Engineering-The Fulcrum of Tomorrow's World?

Abstract

The future depicted in the movie Minority Report should be seen as a wake up call for those of us in the engineering community. While it is unmistakably a work of science fiction, many of the concepts it presents are very much seated in current day reality more than we would perhaps acknowledge at first glance. If we are to capitalise on today's technology to shape tomorrow's world, the engineering community will need to view itself differently and step outside of its technical comfort zone to embrace the non-technical realm. Such a shift in perception will have implications for the roles fulfilled by engineers in the workplace, how we educate our engineering students and the role played by professional societies. The increasing scepticism of society towards technology and the engineering and scientific communities from which it is created will place a greater emphasis on ethics and the explicit need to demonstrate that technology is utilised to facilitate the creation of tomorrow's world, not prescribe it.