Success stories for socially positive engineering?
July 28, 2018 11:59 AM   Subscribe

It’s really easy to find accounts of engineering projects or companies doing harm to their communities, whether through cluelessness or malice. Where can I find success stories where engineers helped their communities or pushed for social justice using their skills?

The immediate prompt here is from a friend who’s entering the tech industry, and expressed frustration to me because her engineering ethics class was mostly a course in “things not to do”. She pointed out to me that positive models are important to show people what they should be doing. She was also annoyed that the positive stories she could find were mostly about financial success rather than social good.

I pointed her to coverage of Code for America as a good example, as they’re making government digital services easier to use and more accessible. But I’d love to have a wider range of examples I could share... both with her and others. I’m getting to a career stage where I’m starting to spend a lot of time on mentorship as well as straight technical work. I’d really like to be able to point out positive examples of doing good in the world, as well as talking about how to make the computer do the thing better.

While my particular context is computing, accounts of social good in other forms of engineering are also perfectly welcome. Especially helpful if they come in the form of a convenient book or reading list which I could share with others. :)
posted by fencerjimmy to Society & Culture (9 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Engineers Without Borders
posted by slidell at 1:11 PM on July 28, 2018


Perhaps look up some winners of the Zayed sustainability prize.

Practical Action do a lot of work around access to energy, there will be other organisations who do work around renewables for access.
posted by biffa at 1:46 PM on July 28, 2018


The app Nextdoor made some design changes to subtly encourage users to reconsider reporting issues that boiled down to “a brown skinned person was on my street”. Here’s the HBR article about it.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:15 PM on July 28, 2018


After one of the police encounters with really bad results, some programmers wrote phone apps to help members of the public record cops to help protect their rights.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:54 PM on July 28, 2018


I think the lack of positive examples is because when engineers behave ethically and do what they should be doing, nothing happens. Buildings don't collapse, planes don't fall out of the sky, people don't die, and no one writes a case study. Pretty much every engineering body has some oath/code about their responsibility to the public good. "Remember your obligation to society and do your job correctly" isn't very sexy or uplifting, but there you have it.

Whistleblowers are one area that might actually have some positive stories about things that didn't happen. The Challenger disaster is not one of those stories, but Bob Ebeling, the engineer who raised the flag about the shuttle's faulty o-rings is a textbook example of someone who tried his damnedest to do his job correctly. There will always be lots of opportunities to cut technical and moral corners, but if it's important, don't stop arguing.
posted by yeahlikethat at 7:10 PM on July 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


Another factor is that even when situations are greatly improved, there is always still room for it to get better. A few random examples from recent conversations include sanitation (now we worry about storm water overflows, but as recently as sixty years ago people in some neighborhoods, even in urban areas, were still using backyard cesspools in the US); automobile safety which has become vastly better and allows drivers even more confidence to not pay attention and view their phone instead; fuel efficiency which saves gas per mile and people have used to afford longer commutes; etc. Indirect effects can be difficult to predict at best, and engineering is the constant effort to better understand and manage them, well beyond the basic problem statement.
posted by meinvt at 7:19 PM on July 28, 2018


Someone made a chatbot to help appeal parking tickets, as well as give advice to refugees. These links are two years old so not sure how they are doing at the moment. And this service helps connect refugees and aid-workers to translators.
posted by Field Tripper at 1:13 AM on July 29, 2018


In the UK, MySociety has been building websites that provide technology, research and data that help people to become active citizens - so things like filing FoIA requests, contacting MPs and other representatives.

The BBC recently did a series called The Big Life Fix where leading inventors create new solutions to everyday problems for people in need - usually people with a disability or illness that's stopping them doing something they want to be able to do.
posted by crocomancer at 4:54 AM on July 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you broaden the definition of "engineering" to include using specialized, technical skills to solve problems, maybe Habitat for Humanity would qualify?
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:01 AM on July 29, 2018


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