-raising activities that support reaserches…such as Autism Speaks, March of Dimes, American Cancer Society, etc.

There are lots of opportunities to help. Any trade has the potential to contribute. You can be a lab technician. You can work in a machine shop making components for the test devices. Construction workers build the buildings, dig the trenches. Who do you think dug the tunnels for rhe super collider? Not the scientists. They can’t do their work without the work of others.
Heck, even English majors are needed to write proposals.
Sorry, History majors are screwed.

Become a volunteer in some experiment. Or try to make your own experiment. You will contribute something if you succeed,and even if you failed you’ll still contribute something about what method can’t be done in some science experiment.

You can use your computer’s idle time to work on scientific experiments.

It sounds like you’re interested in getting involved, not just side-line stuff.
You can just hop right into it, it’s not hard it’s just made to look that way.
Get the books, go through articles – find an area of interest to you. Find out more, do a full literature review.. you’ll soon find out how to add to that. You can contact researchers, become a research assistant and so forth. Maybe even do some side courses.

Great question – best of luck :)

Bill Gates didn’t finish college.

Educate yourself about science and research as best you can and raise children with a hunger to learn and a desire to make the world a better place. Support research that means something to you by donating, by encouraging others to do the same. Support good education in your community.

You can make a difference without doing the science yourself! Thank you.

Well, we know that “simple” patent officers can contribute.

Travel into the Amazon rain forrest and identify a new species of something.