Engineering identity in the postmodern world

Andrew Fox at Philosophy of Engineering is blogging about the identity crisis of engineering in our brave new world (here). Many of the concerns of that post resonate with the themes of The Entrepreneurial Engineer.

Engineers of our times must be more broadly capable than Cold War engineers. Engineering educators and leaders of our times need to be more reflective on the foundations and underpinnings of engineering, and they must grasp the opportunities to bridge engineering to the social sciences and the humanities. The key distinctive feature of our times is the interconnection of a large segment of the world's population, the cache of data about human preferences and behavior that this network creates, and the possibility of moving from qualitative and statistical modes of reasoning about human affairs to a new kind of engineering knowledge that is quantitative and sufficiently predictive to enable better postmodern systems design.

Engineers of the Cold War concentrated their efforts on designing physical systems that obeyed natural laws. Engineers of the postmodern era will need to learn to concentrate their efforts on designing institutional facts (in Searle's sense) integrated with physical devices that serve the needs of diverse, distributed populations around the globe.

These efforts requires solid engineering metaphysics, epistemology, and a deeper concern for the logic of invention. They will also strain our Cold War notions of engineering ethics as well. For these reasons, and many more, a better concern for the philsophy of engineering is crucial at this juncture in time.
My view is that the crisis is worse than Fox suggests. and I doubt that the remedies suggested will be of much

More Teaching Company hits

I've blogged previously about Teaching Company courses, and my combined mind-body exercise program continues unabated. I just finished James Hall's course Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason. I liked his earlier course Philosophy of Religion, and thought Tools of Thinking would be worth a shot. I was right.

Tools of Thinking is a subtle interweaving of metaphysics, logic, philosophy of science, history of thought and great thinkers in a form that I think entrepreneurial engineers will particularly appreciate. It is practical, erudite, informative and Hall has a dry sense of humor and an avuncular manner. Lovely course.

I'm just underway on the Teaching Company's flagship course 84-lecture Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition. Back when I started running (1994?), I bought the first edition of this course on audiotape, listened to it on my morning runs, and really enjoyed it, but they've added some terrific new lecturers and made a very good course even better. My exercise regimen has changed (weights and elliptical training), and now I watch DVDs instead of listening to tapes, but the Teaching Company has been a twelve-year invariant in my life.

Hello TEE students

The purpose of this post is to say hello to all GE 498 students in The Entrepreneurial Engineer. There is still time to register for those interested in taking the course online. For those interested in taking it on campus, simply sign up using the normal registration procedures.

Take TEE online

The arrival date for The Entrepreneurial Engineer in the warehouse at Wiley is 25 August. In the meanwhile, you can sign up to take my 1-hour online course by the same name at the Office of Continuing Engineering Education website here.

The course can be used toward credit for the Strategic Technology Management graduate certificate (see here). It may also be useful for a variety of online graduate programs at the UIUC and elsewhere (see program requirements).

I will be offering the course on campus on Thursday afternoons (starting this week) as GE 498-DG1 (click here).

Epictetus for entrepreneurial engineers

As part of the course I'm taking on the Greco-Roman moralists, I've been reading some Epictetus's Discourses. He hits the hammer on the head in book 1, discourse 1 Of the things which are under our control and not under our control:

But now, although it is in our power to care for one thing only and devote ourselves to but one, we choose rather to care for many things, and to be tied fast to many, even to our body and our estate and brother and friend and child and slave. Wherefore, being tied fast to many things, we are burdened and dragged down by them. . . We must make the best of what is under our control, and take the rest as its nature is.

Nuggests of wisdom of the ages are found on almost every page.

ILSPE and TEE

The Entrepreneurial Engineer goes on the road to The Illinois Society of Professional Engineers convention in Bloomington, IL Friday, July 29, 2006 (9:10-11 am).

Session 9-A - The Entrepreneurial Engineer (2 PDHs)
Sponsored by: College of Engineering, University of Illinois
Speaker: Professor David E. Goldberg, PhD - Department of General Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Today's world is radically networked, fast-paced, and full of opportunity, but to be successful in these times, engineers need to master a broad array of personal, interpersonal, oganizational, and business skills. This talk starts by pointing out key differences between yesterday's Cold War engineer and today's entrepreneurial engineer. It continues by examining the tug of war for the engineer's mind and how to find joy in engineering study and work. This lead to an examination of the role of engagement in matching personal interested to a life of fulfilling work. The talk concludes by explaining a key pattern or template that lead to clearer, more effective business writing and presentation.

See the full program here.

White paper on the Engipreneur

Paragon Innovations President has a whitepaper on being on an entrepreneurial engineer here. The paper explores five characteristics of the Engipreneur:

1. Initiating communication
2. Packaging potential
3. Delivering on promises
4. Understanding the business
5. Closing the system loop

See the full white paper for more detail.

Interesting PoE essay

There is an interesting 1998 essay entitled The Importance of Philosophy to Engineering by Carl Mitcham here.

Blogging GECCO

The gang from IlliGAL is blogging the GECCO conference (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) here.

Descartes for engineers

Philosophy of Engineering invokes Descartes (here) and his Discourse on Method as being of interest to engineers. Similar points are made in Billy Koen's Discussion of the Method and my own Design of Innovation.