editorial
Goodbye, Kids
T
his issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine includes a special section on engineering education and the liberal arts. The new millennium has brought renewed attention to this important topic and engineering educators have been hard at work on innovative methods, courses, and programs for integrating perspectives from the humanities and social sciences with technical studies. Our special issue features authors from the humanities, social sciences, and engineering, writing on such diverse topics as disasters, problemsolving, and games. In the first two papers, philosophers Heinz Luegenbiehl and Michael Davis take on the question of whether recent disasters (in this case Hurricane Katrina) make for good teaching cases in engineering ethics. Davis argues that the Katrina case is too complex and the engineering decision making too “diffuse” for it to be very useful in teaching engineering ethics. Luegenbiehl, on the on the other hand, argues that the complexity of the case enables interesting and important discussions regarding the ethical responsibilities of engineers. In the next paper, J. Douglass Klein, an economist, and Robert Balmer, an engineer, describe “Converging Technologies,” an innovative program at Union College, Schenectady, NY, that attempts to expose both non-engineering and engineering students to the best thinking in the areas of technological literacy and liberal studies. By studying new and converging technologies such as bioengineering and nanotechnology students in this program learn about both how technology works and its societal context. Kathryn Jablokow, another engineer, follows with a paper that argues for achieving a synthesis of enDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2007.913308
joseph r. herkert
gineering science and humanities through a focus on problem solving. Marilyn Dyrud, a communication professor, concludes the special section with a discussion of the use of ethics games in industrial ethics training programs as well as in teaching engineering and professional ethics. The synergism suggested by these authors — between micro and macro approaches to engineering ethics, between technological literacy and the liberal arts, between liberal studies and problem solving — are not only reflective of some exciting trends in engineering education but also, I think, of the underlying rationale for T&S and its parent, IEEE-SSIT. Our members and readers have long recognized the critical importance of the social implications of technology — we are thus well positioned to both benefit from and contribute to the recent interest in educating engineers with broader social, ethical, political, historical, and cultural understanding of their work and profession. This issue also marks the end of my four plus years run as Editor of T&S. My deepest thanks go out to all of the authors, reviewers, guest editors, editors, and editorial board members who have contributed to the success of the magazine during this period. I’m especially grateful to Managing Editor Terri Bookman, who keeps this train on the tracks and on schedule, and to Keith Miller, whose enthusiasm and hard work as Senior Associate Editor this year has made for a very smooth transition to Keith’s forthcoming Editorship of the magazine. As I wrote this final editorial, all that remained was to choose a parting quote that would double as the title of the piece. Although there were several candidates (such as “you won’t have Herkert to kick around anymore”), in the end the most fitting seemed to be Clarabell’s first — and only — words.
T&S Editor Joseph R. Herkert is Lincoln Associate Professor of Ethics and Technology, Arizona State University, 7001 E. Williams Field Road, Bell Hall, Mesa AZ 85212;
[email protected]. IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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winter 2007
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