TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 209 Despite these reservations, those interested in the evolution of engineering education in America will find much of interest in Yates’s account of one of the important American engineering schools. Terry S. Reynolds Dr. Reynolds is head of the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University and author of several recent articles on the history ofengineering education. MIT: Shaping the Future. Edited by Kenneth R. Manning. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. Pp. x + 200; notes. $9.95 (paper). Few institutions in American higher education have been more introspective than technological universities. Reflecting the selfconsciousness of the emergent engineering profession itself, they have worried continuously about how best to educate engineers and about the role of engineering education and research in American society. The dialogue has gone on for over a century, and certain themes recur. As a colleague of mine noted in the midst of one such conversation, “our discussions always begin in medias res.” This collection of essays is part of that ongoing dialogue. Stimulated by the inauguration of President Charles M. Vest, faculty and staff members at the nation’s preeminent technological university offered their reflections on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its place in American life. The result is not the sort of volume that emanates from foundation-funded studies on the future of higher education. These essays resemble the conversations one hears when colleagues reflect on their own institution. With few exceptions, the sixteen essays fall into three categories: the juxtaposition of engineering and liberal arts in the curriculum, the student culture and work ethic of MIT, and MIT “inventions” of national and global significance. The proper mix of technical and liberal arts subjects has long been a staple of engineering education debates. All of the authors who addressed that issue argued for a closer integration of science and technology with the humanities and social sciences. The most fully developed proposals came from Ann F. Friedlaender (civil engineer ing and economics), who stressed the importance of the liberal arts in creativity and design, and Michael L. Dertouzos (Laboratory for Computer Science), who emphasized the sociotechnical nature of the problems which engineers must be educated to resolve and pro posed curricular reforms similar to the ones he and his coauthors outlined in Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (Cam bridge, Mass., 1989). Tbe work-hard-play-hard culture of MIT students came in for its share of scrutiny. Cynthia Griffin Wolff (literature) described the careers of three women students, whose experiences illustrate the 210 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE dark side of MIT’s competitive environment. In a parallel essay Eve Odiorne Sullivan (Laboratory for Nuclear Science) suggested that when taken to extremes the pursuit of excellence becomes yet another form of addictive behavior that MIT is called on to treat. A final set of essays argued for the social utility of MIT “inventions” ranging from transformational generative grammar to system dy namics to techniques for cleaner utilization of fossil fuel. Two essays addressed the perennial issue of how such institutions as MIT foster industrial growth. Edward B. Roberts (management of technology) chronicled the culture of high-tech entrepreneurship and MIT’s support for commercialization of research that spawned the hightechnology boom along Route 128 and served as a model for Silicon Valley. Thomas R. Moebus (Industrial Liaison Program) traced MIT’s interaction with technology-based firms from its association with Alexander Graham Bell to the liaison program to a global computer network that will link MIT and a host of industrial partners. Similar to faculty conversations elsewhere, these essays lay claim to their institution’s historical sense of itself (most appropriate, for their own ends, MIT’s motto, Mens et Manus), while at the same time articulating a sense of what that institution should be and do in the years ahead. If at times the authors seem to be talking past rather than to each other, that is the way of many faculty conversations. The essays on curriculum and student life offer a healthy dose of institutional self-criticism. That spirit does not extend to the essays on MIT’s interaction with the world of commerce and...