Engineers for Change

Engineers for Change
Author: Matthew Wisnioski
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2012-10-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262304260

An account of conflicts within engineering in the 1960s that helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of technological change as the driver of history. In the late 1960s an eclectic group of engineers joined the antiwar and civil rights activists of the time in agitating for change. The engineers were fighting to remake their profession, challenging their fellow engineers to embrace a more humane vision of technology. In Engineers for Change, Matthew Wisnioski offers an account of this conflict within engineering, linking it to deep-seated assumptions about technology and American life. The postwar period in America saw a near-utopian belief in technology's beneficence. Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, society—influenced by the antitechnology writings of such thinkers as Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford—began to view technology in a more negative light. Engineers themselves were seen as conformist organization men propping up the military-industrial complex. A dissident minority of engineers offered critiques of their profession that appropriated concepts from technology's critics. These dissidents were criticized in turn by conservatives who regarded them as countercultural Luddites. And yet, as Wisnioski shows, the radical minority spurred the professional elite to promote a new understanding of technology as a rapidly accelerating force that our institutions are ill-equipped to handle. The negative consequences of technology spring from its very nature—and not from engineering's failures. “Sociotechnologists” were recruited to help society adjust to its technology. Wisnioski argues that in responding to the challenges posed by critics within their profession, engineers in the 1960s helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of technological change as the driver of history.

Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications

Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications
Author: United States. Superintendent of Documents
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1290
Release: 1971
Genre: Government publications
ISBN:

February issue includes Appendix entitled Directory of United States Government periodicals and subscription publications; September issue includes List of depository libraries; June and December issues include semiannual index.

Military and the South

Military and the South
Author: Julian Bond
Publisher: The Institute for Southern Studies
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2013-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN:

Southern Exposure's inaugural issue explores US imperialism and its nuclear and genocidal threat. Excerpt from the Introduction: As the South blends into the national picture, its problems are less unique, more national in character. Yet there is a continuing uniqueness to the region—both in its history of struggle and its possibilities for developing alternatives to the rest of America's crisis-prone growth. In 1970, with the advent of an era characterized by rapid economic expansion, urban growth, "New South politics," and more subtle forms of racism, we founded the Institute for Southern Studies. Our staff is young, black and white, men and women who were active participants in the struggles of the sixties. With an appreciation for region/nation interrelations, we seek to offer imaginative strategies for social change. Our goal is to provide ideas, analyses, facts, and programs for groups and individuals building the South of the Seventies and beyond, to translate information into action for progressive change.

NASA SP-7500

NASA SP-7500
Author: United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1973
Genre:
ISBN: