Engineers at War with Themselves: 'New Luddites', Humane Technology, and the Remaking of a Profession in the 1960s

As part of the Lafayette Forum on Technology and the Liberal Arts, Prof. Matt Wisnioski will be speaking on “Engineers at War with Themselves: 'New Luddites', Humane Technology, and the Remaking of a Profession in the 1960s” on March 22, 2012. The talk is drawn from his forthcoming book Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America (MIT Press, 2012). In his work, Prof. Wisnioski, a historian and science, technology, and society (STS) scholar at Virginia Tech, addresses the ways engineering identity and engineering education were shaped by Cold War politics and cultural debates. By relating the history of engineering education to longstanding concerns for humanistic engineering, his work shows how liberal ferment in the 1960s and a cultural backlash to the place of technology in society provoked widespread debates about integrating engineering and the liberal arts. The result was a range of new programs and curricular requirements in engineering schools, from MIT and Cal Tech to Harvey Mudd and even the A.B. program at Lafayette.