Uses and abuses of technology

In the paper the author emphasises that `use¿¿ and `abuse¿¿ are not absolute terms; so before professional engineers can be clear as to what they mean when they use them, they have to be able to assign them values on some scale of morality appropriate to their profession. In ages past, belief in God was widespread, and therefore holy writ provided the professionals of the time with the requisite moral yardsticks. For today´s professionals, the notion of God no longer finds universal acceptance, and so whatever scale of values we choose must rely on some other source for its authority. The paper suggests that the engineering profession must rely on consensus within the profession as the route to agreed norms by reference to which engineers can derive a code of ethics. The achievement of such norms and a code of ethics is not an easy task for engineers, whose traditional education equips them poorly to deal with the conceptual matters involved. The author identifies this deficiency in engineering education as the root cause of the relatively low regard in which today´s engineers are held. Because they have shied away from the moral issues raised by the application of technology, they have allowed others to decide these issues to the detriment of the engineering profession. The solution to this problem offered by the author is a more balanced education which he describes and illustrates diagrammatically.