Technology in Economic and Social Context

Resumo

Our goal is to promote a fuller understanding of the economic and social contexts in which engineering practice takes place to foster both the success of real-life engineering projects and genuine interdisciplinary thinking. Technological systems and the engineering practice behind them are both human endeavors; they rely on networks between non-natural artifacts and systems, and the humans who employ them.  Neither can exist without users, or indeed without proving acceptable to a sustainable community of users. Engineering is much more than just the production of technological artifacts, and as such, needs an understanding of the economic and social contexts in the construction of technologies.  Similarly, innovation, including technological innovation, is a social process. Engineers are best served when they understand the importance of tradition as well as of weak links across communities in the creation of new innovative technologies.  Likewise, there is much to learn from the study of past experience about the role of economic and social conditions in contributing to the success of technical innovations and diffusion of new technologies via entrepreneurship.  Many new technologies result from the reuse of old innovations in new contexts.  Thus, we stress the importance of history -- including but not limited to the history of technology and science -- as a source of inspiration about technology.