Advice to a young technologist

I just got an email from a high school sophomore in Dayton, OH, asking me for advice. The student is interested in technology, and likes the work that we do in the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media Lab. They were wondering what they should do now, to move in this direction and to prepare for their future college career, and eventual work career.

Here are the thoughts I offered:

• Keep looking around online for projects that you think are interesting, and keep a list of them. Find out what technologies they use, how those technologies are put together, and what the background of the people was who did it.
• Find ways to learn more about engineering and technology. This can be classes, if your school has electronics, computer programming, or applied math -- but could also be extra-curricular activities, like if your school has a robotics club. If you can find a summer job/internship with a local research lab -- maybe in a computer science or product design group at a nearby university, that can also be a great place to get experience.
• Take things apart. start with things that don't matter if you can't get them 100% back together, then you can move to more precious things. And when you take something apart, pay close attention to how it's made and how things are connected to other things.
• Build stuff! do your own projects -- get started asap. check out online resources like instructables.com, or the sparkfun.com tutorials, for ideas.
• Find other people who are also interested in engineering/technology, and hang out with them. Teach each other about new techniques for making stuff, do projects together, etc.. Having a community is important.
  

Feel free to comment with other ideas -- this question is one that really resonates with me, since I wish that I had become empowered to use technology as a creative tool even earlier in life than I did!