Since at least the 1950s, specialists from various fields of science have been discussing the social impact of modern products and technologies (in the area called "Technology Assessment" -TA). For example, spectacular effects of the appearance of television or a mobile phone on the shape and type of relationships between people are described, both in the micro (e.g., family) and macro (local, regional, national, or supra-national community) scale. However, this discussion has not yet found reflection in the education of young people, especially - though not exclusively - future engineers. Hence my "multi-layered" question: is it worth including such content in modern education programs? And if it is worth it, to what extent, at what level of education and with the use of what means and methods?
On the basis of th two following articles (translated from French), yes we could consider that students should be warned of the possible adverse effects modern products and technologies can have:
Article Amazon and Tesla: Men Subordinate to Robots
Article How techs are transforming work and why the current accelera...
But if we consider the question more deeply, the technologies themselves have nothing to see with the dubious use which is made of them. They could provide real progress ans happiness instead of alienation. Engineers have generally no real empowerment on that use: the last word is for financiers. It is the social conscience of the latter that should be concerned: unfortunately, it is hopeless.
All that remains is to try to counteract (mostly in vain) their influence:
Presentation About the proper use of automation to improve working conditions
Thanks for raising the issue of two "technonic plates with rupture lines and touch points": technology revolutions and societal evolutions.
Within the technology evolutions one needs to add some study of observed user adoption (refrigerator, CD, DVD, mobile phone, social networks, etc) which seems to be shrinking at every new step of technology revolution.
Within societal evolutions, slower changes in beliefs, mindsets, behaviours.Here a sharp detector is attitude of majority towards certain minorities, or accepted behaviour of dominant category towards dominated categories. For instance increasing the status of women by law, and comparing with its actual progress (proportion of women CEO of companies, salary equality or not, per country). It's just an example,many others should be studied.
Then comes the question of how technology and society interplay. To stay with the example of a history of lack of recognition of women versus men, slowly corrected, take the case of women driving any heavy vehicles now, because technology has completely changed the way vehicles operate (not strength but brains are needed). This is why women drive buses,whereas decades ago, only makes would do this task. Employment law and regulation has also accompanied the change made possible by technology, to prevent archaic societal inertia to block evolution.
Some societal evolutions also stimulate technology evolution.
For instance Covid19 stimulated use of two-wheel vehicles, with new bicycles selling well, and electrical bicycle market being accelerated. Observe that a first obvious consequence is the progressive growth and expected generalisation of disk-brakes on two-wheel vehicles (initially this system was used on four wheel vehicles...).
Working from home and having home bound work and leisure sessions stimulate high speed network growth and fiber connection in many countries. This is a case where society accelerates technology revolution
Dear author, thank you for sharing this excellent question..
I agree with Prof Di Francesco.
kind regards..
I would strengthen the message and say they even must be taught on such concerns of technology assessment. Otherwise they will not be prepared in future to support decision makers or make own conscious decisions. I believe, that this issues should be reflected in both bachelor and master curricula in different disciplines. However, to different extent of course, but I cannot imagine now the discipline, that should not have any mention of technology assessment at all. Recapitulating, to what extent at which majors is still open and complex research question, that would need extensive research programme including researchers of different disciplines (philosophers, engineers, managers, ...) in order to be answered.
A robot (GPT-3) wrote the following article, entitled “Are you scared yet, human?”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3?fbclid=IwAR0VC-CgebnF_FC9fBNgOU8zt-HGMHyPqfy0cCsvRfUmFsepzJjVkFQZtRM
Following Stephen Hawking (among others) who has warned that AI could “spell the end of the human race.”, I believe that students must be enlightened as such. I also believe that “Educating the educators” must be first taken into careful consideration.
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