With the University of Connecticut’s STEM career fair taking place this week, the conversation around the moral and ethical implications of a career in engineering is becoming ever more relevant. As a discipline heavily involved with defense, AI and numerous other controversial and ethically questionable industries, engineering has garnered a reputation as a somewhat cold and unfeeling field of study.
Its role in the oversized influence of Big Tech in our society and the widening wealth divide that has resulted from it has caused many to view engineering as nothing more than a tool of the powerful and corrupt to maintain their preferred status quo. This reputation is not unearned. As an aspiring engineer myself, I’ve found that most career opportunities available to me are somehow related to these morally fraught industries either directly or indirectly.
Despite this tendency to align with the interests of oppression and injustice, I still firmly believe that engineering as a discipline can be an extremely potent force of defiance against those interests.
This claim may seem strange given the abundance of examples to the contrary, but I believe that when the fundamental principles of engineering are examined directly, it can be seen for what it is: the pursuit of change.
While it can often be distorted by the valid discontent towards engineering-adjacent industries, the general definition of engineering remains the same: Engineering is the practice of applying scientific and mathematical principles to solve real world problems. The nature of this practice, whether defiant or oppressive, lies in how those problems are defined. More than anything, engineering is a tool, a powerful method of changing our everyday reality for better or for worse.
When injustice, inequity and harm to life are the problems engineers are tasked with solving, amazing advancements become possible. It is a pathway to break many of the bonds that reality has imposed on us and that we have imposed on ourselves. Through diligence and compassion, engineering has created medical advancements that defy some of the fundamental ideas of nature. Prosthetics, artificial organs and other devices have allowed those who were previously bound by biological limitations to supersede them.
Advancements in transportation and communication have connected people and communities that would have previously been inescapably separated. Through this spirit of ingenuity for the benefit of humanity, we have managed to break even the chains of gravity. Natural limitations which once seemed immutable have been overcome through engineering.
Unfortunately, the opposite can also be true. When problems are defined on the basis of personal interest and prejudice rather than universal compassion and respect for human dignity, engineering can serve to limit and oppress people. The same capacity to break bonds can also be used to build them.
The modern state of constant digital surveillance and influence was enabled by technologies engineered to process and disseminate massive amounts of data. The violent atrocities committed around the world are only made possible by advancements in military technology. Tragically, these applications of engineering have become the most prevalent in the modern era. Those with the wealth and power to define the direction of engineering are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of others than in leveraging the massive potential of engineering as a humanitarian tool.
Engineering, like all disciplines, is vulnerable to the corrupt power structures that govern our society. The same force that allows humanity to defy the fundamental laws of nature, when forced to exist in an inequitable and apathetic environment, now serves to uphold and strengthen the unjust will of those in power. and strengthen the unjust will of those in power.
Nevertheless, I still have hope for the future of engineering. At its core, engineering is not an institution, a company or a person. It’s a practice. The effect it has on the world and the problems it works to solve are not determined by some unfeeling autonomous force, but by those who practice it. Engineers ultimately hold the power to decide which problems they’ll work to solve, which ideas they’ll endeavor to defy and whose interests they’ll advance.
The self-interested power structures that have corrupted the practice of engineering are only able to do so if those with the skills and passion to be engineers don’t recognize the power they hold. As part of the next generation of engineers about to enter the workforce, I’d like to offer some advice to both my colleagues and to anyone at UConn who wants to make the world a better place: break the chains that deserve to be broken, solve the problems that need solving and most of all, be defiant. You have the power to do great and terrible things. Use it responsibly.