The Unbalanced Equation: Technical Opportunities and Social Barriers in the NAE Grand Challenges and Beyond

Dean Nieusma,Xiaofeng Tang

doi:10.24908/ijesjp.v1i2.4314

Abstract

The US National Academy of Engineering’s 2008 report, Grand Challenges for Engineering, puts forward a provocative vision of future civilization and engineering’s role in it. Notably, the report signals a trend in engineering toward more explicit and direct engagement with enduring, complex social problems, offering intriguing opportunities for exploring the relationship between engineering and questions of social justice. This paper makes one such exploration by analyzing the report’s explicit framings of engineering-for-social-problem-solving and the implicit assumptions underlying such framings. It shows how the report frames the non-technical factors as external to—and often barriers for—engineering. In contrast, technical challenges, even immense ones, are framed as wholly within engineering’s dominion and as opportunities for both engineering and human civilization as a whole. The paper argues that Grand Challenges signals contemporary tensions in the profession as it seeks an expansive domain of influence and relevance while at the same time narrowly circumscribing what engineers should be accountable for knowing and doing.

Highlights

In 2008, the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) released its report, Grand Challenges for Engineering, which describes 14 major engineering challenges that must be overcome to make the world “a more sustainable, safe, healthy, and joyous—in other words, better—place” (p. 6)
The Unbalanced Equation demonstrate the connection between their activities and the grand challenges, such as IBM’s Big Green Initiative, which claims to address a number of challenges identified in the NAE report
The general enthusiasm with which it has been received, the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering report offers an intriguing opportunity to reflect on how engineers imagine what engineering is and what its proper role in society ought to be, including how it relates with questions of social justice

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In 2008, the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) released its report, Grand Challenges for Engineering, which describes 14 major engineering challenges that must be overcome to make the world “a more sustainable, safe, healthy, and joyous—in other words, better—place” (p. 6). After working through some of the most problematic assumptions and approaches evident in Grand Challenges, we propose alternative understandings of engineering that are more in line with the complexities of the grand-challenge problems and that more readily align with social justice initiatives. These alternative understandings synthesize insights being developed within the engineering studies community—and within science and technology studies (STS) more broadly—over the past few decades. These understandings promise more imaginative engineering approaches and more robust contributions to social justice

METHODOLOGY

A Multiple-Stakeholders Model of Collaboration

CONCLUSION