Wrong.
It's traditional engineers versus the rest of us.
Most humans don't live in nature, they live in constructed environments. Much of the dissatisfaction, agony and inanity of the constructed world lies at the feet of those who have done the constructing - the civil and municipal engineers, and the associated professions like town planners, transport planners and architects.
Unthinking, blinkered engineers of the old school have made the grossly inefficient, ugly, wearying, cities and transport systems, ruined environments, social wastelands, wasteful production processes that we complain about today.
But engineers don't have to degrade everything they touch. The outcome is often decided by preconceptions and processes. It's all in the mind-set.
A new generation of engineers, town planners and architects are struggling to find an alternative approach.
This emerging approach doesn't have a name yet, so I'll call it "approach X".
So what is the traditional engineering mind-set and how does it compare to the new approach?
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|
Engineering paradigm |
Approach "X" |
| Interpersonal style | Control | Facilitation |
| Approach to process | Getting outcomes by controlling the inputs and processes of constructed systems | Getting outcomes by influencing natural and social processes |
| Method of organisation | Define compartmentalised functions e.g. departmental managers | Create integrated, cross-disciplinary teams |
| Dealing with natural and social systems | Impose/substitute mechanistic systems | Attempt to understand and influence existing systems |
| Perception of world | A finite assemblage of discrete, comprehensible objects and forces (the Newtonian world view) | A dynamic, irreducably complex interplay of influences and forces: an ecology (the world of chaos theory and quantum mechanics) |
| Values | Absolute, certain: right/wrong | Relative: socially determined |
| Approach to communication | Compartmentalise (the 'need to know' approach), knowledge as private power to be hoarded | Share, empower and encourage others, facilitate learning |
| Attitude towards public involvement in decision-making | Huh? | Active engagement with community, trust. |
Perhaps the acid test of the engineering paradigm is its attitude towards the irrational in human nature: passion, fear, igorance, love and hate. The engineering paradigm fears public involvement precisely because it has no place for these irrational forces. "Approach X" however recognises that these forces can't be ignored - it engages with them and attempts to harness them for good.