@article{1386486,
      recid = {1386486},
      author = {Wisnioski, Matthew H.,},
      title = {Engineers for change : competing visions of technology in  1960s America /},
      pages = {1 online resource (xvii, 286 pages) :},
      abstract = {An account of conflicts within engineering in the 1960s  that helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding  of technological change as the driver of history. In the  late 1960s an eclectic group of engineers joined the  antiwar and civil rights activists of the time in agitating  for change. The engineers were fighting to remake their  profession, challenging their fellow engineers to embrace a  more humane vision of technology. In Engineers for Change,  Matthew Wisnioski offers an account of this conflict within  engineering, linking it to deep-seated assumptions about  technology and American life. The postwar period in America  saw a near-utopian belief in technology's beneficence.  Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, society--influenced by  the antitechnology writings of such thinkers as Jacques  Ellul and Lewis Mumford--began to view technology in a more  negative light. Engineers themselves were seen as  conformist organization men propping up the  military-industrial complex. A dissident minority of  engineers offered critiques of their profession that  appropriated concepts from technology's critics. These  dissidents were criticized in turn by conservatives who  regarded them as countercultural Luddites. And yet, as  Wisnioski shows, the radical minority spurred the  professional elite to promote a new understanding of  technology as a rapidly accelerating force that our  institutions are ill-equipped to handle. The negative  consequences of technology spring from its very nature--and  not from engineering's failures. "Sociotechnologists" were  recruited to help society adjust to its technology.  Wisnioski argues that in responding to the challenges posed  by critics within their profession, engineers in the 1960s  helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of  technological change as the driver of history.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1386486},
}