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Centre for Technology and Social Development
Engineering for Society and the Biosphere
Become an Engineer with a Difference
The engineering, management and regulation of contemporary technology has an enormous influence on human life, society and the biosphere. All of us contribute to these effects by means of our professional practice. At the same time, this professional practice is based on highly specialized knowledge. Whatever consequences of design and decision-making fall within a discipline or specialty can be successfully dealt with. The consequences that fall beyond cannot, and there are a great many of them. To deal with these successfully, the best we can do is to examine the typical undesired consequences that flow from the application of a particular discipline or specialty, identify the disciplines and specialties in whose areas these consequences fall, and based on what we can learn, adjust our design and decision-making to get the job done but at the same time prevent or minimize harmful effects. Doing so is the only way that we can ensure that our design and decision-making makes the greatest possible contribution and does the least harm.
The current undergraduate engineering curricula make engineering for society and the biosphere virtually impossible. The “intellectual worlds” of the technical subjects are full of technology and little else, while the “intellectual worlds” of the social sciences and humanities electives are full of everything else but no technology. The mission of the Centre for Technology and Social Development is to help you become an engineer with a difference. By means of preventive approaches you will learn to design for society and the biosphere. First, you will learn how the process of industrialization connected technology to everything else, and with this map you will learn to make use of this knowledge to adjust your design and decision-making to get the job done while minimizing harmful effects. On the undergraduate level, engineering students can obtain a Certificate in Engineering and Social Development by completing three courses. On the graduate level, engineering students can take two courses, and pursue further studies through customized reading courses.
Become a Social Scientist with a Difference
Social science students face the mirror-image problem. Their “intellectual worlds” are filled with economic, social, political, legal, moral or religious phenomena, but virtually empty of the science and technology that have so profoundly transformed them. As a result, the above courses are also open to social science students. On the undergraduate level, they can take some of the above courses under a sociology course number, and on the graduate level, the courses are already a joint venture of the Centre for Environment and the Faculty of Engineering.
Research with a Difference
The research of the Centre for Technology and Social Development has created a different kind of specialization based on a synergy of a great many disciplines spanning applied science, engineering, and the social and environmental sciences. It is designed to confront our current economic, social and environmental problems in order to create more livable and sustainable ways of life.
Recognition of Preventive Approaches
The program of teaching and research at the Centre for Technology and Social Development is unique. There are no comparable programs in North America, and probably in the world. The potential of preventive approaches was recognized by the former Premier’s Council of Ontario, which created a roundtable on exploring the potential of preventive approaches by reorganizing professional education in the province of Ontario. This would enable practitioners to create an economy that would deliver goods and services with a fraction of the harmful effects on human life, society and the biosphere. In 2002, the Canada Foundation for Innovation recognized preventive approaches as one of 25 leading recent Canadian innovations. In 2003, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) created a proposal entitled Society, Technology and Science 21(STS21), for which the research of the Centre for Technology and Social Development was one of two models for redirecting the teaching and research at Canadian universities in order to unleash the potential of preventive approaches. The founding director of the Centre for Technology and Social Development was elected to the Canadian Academy of Engineering for his pioneering work on preventive engineering.
Unfortunately, we live in a time dominated by economic fundamentalists who believe that the Market, through free trade, can deliver us from all our woes. Despite the fact that most of the history of industrial civilization has been plagued by market instability, unemployment and inflation, we have returned to a belief in “natural” markets, a “natural” level of unemployment, as well as a renewed belief in economic growth, spurred by global markets created through free-trade agreements. However, the only period relatively free from these problems was the result of Keynesian economic policies, which argued that there was nothing natural about markets and that these were simply a tool, like any other, to serve the common good. Since the most recent economic crisis, our faith in market fundamentalism has been deeply shaken, and the era of this madness is hopefully coming to an end. As a result, the teaching and research efforts of the Centre for Technology and Social Development would have been centre-stage were it not for the election of governments who had unlimited trust in the advice of economic fundamentalists. Hopefully, the work of the Centre will again be recognized as a key to a livable and sustainable future.
Finally, the Centre for Technology and Social Development is the home of the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, an international refereed journal published by Sage Press. Previous Editors-in-Chief include Rustum Roy and Jacques Ellul.