Engineering a Better Future

Front matter

Eswaran Subrahmanian Toluwalogo Odumosu - Jeffrey Y. Tsao Editors

Engineering a Better Future pier 2y between Engineering, Social ances, and Innovation

Z) Springer

Preface

Engineers make up roughly 2% of any country’s population, however, they exert an outsize impact on the lives of citizens and on society in general. Since the Industrial Revolution through the current Information Revolution, engineers through their work have played the roles of sociologist, economist, political scientist, and policy analyst, changing the patterns of our lives. Socially embedded innovations such as the cell phone and the Internet are transforming the economic, social, cultural, and physical well-being of people all over the world. The debate is often over how the technology fits into society and not necessarily over how society is reflected in the technology developed, i.e., for example, how the technological system reflects preexisting bias and inequality. As the 1991 NAP report on “Engineering as a social enterprise” states, the dominant view of engineering is one of detached technological quests apart from society. The social implications of engineering and the social influence of engineering is often left out leading to a paucity of interaction between social sciences and engineering in any meaningful way. Engineers are often unaware of technological history and the role of social forces in the history of the development of technologies. Furthermore, the importance of social understanding of innovation processes is often downplayed both in daily and academic discourse on engineering. The workshop was designed to bring together these two cultures. Our hope is that they are not as divided as C. P. Snow declared, but rather, it is the lack of recognition of the intertwined nature of engineering and social sciences that prevents interactivity.

The goal of the workshop was to bring together engineers and social scientists to examine the role that engineers have in the future of our living environments and our economies, and to begin a discussion on how best to integrate the social sciences into engineering practice and research. The best innovation systems anticipate characteristics of technological use and culture, and these are best informed by the social sciences. The symposium addressed the role of social science research in shaping engineers’ view of their work and its role in the transformation of society.

vi Preface

Engineering is shaped and informed by social sciences in ways that would benefit from open discussion and greater integration. Often the larger population and engineers themselves are seldom aware of engineers’ contributions to social sciences. From Stevenson to Ford, engineers continually envision and actualize profound changes to social character and behavior. Individuals such as Benjamin Whorf, Vilfredo Pareto, and Fredrick Taylor whom, while engineers in practice, made significant contributions to social sciences, suggesting the close interrelationship between engineering and social sciences. Given the range of problems faced by global society from global warming, the automation of work, to environment degradation and social inequity, it is clear that only through the collaboration and appreciation of the each other can engineers and social scientists work together to solve these critical problems.

The workshop brought together a variety of scholars from the social sciences and engineering (see list below) to Carnegie Mellon University for a period of 2 days. The workshop was divided into three themes: Meeting at the Middle (challenges to educating at the boundaries); Engineers Shaping Human Affairs; and Engineering the Engineers (thinking about design in designing thinking).

Pittsburgh, USA Eswaran Subrahmanian Albuquerque, USA Dr. Jeffrey Y. Tsao Charlottesville, USA Prof. Toluwalogo Odumosu

Organizing Committee

Acknowlegments

We would like to thank Prof. Venkatesh Narayamurthi for his encouragement to find ways to make this workshop happen. He brought us, Subrahmanian, Jeffrey Y. Tsao, and Tolu Odomosu together, as organizers that allowed us to pull off the workshop and the edited book. We would also like to thank, Prof. Maryann Feldman, Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, who was the Program Director of SciSIP program of NSF, supported and funded this workshop. Our thanks to Prof. Douglas Sicker, Head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy for his active participation in the workshop, Prof. Burcu Akinci, Associate Dean for Research at College of Engineering, Rebecca Gray, and all other Staff at the Engineering Research Accelerator at CMU who supported in making this workshop successful. This workshop was funded by the NSF grant 36513.

Contents

1 Innovations in Energy-Climate Education: Integrating Jennie C. Stephens

2 Technology, Policy and Management: Co-evolving or Converging? ci csc eeepc aay ad Wine IREE OBE ose shee Wh 9 Margot Weijnen and Paulien Herder

3 Reconnecting Engineering with the Social and Political Sphere css. i eao eE Resell SiR Ral BBs nace ae EN ee AG 15 Jameson M. Wetmore

Introduction

Background

Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences and Innovation, a workshop funded by the National Science Foundation, was held from April 15-16, 2016 at the Carnegie Mellon University. The workshop was held at a time in history when innovation and design thinking “fever” are at a high pitch, when engineers are “king”, and when the products of engineers—technology, is shaping our lives, social relationships, habits, and even needs, in a kind of uncontrolled, technology-centered evolution of our society.

We are not always happy with the shape that this uncontrolled evolution takes. Overwhelming problems of day-to-day life have not yet been alleviated by technological systems, as evidenced by the sub-par quality of life of billions on the planet. In other cases, technological systems have been the cause of problems. As discussed by Galbraith (1998), new needs and desires in an affluent, technology-rich society can be created where none previously existed. There are also other extreme cases such as the whitening cream sold to women in India who have become preoccupied with obtaining lighter complexions, or the burning need to own the next iPhone in order to keep up with peers. These kinds of consumption patterns are global and are deeply ingrained in our psychological makeup, i.e., our fears and personal anxiety at being left out of the game of life.

The question we should ask is: what would “engineering a better future for humanity” look like? One possibility, the metaphor of society as a machine, conjures authoritarian order and a socially engineered, “designed” society, which we by instinct reject. Such social engineering would appear to obstruct and limit the infinite possibilities that humanity might aspire to. The other extreme possibility, the metaphor of society as a complex adaptive system, conjures a runaway and perhaps ultimately self-destructive mix in which humanity, whose instincts evolved and adapted in prehistoric times, interacts with evermore powerful technologies provided to it by willing but oblivious engineers.

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Are there middle possibilities, in which we avoid these two extremes through meaningful ways of socializing engineering and engineering the social in a collective sense? Can a better joint understanding by engineers and social scientists of societal values, understanding sociopolitical contexts, ethical education, and empathy for the environment, enable to us to avoid the blindness that might lead to self-destruction? For example, in the 1991 report “Engineering as a Social Enterprise”, the last National Academy of Engineering Publication on this subject (Sladovic 1991), Thomas Hughes compared two different solution approaches to electrification, one in the US and the other in Europe, and showed the intricate interrelationships between society and engineering. Or, for example, Subrahmanian taught a course on engineering problem formulation in different social contexts at CMU. The course was extended with Prof. Paulien Herder from the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands to illustrate the social and cultural context of the two countries in their approach to dealing with engineering problems, and how the choices made in each of these societies led to very different solutions (for example, in transportation modes) (Subrahmanian et al. 2003). In other words, can a better interplay and mutual understanding between engineers and social scientists help us shape technologies and the social contexts of their uptake in ways which better serve humanity? We are fully aware of the challenges associated with finding the right balance within these middle possibilities.

First, technologies, the products of engineers, are complex and their societal ramifications are difficult and sometimes impossible to predict. Recently, there have been public discussions about smart cities, and the imaginative reengineering of the environment and the connected lives that are possible in the era of the networked world. This is no different from the imaginative reengineering of transportation systems (cars), the unintended consequences of which gave us suburbia and long commutes. It is also no different from the imaginative reengineering of information technologies which are intrusive and paradoxically, make the society both more transparent and less transparent at the same time. No matter how socially conscious or aware of social science principles an engineer might be, his/her ability to forecast how technologies will interact with society is limited. Technologies can both liberate and imprison us, both in surprising ways. Whether we imagine an extractive economy (state or private), a generative circular economy (Eglash in this volume), or a neoliberal model that promotes consumption through its mythology of innovation (Winner, in this volume), how the products and services that are created integrate and transform human society is difficult to anticipate.

Second, it is not just technologies that can be engineered. As Howarth (in this volume) argues, legal systems are also engineered and have a life cycle. We engineer laws to deal with technologically engineered products such as emissions and corporate finance laws that also change society in specific ways. Furthermore, if law is “engineered”, isn’t economics engineered too? If it is true that “economics is an artificial science,” then surely, economics should be understood as being subject to principles of design and engineering in similar fashion. Nobel Economists Ostrom and Roth use design and engineering in the way they approach problems in economics (Ostrom 2005; Roth 2002). Varian (2002), another theoretical

Introduction Xv economist, made the case that economists are more and more, being asked to be engineers. This recognition of the “engineering” of our social lives beyond traditional understanding of engineered physical technologies brings to the fore the importance of a necessary interplay between engineering and the social sciences.

Third, engineers of physical technologies and engineers of social technologies and human affairs are human, all of them, and are just as prone to failures of integrity and behavior as all humans are. Veblen (1963), the American sociologist and economist, argued that the Engineer was the engineer of price and believed that the engineer would be the revolutionary in changing society. That did not happen. In fact, engineers in America have been subordinated by their managers. Charles Perrow, who could not attend the workshop due to illness, in his request to the workshop participants asked (Perrow 2016):

The most important question I would broach at the conference is why are mid and lower level engineers willing to run great risks that are ordered from the top? In my study of major accidents and disasters and fraudulent organizational behavior, I often find that engineer’s warnings had no effect upon the top, and I assume they went ahead with great reluctance, fearing sanctions. If that is the case the problem is with top management (who are often engineers of course) and we should be studying them, and not expect lower level engineers to be heroes.

This request raises the question: when an engineer becomes a manager, does he/she give up his/her engineering ethics of safety first with the products that are built and operate so as instead to satisfy shareholders? Even though Veblen (Veblen 1963) put his faith in the engineer, he was aware of the rise of corporate finance and its control of the engineer (Veblen 1963, p. 55), similar to how Edward Layton details the weak power of the engineers in his book on the “Revolt of the Engineers” (Layton 1986).

Of course, we do not know the answers to these various challenges, and the purpose of the workshop was to explore how, through an interplay between engineering and the social sciences, answers might emerge. Our hypothesis is that both engineering and social science can enrich each other with their methodological approaches and insights, and ultimately, can help “engineer a better future.”

On the one hand, we encourage social scientists to expand their scope to include how engineers think and work, and to develop new principles of engineering that apply not only to physical things but also to human societies. Just as science, cinema and arts influence our thinking of the future, social sciences need not just study universal social science principles, they can also study social structures and rules that work in practical contexts (Sundar, this volume). For example, Ostrom (2005) in her work on institutional analysis and development frameworks creates a grammar and a framework to describe organizations that manage common pool resources. The creation of this grammar is similar to what Redtenbacher did for machine design in Germany in 1850s to promote economic development as it was lagging behind France and Britain. Redtenbacher’s engineers were not just technicians, they were expected to be versed in ways of the society, humanities, and the arts as well (Wauer et al. 2010). This is the same message that one sees in the work of Vitruvius (Pollio 1914), the author of the Ten Books on Architecture.

xvi Introduction

On the other hand, we encourage engineers to better understand how their work influences human society and how the way they work is itself governed by social principles. This latter idea is in our opinion, important but under-appreciated. Social philosophy, attitudes, capabilities, and institutional mechanisms all play a role in the way in which engineered products are developed. The work of Hausman et al. (2014) on the economic complexity of nations shows how the level of complexity of products produced by a country is directly related to its skill base and institutions. Societal mechanisms and attitudes have a clear relationship to the kind of engineering that can be, and is done (product/process complexity and sensitivity).

& HUMANITY D

A Meeting at the Middle: challenges to educating at the boundaries

B Engineers Shaping Human Affairs

C Engineering the Engineers: thinking about design in designing thinking

Se

The workshop itself was not sufficiently comprehensive. It would not be possible in a single workshop to illustrate all the possible ways social science disciplines interconnect with engineering. However, it brought together a variety of people from different disciplinary backgrounds, all of which are well known to have ventured into this middle space rarely visited by most engineers or social scientists. We hope in bringing these individuals together, and in publishing their thoughts in this volume, we help catalyze additional serious conversation between the two communities.

To focus the workshop, it was organized along the following three themes as shown in the figure: Meeting at the Middle (challenges to educating at the boundaries); Engineers Shaping Human Affairs; and Engineering the Engineers (thinking about design in designing thinking). In the remainder of this Introduction, we offer a brief summary of these three themes, along with the various papers associated with them. The breadth of this collection is not indicative of the entire range of possibilities of interplay between social sciences, engineering, and innovation, but rather instead, a representative sampling.

Introduction xvii

Meeting at the Middle: Challenges to Educating at the Boundaries

The collection of papers in this theme is mainly about incorporating social sciences into engineering curricula in various universities in Europe and the US. In the case of The Technology Management program at Technical University of Delft, the choice of “Next Generation Infrastructure” as the focal topic allowed for different disciplines to come together and study problems from perspectives of the other disciplines. In Jennifer Stevens’ work on engineering and environment, the focus on climate change provides the common object of interest. In Dan Siewiorek’s paper on the evolution of Wearable Computers and his “User Centered Multidisciplinary Methodology” course, the focus is on the importance of putting engineering tasks in a context that forces the interaction with other disciplines to create what he calls “renaissance teams”. In the paper by W. B. Carlson, the trajectory of teaching social sciences to engineers at University of Virginia is followed, and he seeks a balance of perspectives in not making engineering into a social construction or an apology for what engineering is: the goal is to understand the interplay between the social and technical without the sometimes-pejorative jargon of the social studies of science. In the case of Jamie Wetmore, the disillusionment of engineering students in being able to make a change in society is addressed: though most do not want a change from purely technical education and are willing to be cogs-in-the-wheel. Wetmore has created a space for those students, who are interested in going beyond traditional boundaries of engineering knowledge and seeks to expose them to the social consequences of engineering and policy decisions. In Hatchuel’s paper, the history of the evolution of engineering studies at Mines ParisTech, France, is reviewed over three major periods: from its beginning as a technical school; to a science-based generalist school with the inclusion of management, political science, and law as part of the curriculum; to the third period where creative, critical, and socially responsible thinking are emphasized in the context of globalization and financialization of engineering and economics.

Technology, Policy and Management: Co-evolving or Converging?

In “Technology, Policy and Management: Co-evolving or Converging?” Margot Weijnen and Paulien Herder trace the logic of the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) from its origins in 1992. The primary focus of the faculty is what they term “comprehensive engineering”, where the goal is to combine insights from engineering sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The premise is that this combination allows for the exploration of interfaces between systems, governance, and values, especially for a networked urbanized society. The program’s evolution from systems engineering to “comprehensive engineering” was motivated by the Next-Generation Infrastructure (NGI) project that created an environment to explore interdisciplinarity in all its richness. The project also articulated the idea of comprehensive engineering as the modeling and design of socio-technical systems xviii Introduction that need to mediate conflicting public values. The chapter then traces the history since 1992 of this move and its effects.

The main point of this chapter is that engineering of infrastructure is not new, but infrastructure and its governance structure often evolve independently. Moreover, even though most infrastructures evolve independently of each other, within an infrastructure domain such as the railway infrastructure, telecommunications, or power, which cross national boundaries, the interrelationships between infrastructures must be recognized and the need for new science of socio-technical systems becomes imperative. It is in this context that the authors argue that TPM had to move from systems engineering to socio-technical systems engineering where methods and models integrating for values, governance, and systems became paramount. New methods such as serious gaming and agent-based modeling that allowed for hybrid models of engineering and social sciences were developed. The move was important for this program to integrate the training in social sciences, engineering, and modeling of complex hybrid systems and has been critical to educate a new class of engineer. The educational program at TPM has embraced this view fully and has been producing Ph.D.s and masters students, who are able to treat social sciences and public values not just as context variables but integral to the design of such systems. This approach has allowed for the program to recognize that systems, governance, and values need to converge.

Evolving from Single Disciplines to Renaissance Teams

The chapter by Dan Siewiorek from Carnegie Mellon University, “Evolving from Single Disciplines to Renaissance Teams”, traces the motivation and history of a course that started as the creation of a single-board computer to the development of wearable computers. This chapter traces the evolution of the course by identifying the failures of the single-board computers that were designed purely by electrical and computer engineers to the outreach to other disciplines. They found their inspiration in the work of the late Randy Pausch, who had created a multidisciplinary course at CMU as part of the entertainment technology master’s program with the explicit goal to create what he termed as “Renaissance” Teams. The notion here is that no one person can possibly cross enough disciplines to be a “Leonardo” of current science and engineering, but one could create teams that mimic the same attitude and openness needed to solve complex problems by transcending technology to address the needs of the user. The chapter traces the characteristics of this course that has as its cornerstone a User-Centered Multidisciplinary design methodology. They also used of documentation tools for understanding the interaction between the disciplines and groups through natural language processing of documents. The conclusion describes the lessons learned from this continuing exercise.

Introduction xix

Knowledge, Skill, and Wisdom: Reflections on Integrating the Social Sciences and Engineering

The chapter, “Knowledge, Skill, and Wisdom: Reflections on Integrating the Social Sciences and Engineering”, by W. Bernard Carlson, from University of Virginia (UVA) traces the history of the integrative social sciences in the undergraduate engineering curriculum at UVA. Carlson begins the paper by making the case that there exists an inherent tension between dependency on technology and ignorance about it in the general populace versus the continued specialization that haunts the engineer from understanding the connection to society of their work. In addressing this problem, he identifies three important components of engineering education: Knowledge, Skill, and Wisdom which he makes the grounding for creating reflective practitioners of engineering in the sense that was first described by Donald Schon. In UVA’s composition of the three components: Knowledge is the use of equations, methods, and other modeling techniques; Skill is the know how to use models, theories, methods, and technique as the they are all about use and manipulation of information; and Wisdom is the skill to know when and where to use these skills while acknowledging that not all is captured in a mathematical model or a theory.

Students are also exposed to the need to understand their limitations and go beyond them to recognize the scope and limitation of their creations from moral, ethical, and socially responsible perspectives. In this chapter, Carlson lays out the history of the evolution of this philosophy of engineering education arising out of a peculiar history of engineering at UVA from a course of writing, presentation, and communication to a four-course structure. The students learn writing, presentation communication as one also learns to think about the interactions between society and technology and its in a nuanced way varied implications in a nuanced manner. To do so requires the evaluation of positive and negative consequences and the ability to think about unintended consequences and their potential impacts. This is done by incorporating case studies, reading in science technology studies and bringing all of them together in a final thesis project. Carson in his chapter also alludes to the challenge of teaching the social aspects of design without the jargon of social studies in technology in the context of production of knowledge. Finally, Carson points to an attitude that is critical to teaching this perspective to the students, i.e., it neither should be an apology for what engineering is nor should it make all of engineering exclusively a social construction.

Innovations in Energy-Climate Education: Integrating Engineering and Social Sciences to Strengthen Resilience

The fourth chapter in this collection by Jennie C. Stephens explores the opportunity afforded by the energy-climate nexus to incorporate social sciences in engineering education. Her primary thesis is that the energy-climate nexus not only transcends silos of disciplines but also connects to practice through its impact on behavioral, economic, and social well-being in communities small and large. Thus, it creates a space for students with diverse interests and backgrounds to relate engineering to

XX Introduction their lives. Beyond engineering, it provides a substrate for STEM education in K-12 at the precollege level. She also makes the case the that the rise of renewable energy and the distribution of energy resources could lead to more democratic forms of governance in resources and energy at the local, regional, and national levels than a distribution dominated by traditional energy resources. She explores the concept of an Energy Democracy that strives to integrate energy policy and social policy to rearticulate energy systems as distributed systems that accrue social benefits to local communities out of the reach of powerful energy interests. She makes the case that the climate-energy nexus brings together the political, social, and technical in a fashion that allows for innovation. Innovation occurs not just in the local communities but in the nature of engineering education itself. By its embrace of the social sciences in engineering through direct engagement, project-based and contextualized learning of engineering would create new career paths and social engagement.

Reconnecting Engineering with the Social and Political Sphere

The chapter by Jameson M. Wetmore, on “Reconnecting Engineering with the Social and Political Sphere”, narrates his experience and solution to the problem of loss of interest in engineering in students who come to the field thinking they are going to be changing the world or doing something good for the world. His observation is that most engineering students feel comfortable being “cogs-in-the-wheel” when asked about going beyond the technical confines of their work. Wetmore’s question is on the means of transforming engineering students’ perception and role as “cogs-in-the-wheel” to be capable of addressing broader challenges in society using Callon’s image of an engineer as an “engineer-sociologist”’. In a way, he is appealing to those few who are yearning for that broadened experience by engaging them in challenging problems in the world. Wetmore describes two efforts that he is conducting at ASU. One is called “Science outside the Lab”, where science and engineering Ph.D. students are brought together with policymakers who work at the interfaces of science, policy, regulation, lobbying, and others in the government over a 2-week workshop. The second lab is based on community experience and involves engaging with the community in a developing country. In these projects, the goal is to dissuade students from starting with a technological solution to rethinking the methodology to include decentering the technology, listening to and learning from the community and empowering the community. The program has been largely successful in getting engineers to think in ways they did not before is evidenced by the careers they pursue. While they were not converted to engineering sociologists they became cognizant of social, political dimensions in engineering and that they can explore this gray space thorough bridges to other disciplines.

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The final chapter in this collection, “Ecole des Mines de Paris: A Few Lessons from a Long History”, by Armand Hatchuel, traces the history of the school through three periods of evolution as a professional training school (1815—1890), subsequently as a generalist school (1890-1967) and to the inclusion of a research-based school (1967—2014) with the additional distinct lines of research pursued in dedicated centers. This history is based on the evolution of the pedagogical approach and identity of an engineer over time.

The goal of the professional training school (1815—1890) was to teach “The art of mining” that inculcated a critical function to restructure the mine operations and practice to enhance poor management of mines and treatment of miners. Beyond courses, in the basics related to metallurgy, materials, and crystallography, the goal was to connect to practice through a course on mine and machine operations. This course served as the basis for field studies that led to documenting mining practices all over the world. After 1850, developments in science including thermodynamics and the science of machines required a transformation of the pedagogy to incorporate training in mathematics, physics, and chemistry training as prerequisite. With these additions, the identity of the engineer had changed from a technician to an “Applied Scientist” resulting in the higher social status of an engineer. There was also a recognition of the engineer’s role in the “creative” act to enhance the well-being of people and the wealth of society. Changing social environment and institutions led to an addition of a course on “Legislation and Industrial Economy”, a generic space of context in the form of legal responsibilities from an engineering perspective.

The second period of the school (1890-1967) moved toward a “Generalist school” and the pedagogical structure was changed to accommodate the new scientist and engineer/manager dual identity. During this period with the rise of industrial chemistry and electricity, the school embraced industrial chemistry and integrated electricity into machine operations courses. It made changes to law and industrial economy course and added many other courses to incorporate industrial science of management. The school in the process of creating the new identity created a new pedagogical structure with general scientific education including mathematics, chemistry, and physics, training in generic technologies including management, economics, and sociology and in a chosen specialization that were available within the school. In the last period 1967—2014, there was the rise of a “Research Based School” that absorbed the “Generalist School”. This period saw the incorporation of a doctoral program and new research centers that covered economics, sociology, and management among other fields. Now, the new identity was one of a designer, innovator-scientist, and scientist-entrepreneur. The paper concludes by projecting the future of the education of an engineer with an identity that is critical, creative, and socially responsible. Increasing financialization of the economy, social and economic inequality, and environmental degradation calls for xxii Introduction a new breed of engineers. The future students should be contributing to collective progress though new forms of responsible firms and industry that reject and regulate the abuses of globalized firms through legislative frameworks and standards.

Engineers Shaping Human Affairs

The collection of papers in this second section highlights the interplay between social sciences and engineering and vice versa. The papers are from different perspectives by people from very different backgrounds. Ideas explored include (a) an exposition by as social studies of science scholar of the cult of innovation in today’s science and technology discourse and its corrupting influence in promoting a neoliberal agenda that primarily serves the elite, (b) an alternative model of engineering and development from a social scientist/systems scholar to a move away from the model of exploitative value generation to circulation of value within a community through generative engineering, (c) a call from an engineer/polymath for a conceptual prospective thinking rather than predictive thinking as the future is not simply a continuation of the past, (d) a legal scholar’s use of models of rate of failures in engineered objects over the life cycle to show that laws wearing out over time have similar patterns to engineered products wearing out over time, (e) an engineer’s call to ask the question of who, why, what, and how as fundamental questions to ask about the role and goal of artifacts and their political, technical, and social goals in designing our future; and (f) a management scholar questioning the role social sciences can play in engineering given their lack of engineering knowledge and the difficulty of normative social science methods to guide technological developments and understand possible paths for their interaction.