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In the course of this book, we have encountered several theories of engineering that imply particular visions of the future:
The trickle-down theory would hold that science leads technology: the direction of scientific advance makes new things possible, and these are the things that technology creates. To predict tomorrow's technologies, then, we should look at the most recent advances in science, and even, if possible, anticipate what turn science will next take. But Popper's arguments tell us that this is intrinsically impossible.
The view that engineers apply science for the betterment of humanity, on the other hand, suggests that the needs of humanity lead technology: engineers work on products and problems for which demand exists, a demand which can be expressed either through the market, or through the elected representatives of the people. On this model, the future is one of steady progress towards utopia. However, looking back over the last century and its unique achievements in the technologies of torture and mass destruction, it is difficult to have much faith that that's where we're headed.
Could we say, then, that it is military goals that lead technology, and that new technology in turn leads to new military goals? This is consistent with the observation we made in Chapter Two while examining the Bronze age: the technologically backward nation is at the mercy of the technologically advanced nation. If we live in a world of potential enemies, we must develop weapons at least as sophisticated as theirs - or, to be safe, a bit more sophisticated. This yields a vision of the future as a series of arms races, in which civilian technologies emerge as spin-offs from military goals.
Our analysis of the role of engineers as managers, in Chapter Five, could suggest that it is the decisions of managers that lead technology: managers of private or state-run enterprises choose which technologies to develop, and manipulate public demand to create a market for them. Their decisions, based on corporate goals, shape technology, and indirectly shape science. An illustrative example, reported on the website (1), would be the conviction of General Motors, Standard Oil and the Firestone Tire Company in March 1949, for having criminally conspired to destroy the electric trolly system in Los Angeles and replace it with gasoline or diesel-powered buses. (An offense for which the three companies were fined a total of $5,000.)
If we have learned anything from the discussion of this chapter, it may be that none of these models should give us any confidence in our predictions. To the extent that we can predict the future at all, our best guide is to understand the past. Unfortunately, we're becoming less good at this. For example, over the past ten years I have seen my students' sources of references in their essays go from 90% text-based to 90% Web-based. The Web is a wonderful resource, but how much of the information on the Web predates, say, 1975? And what fraction of humanity's collective wisdom is likely to have been expressed in the years since 1975?
One of the arguments of this text has been that familiarity with the writings of the distant past can show us that people thought differently in the past, and will therefore think differently in the future. We have some perception of this, but our perception tends to be that ``People in the past were stupid''. They weren't; the brains of Neolithic humanity, thirty-five thousand years ago, were as powerful as ours. Our society differs from the Stone Age because we have used our brains to do different things.
So although an understanding of the past will not allow us to know the future, it does permit us to set wider bounds on the range of possible futures. The variety of human civilizations that have preceded ours should save us from the temptation of thinking that the future will be identical to the present.
Knowing the future is not just a matter of prediction, but choice. We have a responsibility as citizens to participate in the processes through which our society choses its future. And we have an additional responsibility as professionals: the biggest effect we have on the future may lie in the technologies we choose to spend our lives developing. We are neither guaranteed a utopia, nor doomed to imminent extinction, but every day we spend at work moves us towards one or other of these ends. The cumulative achievements of engineering have given humanity powers unprecedented in our history; we have a responsibility to use those powers wisely.
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