Engineering and Responsible Innovation

Engineering is no longer the realm of bearded men designing suspension bridges over gorges or railway lines over marshland. Engineers work in laboratories, designing and building robots, splicing DNA and manipulating nano and micro technology. Engineering is a major part of many contemporary innovation processes.

We might say that in doing their work, and through the innovation processes that they are part of, engineers are writing history, and in doing so a huge responsibility sits upon their shoulders. As more and more voices lend their weight to the call for "responsible innovation", and a community of scholars and practitioners adopt the "RI" cause, what role should engineers and their professional organizations play in this debate?

Bassetti Foundation Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Hankins addresses these issues with a guest post on the IEEE-Spectrum website [2].

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(photo: edison bulb bokeh [3] by Σπύρος Βάθης from Flickr)

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