The collective imagination sees engineers as the driving force for innovation. Empowered by their technical expertise, they use our resources to best advantage, they increase our energy and they move the world forward. They help improve everyday life by streamlining the flow of people, building infrastructures, enhancing industry practices, scaling up military performance and driving back scientific boundaries. But as we know only too well, the processes that lead to innovation have their limitations. Overproduction has sent our environment's temperature into the red, increased vulnerability among inhabitants and created wider rifts in social inequality.
In the 21st century, humanist engineers no longer deal exclusively with machines, but they also use their skills to coordinate human beings. Their mission is to produce the blueprints for a future where everyone can thrive, including the planet.
How can you design a viable future for everyone all by yourself? More than ever, engineers know just how important it is to use a wide range of profiles in order to deliver the best solution. Women are at the top of their list. According to an article by The Guardian in 2019, women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured than men in a car crash. The reason is that the car's safety devices are mainly designed by men and have long been tested using crash-test dummies based on the average male. This is just one of the many examples that explain why the engineering profession needs to open its doors wide and welcome the widest range of profiles possible. The rate of change may be slow, but it is clearly gaining traction: 3.5% of practising engineers in 1963 were women, and that figure had risen to 10% by 1970. The collective imagination sees engineers as the driving force for innovation. Empowered by their technical expertise, they use our resources to best advantage, they increase our energy and they move the world forward. They help improve everyday life by streamlining the flow of people, building infrastructures, enhancing industry practices, scaling up military performance and driving back scientific boundaries.
But as we know only too well, the processes that lead to innovation have their limitations. Overproduction has sent our environment's temperature into the red, increased vulnerability among inhabitants and created wider rifts in social inequality. In the 21st century, humanist engineers no longer deal exclusively with machines, but they also use their skills to coordinate human beings. Their mission is to produce the blueprints for a future where everyone can thrive, including the planet. By 2010, the number was 17%, and then 20% in 2020. In addition to ensuring that technical innovations incorporate a universal design, the need for women engineers is anything but a trivial detail. Women currently account for 90% of human services experts. Women specialising in the care services sector (meaning care in the broadest sense of the term and other people's well-being) can provide engineers with the altruism and insights into community life that they need more than ever.
Generally speaking, engineers need to recruit their allies from the non-technical disciplines. In what can only be called a sign of the times, the French army recently hired a Red Team of 10 science-fiction writers in a bid to anticipate and prepare for the future. In a rationally minded country where divisions have long existed between science and the arts, new collaborative arrangements will emerge as efforts are made to design a future that is not only realistic, but also desirable. To mitigate the amount of pollution generated by travel, engineers will need to focus on giving alternative forms of transport greater appeal, rather than looking to improve existing vehicle Aware, responsible and multi-profiled: three trends for the engineering profession 15 performance. To approach the future with greater confidence and peace of mind, engineers will need to re-engage with a society that has become increasingly critical of new technologies - the rollout of 5G is a prime example. Basically, although the modern world had faith that the future would always be bright, the post-modern world does not know what the future holds in store.
