McDonough further develops the idea of products or designs as “speaking” about our aspirations and intentions by using the concept of “idiom,” which carries meaning in both design and communication contexts. In place of the “industrial idiom of design” which we can associate with the concept of development, he proposes the idea - based on “natural design” - that “waste equals food,” in other words, that all wastes produced serve as food for other systems. “All materials given to us by nature are constantly returned to the earth without even the concept of waste as we understand it. Everything is cycled constantly with all waste equaling food for other living systems” (1993, 4). This new model serves as an incentive to creativity, and evokes, and is compatible with, a very different ethical framework than the “idiom of industrial design.”
In the domain of engineering design, especially engineering design sponsored in the context of capitalist organizations, the equivalent of McDonough’s model may lie in the emerging concept of “doing well by doing good,” that is, approaching business with the aim of balancing the financial bottom line with the bottom line of ethics and social concerns (Finkel, 2002, 2). The “doing well by doing good” approach leads researchers at Northwestern and the Wharton School of Business to address subjects in which ethics and issues of social responsibility “become a central focus of management thinking in general” (2002, 5). “Balancing the relationships between financial success and a progressive social agenda can prove extremely complicated for business” (2002, 5), but it can also be a great source of individual and collective empowerment, especially for engineers whose own professional history is rooted in an emphasis on “doing good.”
We have argued in this chapter that disrupting the discourse of inevitability will require us to recognize and confront the sources of its robustness. To put it simply, we must find a way to connect with public discourse on a large scale and to develop accessible and persuasive narratives in which the individual engineer can make a difference. Developing an accessible discourse that will help people reinterpret their own experience is an essential step in this process. Another is to help both the community of engineering professionals and those outside it recognize that we have choices about the forms of discourse in which we engage, and that those choices matter. One key element in realizing these goals will be for STS scholars to engage with public discourse and offer accessible and persuasive narratives of design as a process imbued with ethical considerations.
The point of this chapter is not to make a claim about the nature of technological development. It is to focus on the impact of our way of speaking about the process of the introduction of technology in society. It is our argument that the mode of discourse in relation to technology, as well as elsewhere, is centrally relevant to how we perceive the thing itself. This is not a new thesis in its theoretical dimension, (see, for example, Heidegger, 1977) but one which has often been ignored in the dominant focus on the object (technology) itself. STS has done an admirable job of looking at the dual influence, i.e., feedback loop, between technologies and society, but in that very feedback loop has implicitly expressed a notion of inevitable progression. To give true voice to ethical concerns, however, it is important not to see technological development simply as a chain of developments, of which any human actors become simply another link, but instead as an opportunity for the expression of creative and original impulses (upsurges in Being). If we can focus the discourse of technology on this dimension, then the opportunity for ethical discourse and reflection arises for the central actors in the process. The how, why, and wherefore of technological innovation will be subject to interrogation without a predetermined answer based on a narrow conception of progress, for example, increased efficiency. The outcome of that process will be seen as the STS community already accepts: indeterminate.
Ellul, J., 1964, The Technological Society, J. Wilkinson, trans., Knopf, New York.
Finkel, E., 2002, Doing well by doing good: new Kellogg BASE major explores the social context of business, Kellogg World (Winter 2002); http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/kwo/win02/ indepth/doingwell.htm
Frost, B., 1996, Historical dimensions of high tech: the politics and rhetoric of progress talk in twentieth-century France. American Historical Association Meeting (Atlanta, January, 1996).
Heidegger, M., 1977, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, W. Lovitt, trans., Harper Torchbooks, New York.
Hughes, T. P., 1987, The evolution of large technological systems, in: The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, W. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, and T. Pinch, eds., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 76-80.
Kroker, A., and Weinstein, M. A., 1994, Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, St. Martin’s, New York.
Idhe, D., 1993, Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction, Paragon, New York.
Imai, M., 1986, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success, Random House, New York.
Johnston, S. F., Gostelow, J. P., and King, W. J., 2000, Engineering & Society, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Luegenbiehl, H. C., 1985, The nature of engineering ethics: preliminary considerations, in: Technology Studies Resource Center Working Papers Series, Vol. 2, Feb. 1985, S. H. Cutcliffe, ed., Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, pp. 79-98.
Martin, M. W., and Schinzinger, R., 1989, Ethics in Engineering, 2nd ed., McGraw Hill, New York.
McDonough, W., 1993, Design, ecology, ethics and the making of things: centennial sermon on the 100th anniversary of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, February 7, 1993; http://www.mcdonough.com
Pacey, A., 1983, The Culture of Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Sasseville, B., 2004, Integrating information and communication technology in the classroom: a comparative discourse analysis, Can. J. of Learn. and Techn. 30(2); http://www.cjlt.ca/content/ vol30.2/cjlt30-2-art-1.html
Schlosser, E., 2002, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Perennial, New York. (2001, Houghton Mifflin).
Selwyn, N., and Gorard, S., 2003, Exploring the ‘new’ imperatives of technology-based lifelong learning, Res. in Post-Compulsory Edu. 8(1):73-92.
Van Gorp, A., and Van de Poel, I., 2001, Ethical considerations in engineering design processes, IEEE Technol. and Soc. Mag. Fall 2001:15-22.
Williams, R., 2002, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Winner, L., 1977, Autonomous Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.