Science and technology are said to be interdependent. What does this mean?

Affiliate 3: THE NATURE OF TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

DESIGN AND SouthYSTEMS

ISSUES IN TECHNOLOGY

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Affiliate 3: THE NATURE OF TECHNOLOGY

As long as there have been people, there has been engineering. Indeed, the techniques of shaping tools are taken equally the principal evidence of the beginning of human culture. On the whole, technology has been a powerful force in the development of civilization, all the more than so as its link with science has been forged. Technology—similar language, ritual, values, commerce, and the arts—is an intrinsic part of a cultural organization and it both shapes and reflects the organisation'due south values. In today's world, technology is a complex social enterprise that includes not only research, pattern, and crafts just also finance, manufacturing, direction, labor, marketing, and maintenance.

In the broadest sense, engineering science extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to motility things from one place to some other; to reach further with our hands, voices, and senses. We use technology to try to change the earth to suit us meliorate. The changes may relate to survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such every bit noesis, fine art, or control. Only the results of changing the globe are often complicated and unpredictable. They can include unexpected benefits, unexpected costs, and unexpected risks—any of which may fall on unlike social groups at different times. Anticipating the furnishings of technology is therefore equally of import as advancing its capabilities.

This affiliate presents recommendations on what knowledge nearly the nature of engineering science is required for scientific literacy and emphasizes means of thinking about technology that can contribute to using it wisely. The ideas are sorted into 3 sections: the connection of science and technology, the principles of technology itself, and the connection of engineering and society. Chapter eight, The Designed World, presents principles relevant to some of the key technologies of today's world. Affiliate 10, Historical Perspectives, includes a discussion of the Industrial Revolution. Chapter 12, Habits of Mind, includes some skills relevant to participating in a technological earth.

TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Engineering Draws on Science and Contributes to It

In earlier times, technology grew out of personal feel with the backdrop of things and with the techniques for manipulating them, out of know-how handed down from experts to apprentices over many generations. The know-how handed down today is not only the craft of single practitioners but as well a vast literature of words, numbers, and pictures that draw and give directions. But merely as important as accumulated practical knowledge is the contribution to engineering science that comes from understanding the principles that underlie how things acquit—that is, from scientific understanding.

Engineering science, the systematic application of scientific noesis in developing and applying technology, has grown from a craft to become a science in itself. Scientific knowledge provides a ways of estimating what the behavior of things will be even before we make them or observe them. Moreover, science often suggests new kinds of behavior that had not even been imagined earlier, and so leads to new technologies. Engineers apply noesis of scientific discipline and technology, together with strategies of design, to solve practical issues.

In render, engineering science provides the eyes and ears of science—and some of the musculus, too. The electronic estimator, for example, has led to substantial progress in the study of weather systems, demographic patterns, cistron construction, and other complex systems that would not have been possible otherwise. Applied science is essential to science for purposes of measurement, data collection, handling of samples, computation, transportation to research sites (such as Antarctica, the moon, and the ocean floor), sample collection, protection from hazardous materials, and communication. More and more, new instruments and techniques are being developed through technology that make information technology possible to advance various lines of scientific research.

Technology does non just provide tools for science, however; it also may provide motivation and management for theory and research. The theory of the conservation of energy, for example, was adult in large part because of the technological problem of increasing the efficiency of commercial steam engines. The mapping of the locations of the entire set of genes in human Dna has been motivated by the technology of genetic applied science, which both makes such mapping possible and provides a reason for doing so.

As technologies become more sophisticated, their links to science become stronger. In some fields, such as solid-state physics (which involves transistors and superconductors), the power to brand something and the power to study it are and then interdependent that science and engineering science tin can scarcely be separated. New engineering science often requires new understanding; new investigations oft crave new engineering science.

Engineering science Combines Scientific Inquiry and Practical Values

The component of technology well-nigh closely centrolineal to scientific inquiry and to mathematical modeling is engineering. In its broadest sense, engineering consists of construing a problem and designing a solution for it. The bones method is to first devise a general approach and then work out the technical details of the structure of requisite objects (such as an automobile engine, a computer flake, or a mechanical toy) or processes (such as irrigation, stance polling, or product testing).

Much of what has been said about the nature of science applies to engineering likewise, particularly the utilise of mathematics, the interplay of creativity and logic, the eagerness to be original, the variety of people involved, the professional specialties, public responsibleness, and so on. Indeed, there are more people called engineers than people called scientists, and many scientists are doing piece of work that could be described as engineering too equally science. Similarly, many engineers are engaged in science.

Scientists run across patterns in phenomena every bit making the earth understandable; engineers also run into them as making the world manipulable. Scientists seek to show that theories fit the information; mathematicians seek to show logical proof of abstract connections; engineers seek to demonstrate that designs piece of work. Scientists cannot provide answers to all questions; mathematicians cannot prove all possible connections; engineers cannot design solutions for all problems.

But engineering affects the social system and culture more direct than scientific research, with immediate implications for the success or failure of human enterprises and for personal benefit and harm. Engineering decisions, whether in designing an aeroplane commodities or an irrigation system, inevitably involve social and personal values as well every bit scientific judgments.

DESIGN AND SYSTEMS

The Essence of Engineering science Is Design Under Constraint

Every engineering design operates within constraints that must be identified and taken into account. One type of constraint is accented—for example, concrete laws such as the conservation of free energy or physical properties such every bit limits of flexibility, electric electrical conductivity, and friction. Other types have some flexibility: economic (simply then much money is available for this purpose), political (local, country, and national regulations), social (public opposition), ecological (likely disruption of the natural surround), and ethical (disadvantages to some people, risk to subsequent generations). An optimum design takes into account all the constraints and strikes some reasonable compromise amidst them. Reaching such design compromises—including, sometimes, the decision not to develop a particular technology further—requires taking personal and social values into account. Although blueprint may sometimes require only routine decisions nearly the combining of familiar components, ofttimes it involves great inventiveness in inventing new approaches to problems, new components, and new combinations—and nifty innovation in seeing new problems or new possibilities.

But in that location is no perfect design. Accommodating one constraint well can often pb to conflict with others. For example, the lightest material may non be the strongest, or the nigh efficient shape may not be the safest or the most aesthetically pleasing. Therefore every design problem lends itself to many culling solutions, depending on what values people place on the various constraints. For example, is force more desirable than lightness, and is advent more of import than safety? The task is to arrive at a design that reasonably balances the many trade-offs, with the understanding that no single blueprint is ever simultaneously the safest, the most reliable, the nigh efficient, the most inexpensive, and and then on.

Information technology is seldom practical to design an isolated object or process without considering the broad context in which it will be used. Most products of technology have to exist operated, maintained, occasionally repaired, and ultimately replaced. Considering all these related activities bear costs, they too have to be considered. A similar result that is becoming increasingly important with more than complex technologies is the need to train personnel to sell, operate, maintain, and repair them. Particularly when technology changes quickly, training can be a major cost. Thus, keeping downward demands on personnel may be some other design constraint.

Designs almost always require testing, particularly when the design is unusual or complicated, when the final product or process is likely to be expensive or dangerous, or when failure has a very high cost. Operation tests of a blueprint may be conducted by using complete products, but doing so may be prohibitively difficult or expensive. Then testing is often done by using small-scale physical models, computer simulations, analysis of coordinating systems (for example, laboratory animals continuing in for humans, earthquake disasters for nuclear disasters), or testing of divide components simply.

All Technologies Involve Control

All systems, from the simplest to the most complex, require control to go on them operating properly. The essence of command is comparing information about what is happening with what we want to happen and and so making appropriate adjustments. Control typically requires feedback (from sensors or other sources of information) and logical comparisons of that data to instructions (and mayhap to other data input)—and a ways for activating changes. For example, a blistering oven is a adequately simple system that compares the data from a temperature sensor to a control setting and turns the heating element upwards or down to proceed the temperature within a small range. An automobile is a more complex organization, made upwardly of subsystems for controlling engine temperature, combustion rate, direction, speed, and and then forth, and for irresolute them when the firsthand circumstances or instructions change. Miniaturized electronics makes possible logical command in a swell variety of technical systems. Almost all simply the simplest household appliances used today include microprocessors to control their functioning.

Every bit controls increment in complexity, they too require coordination, which means additional layers of control. Comeback in rapid communication and rapid processing of data makes possible very elaborate systems of control. Yet all technological systems include human as well as mechanical or electronic components. Even the almost automated system requires human control at some signal—to program the built-in control elements, monitor them, take over from them when they malfunction, and modify them when the purposes of the system modify. The ultimate control lies with people who understand in some depth what the purpose and nature of the command process are and the context within which the process operates.

Technologies Always Have Side Furnishings

In addition to its intended benefits, every design is likely to take unintended side effects in its production and application. On the one paw, there may be unexpected benefits. For example, working atmospheric condition may become safer when materials are molded rather than stamped, and materials designed for infinite satellites may bear witness useful in consumer products. On the other hand, substances or processes involved in product may harm product workers or the public in general; for example, sitting in front of a computer may strain the user's eyes and lead to isolation from other workers. And jobs may exist affected—by increasing employment for people involved in the new technology, decreasing employment for others involved in the onetime technology, and changing the nature of the work people must exercise in their jobs.

It is not only large technologies—nuclear reactors or agriculture—that are prone to side effects, but also the small, everyday ones. The effects of ordinary technologies may exist individually pocket-sized but collectively meaning. Refrigerators, for instance, have had a predictably favorable touch on diet and on nutrient distribution systems. Because there are so many refrigerators, however, the tiny leakage of a gas used in their cooling systems may take substantial adverse effects on the world'southward atmosphere.

Some side effects are unexpected because of a lack of involvement or resources to predict them. But many are non predictable fifty-fifty in principle because of the sheer complexity of technological systems and the inventiveness of people in finding new applications. Some unexpected side effects may turn out to be ethically, aesthetically, or economically unacceptable to a substantial fraction of the population, resulting in disharmonize between groups in the community. To minimize such side effects, planners are turning to systematic run a risk analysis. For example, many communities crave by police that ecology bear upon studies exist fabricated earlier they volition consider giving approving for the introduction of a new hospital, factory, highway, waste-disposal system, shopping mall, or other construction.

Run a risk analysis, however, can be complicated. Considering the risk associated with a item course of action can never be reduced to nada, acceptability may have to be determined past comparing to the risks of alternative courses of activeness, or to other, more familiar risks. People's psychological reactions to risk do not necessarily friction match straightforward mathematical models of benefits and costs. People tend to perceive a risk every bit college if they accept no control over it (smog versus smoking) or if the bad events tend to come up in dreadful peaks (many deaths at once in an airplane crash versus only a few at a time in car crashes). Personal interpretation of risks can exist strongly influenced past how the risk is stated—for example, comparing the probability of dying versus the probability of surviving, the dreaded risks versus the readily adequate risks, the total costs versus the costs per person per day, or the actual number of people affected versus the proportion of affected people.

All Technological Systems Can Fail

Virtually modern technological systems, from transistor radios to airliners, take been engineered and produced to exist remarkably reliable. Failure is rare enough to be surprising. Yet the larger and more complex a system is, the more ways there are in which it can go wrong—and the more than widespread the possible effects of failure. A organization or device may neglect for unlike reasons: because some part fails, because some part is non well matched to another, or because the pattern of the system is not adequate for all the conditions nether which it is used. One hedge against failure is overdesign—that is, for example, making something stronger or bigger than is probable to be necessary. Another hedge is redundancy—that is, building in one fill-in system or more than to take over in case the primary i fails.

If failure of a system would have very costly consequences, the organisation may be designed then that its about probable way of failing would do the least harm. Examples of such "neglect-prophylactic" designs are bombs that cannot explode when the fuse malfunctions; automobile windows that shatter into blunt, continued chunks rather than into sharp, flying fragments; and a legal system in which doubtfulness leads to acquittal rather than conviction. Other means of reducing the likelihood of failure include improving the design by collecting more than data, all-around more variables, building more realistic working models, running computer simulations of the design longer, imposing tighter quality control, and edifice in controls to sense and correct problems as they develop.

All of the ways of preventing or minimizing failure are likely to increase price. But no matter what precautions are taken or resources invested, adventure of technological failure can never be reduced to cipher. Analysis of risk, therefore, involves estimating a probability of occurrence for every undesirable consequence that tin can be foreseen—and also estimating a measure of the harm that would be done if information technology did occur. The expected importance of each gamble is then estimated by combining its probability and its measure of harm. The relative risk of different designs tin can then be compared in terms of the combined likely harm resulting from each.

ISSUES IN TECHNOLOGY

The Human Presence

The earth'southward population has already doubled three times during the past century. Even at that, the human being presence, which is axiomatic about everywhere on the world, has had a greater impact than sheer numbers lonely would indicate. We have developed the capacity to dominate most plant and animal species—far more than any other species can—and the power to shape the future rather than merely respond to it.

Utilise of that capacity has both advantages and disadvantages. On the 1 hand, developments in applied science have brought enormous benefits to most all people. Most people today have admission to goods and services that were once luxuries enjoyed merely past the wealthy—in transportation, advice, nutrition, sanitation, health intendance, entertainment, and so on. On the other hand, the very behavior that fabricated it possible for the human species to prosper so rapidly has put the states and the earth's other living organisms at new kinds of adventure. The growth of agricultural engineering has made possible a very large population but has put enormous strain on the soil and water systems that are needed to proceed sufficient product. Our antibiotics cure bacterial infection, simply may continue to piece of work only if we invent new ones faster than resistant bacterial strains emerge.

Our access to and employ of vast stores of fossil fuels have made u.s.a. dependent on a nonrenewable resources. In our present numbers, we will not be able to sustain our way of living on the energy that current technology provides, and culling technologies may be inadequate or may present unacceptable hazards. Our vast mining and manufacturing efforts produce our goods, but they as well dangerously pollute our rivers and oceans, soil, and temper. Already, past-products of industrialization in the atmosphere may exist depleting the ozone layer, which screens the planet's surface from harmful ultraviolet rays, and may exist creating a buildup of carbon dioxide, which traps heat and could raise the planet'due south average temperatures significantly. The ecology consequences of a nuclear war, amongst its other disasters, could alter crucial aspects of all life on globe.

From the standpoint of other species, the human presence has reduced the corporeality of the world's surface available to them by immigration large areas of vegetation; has interfered with their nutrient sources; has changed their habitats by changing the temperature and chemical limerick of large parts of the world environment; has destabilized their ecosystems by introducing strange species, deliberately or accidentally; has reduced the number of living species; and in some instances has really contradistinct the characteristics of certain plants and animals by selective breeding and more recently by genetic engineering.

What the future holds for life on earth, barring some immense natural catastrophe, will exist adamant largely by the human being species. The same intelligence that got usa where nosotros are—improving many aspects of human being existence and introducing new risks into the globe—is also our main resource for survival.

Technological and Social Systems Interact Strongly

Individual inventiveness is essential to technological innovation. Nonetheless, social and economic forces strongly influence what technologies will be undertaken, paid attention to, invested in, and used. Such decisions occur direct as a affair of government policy and indirectly as a consequence of the circumstances and values of a society at any item fourth dimension. In the United States, decisions about which technological options will prevail are influenced by many factors, such every bit consumer acceptance, patent laws, the availability of risk capital, the federal budget process, local and national regulations, media attention, economic competition, revenue enhancement incentives, and scientific discoveries. The residuum of such incentives and regulations usually bears differently on unlike technological systems, encouraging some and discouraging others.

Engineering has strongly influenced the form of history and the nature of human society, and information technology continues to practice so. The nifty revolutions in agricultural technology, for example, have probably had more influence on how people live than political revolutions; changes in sanitation and preventive medicine have contributed to the population explosion (and to its control); bows and arrows, gunpowder, and nuclear explosives have in their plough changed how war is waged; and the microprocessor is changing how people write, compute, depository financial institution, operate businesses, conduct enquiry, and communicate with 1 another. Engineering is largely responsible for such large-scale changes as the increased urbanization of society and the dramatically growing economical interdependence of communities worldwide.

Historically, some social theorists have believed that technological change (such as industrialization and mass production) causes social change, whereas others have believed that social modify (such every bit political or religious changes) leads to technological alter. However, it is articulate that because of the web of connections betwixt technological and other social systems, many influences act in both directions.

The Social Arrangement Imposes Some Restrictions on Openness in Engineering science

For the most part, the professional values of engineering are very similar to those of science, including the advantages seen in the open sharing of knowledge. Because of the economic value of applied science, yet, in that location are often constraints on the openness of scientific discipline and engineering that are relevant to technological innovation. A large investment of fourth dimension and money and considerable commercial risk are oftentimes required to develop a new engineering and bring it to marketplace. That investment might well be jeopardized if competitors had access to the new technology without making a similar investment, and hence companies are ofttimes reluctant to share technological cognition. But no scientific or technological knowledge is likely to remain clandestine for very long. Secrecy nigh frequently provides just an advantage in terms of time—a caput offset, non absolute command of knowledge. Patent laws encourage openness past giving individuals and companies command over the use of whatsoever new technology they develop; however, to promote technological competition, such control is just for a limited menses of time.

Commercial advantage is not the only motivation for secrecy and control. Much technological development occurs in settings, such as government agencies, in which commercial concerns are minimal but national security concerns may pb to secrecy. Whatever engineering that has potential military applications can arguably be subject area to restrictions imposed by the federal government, which may limit the sharing of engineering knowledge—or fifty-fifty the exportation of products from which technology knowledge could be inferred. Because the connections between science and technology are so close in some fields, secrecy inevitably begins to restrict some of the free flow of information in science also. Some scientists and engineers are very uncomfortable with what they perceive equally a compromise of the scientific ideal, and some refuse to work on projects that impose secrecy. Others, however, view the restrictions every bit appropriate.

Decisions Nigh the Use of Engineering Are Complex

Most technological innovations spread or disappear on the basis of gratis-market place forces—that is, on the basis of how people and companies respond to such innovations. Occasionally, however, the use of some technology becomes an issue subject field to public debate and possibly formal regulation. One way in which technology becomes such an event is when a person, group, or business proposes to test or innovate a new technology—as has been the case with contour plowing, vaccination, genetic engineering, and nuclear ability plants. Another way is when a technology already in widespread use is chosen into question—equally, for instance, when people are told (by individuals, organizations, or agencies) that it is essential to stop or reduce the use of a particular engineering or technological product that has been discovered to have, or that may possibly take, adverse furnishings. In such instances, the proposed solution may be to ban the burying of toxic wastes in community dumps, or to prohibit the use of leaded gasoline and asbestos insulation.

Rarely are technology-related problems elementary and one-sided. Relevant technical facts alone, even when known and available (which often they are not), normally do not settle matters entirely in favor of ane side or the other. The chances of reaching good personal or collective decisions near technology depend on having information that neither enthusiasts nor skeptics are e'er ready to volunteer. The long-term interests of guild are best served, therefore, by having processes for ensuring that key questions concerning proposals to curtail or introduce technology are raised and that as much relevant knowledge equally possible is brought to bear on them. Because these questions does non ensure that the best decision will always be made, only the failure to raise cardinal questions will virtually certainly effect in poor decisions. The key questions concerning any proposed new technology should include the following:

• What are alternative ways to accomplish the aforementioned ends? What advantages and disadvantages are there to the alternatives? What trade-offs would be necessary betwixt positive and negative side furnishings of each?
• Who are the primary beneficiaries? Who will receive few or no benefits? Who volition suffer as a result of the proposed new technology? How long volition the benefits last? Will the technology accept other applications? Whom volition they do good?
• What will the proposed new technology cost to build and operate? How does that compare to the cost of alternatives? Volition people other than the beneficiaries take to acquit the costs? Who should underwrite the development costs of a proposed new engineering science? How will the costs alter over time? What will the social costs be?
• What risks are associated with the proposed new engineering? What risks are associated with not using it? Who will be in greatest danger? What risk will the technology present to other species of life and to the environment? In the worst possible case, what trouble could it cause? Who would be held responsible? How could the trouble be undone or limited?
• What people, materials, tools, cognition, and know-how volition be needed to build, install, and operate the proposed new engineering? Are they available? If non, how will they exist obtained, and from where? What free energy sources will exist needed for structure or manufacture, and also for operation? What resource will be needed to maintain, update, and repair the new technology?
• What volition be done to dispose safely of the new applied science'due south waste materials? Every bit it becomes obsolete or worn out, how will it be replaced? And finally, what volition become of the cloth of which it was fabricated and the people whose jobs depended on it?

Individual citizens may seldom be in a position to ask or demand answers for these questions on a public level, merely their knowledge of the relevance and importance of answers increases the attending given to the questions by individual enterprise, interest groups, and public officials. Furthermore, individuals may inquire the same questions with regard to their own use of technology—for instance, their own use of efficient household appliances, of substances that contribute to pollution, of foods and fabrics. The cumulative consequence of private decisions can have as great an affect on the large-scale use of technology as pressure on public decisions tin.

Not all such questions can exist answered readily. Virtually technological decisions have to be made on the basis of incomplete data, and political factors are likely to have as much influence as technical ones, and sometimes more. But scientists, mathematicians, and engineers take a special role in looking as far ahead and equally far afield as is applied to estimate benefits, side effects, and risks. They can likewise aid by designing adequate detection devices and monitoring techniques, and by setting up procedures for the collection and statistical assay of relevant information.

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Copyright © 1989, 1990 by American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Source: http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap3.htm

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