Synopsis
The author of The Existential Pleasures of Engineering argues that our world's leaders must adopt an engineering mindset in designing solutions to moral and social problems that fit within the constraints of time, materials, and money.
Reviews
More soothing technological reassurances from writer-engineer Florman (Blaming Technology, 1981, etc.), here maintaining that we need more and better technological ``fixes,'' not fewer, and pleading for more engineers to become involved in running things. What the world needs most, Florman begins, is affordable energy sources, new materials, ample food and water, and a clean environment. Technology can help provide these. But since the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our engineering, we need to attract the best and brightest people into the profession. Nor must we allow technology to rush blindly ahead, Florman continues; we should avoid bleak modernity (as exemplified, apparently, by Star Trek--probably the oddest brickbat it's received), reject cultural homogenization, protect the environment, and resist recriminations for past errors. All well and good, though could not this last proposition be wielded by the unscrupulous to evade responsibility? Elsewhere, Florman rightly points out that many of our technological success stories are described as ``science''; somehow, this becomes ``engineering' only when things go wrong: Witness the entire NASA space program. Florman argues persuasively that in order for engineering and technology to be applied more effectively to the problems that beset the world, political perceptions and public awareness must improve dramatically. When discussing his fellow engineers, Florman is brutally honest but far less reassuring. He admits that engineers are often overly meticulous, lack political savvy and professional pride, and tend to be a humorless bunch; the few engineers to hold prominent public offices--Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, John Sununu--were not successes. Thus his contention that more engineers should involve themselves in political processes and policy discussions, unfortunately, self-destructs. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Florman addresses either popular perceptions of technology or the state of the engineering profession that produces it. We tend to be schizophrenic about technology: a Luddite mentality competes with amazed admiration for what sophisticated machines can do. In these varied essays, Florman tilts strongly in favor of admiration, believing that although technology creates difficulties, as in ecological degradation, it remains the solution. Further, he takes issue with antitechnologists, often poets writing of "dark Satanic mills," and wonders why engineers are never heroes of novels. In actuality, engineers--even those who have revolutionized our lives--labor in anonymity (can you name the inventor of the integrated circuit, Florman asks), which piques Florman's mulling of the engineer's absence from popular culture, except as a figure to fear. In another piece on the personality type of engineers and the poor politicians they make (remember Hoover and Carter?), Florman concludes that they make good idealists and can improve people's lives far better than can any crusading lawyer. A sampler bound to give students considering the career a perspective beyond the dry facts. Gilbert Taylor
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