Engineers for Change

Engineers for Change
Author: Matthew H. Wisnioski
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2012-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0262018268

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.

Characteristics of America's Engineers and Scientists: 1960 and 1962; the Postcensal Survey

Characteristics of America's Engineers and Scientists: 1960 and 1962; the Postcensal Survey
Author: United States. Bureau of the Census
Publisher:
Total Pages: 94
Release: 1969
Genre: Engineers
ISBN:

This report presents detailed national statistics on the employment of America's scientific and engineering manpower in relation to various economic and social characteristics. Responsibility for the publication of this report is shared by the Bureau of the Census and the National Science Foundation. The statistics in this report are based on a postcensal survey conducted in 1962 representing a sample of particular occupations and other groups selected from the 25-percent sample tape file of the population enumerated in the Eighteenth Decennial Census of Population, taken as of April 1, 1960.

The Royal Society and the Promotion of Science since 1960

The Royal Society and the Promotion of Science since 1960
Author: Peter Collins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1107029260

The first synoptic history of how the Royal Society faced up to the challenges of continued relevance from 1960 onwards.