MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Colloquium Bridges to Creative Renewal: Engineers and the "Design Revolution" in 1960s America Matthew Wisnioski, Virginia Tech Commenter, Kelly Moore, Loyola University and NSF STS Program Officer Abstract: This colloquium explores engineers' ambitions to remake society and the character of their profession under the banner of "humane" technology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, engineers wrestled with criticisms that technology was an out of control force and that they were its willing "organization men." Reformers in member societies called for renewed ethical codes, radicals protested their role as cogs in a military machine, and conservatives lambasted "intellectual Luddites" in a partisan battle that rocked their profession. But thousands of engineers sought to avoid overt politics in a series of collaborative, networked projects in what Buckminster Fuller called the "design revolution." I focus on three organizations with very different missions linked by a set of common practices and moral virtues: Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), Volunteers for International Technical Assistance (VITA), and the Innovation Group. I show that so-called "legitimacy exchanges" to make technology human in the late-1960s were never far removed from partisan conflicts and that they contributed to the engineering profession's loss of rhetorical command over the meaning of technology. *****Please note that we have changed our format for colloquia in STS: Speakers will share precirculated papers, and we will have a commenter to help lead discussion. If you would like to have an emailed PDF of Professor Wisnioski's paper, please contact Bianca Sinausky, [email protected]. Monday, February 13, 2012 4pm Located at MIT Building E51-095
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