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Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum (2011)

Chapter: 2 Charting a Path into the Future

« Previous: 1 Perspectives on Global Technology
Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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2
Charting a Path into the Future

In the second half of the forum, the panelists discussed a variety of issues raised by moderator Charles Vest and by forum attendees.

STRATEGIES FOR INNOVATION

Vest began by asking the panelists whether countries and companies need explicit strategies for technology development, given the tremendous amount of largely spontaneous creativity that occurs today, often in areas where new technologies are not expected to exert a great influence.

Ruth David responded that countries and companies do need strategies and that these strategies must exist in multiple dimensions. Most important, nations need strategies to create ecosystems that allow innovation to flourish. According to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group, the United States ranks eighth in the world in its environment for innovation, demonstrating the need for a national strategy to make the United States competitive with other nations.1 In addition, said David, a national strategy needs an international component, because so many of the problems countries face today transcend geographic borders.

Esko Aho agreed that both national and private-sector strategies are needed. At Nokia, for example, the link from content providers to consumers is straightforward for entertainment. But for educational

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1 James P. Andrew, Emily Stover DeRocco, and Andrew Taylor. 2009. The Innovation Imperative in Manufacturing: How the United States Can Restore Its Edge. Boston: Boston Consulting Group.

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

services, health care services, or banking services, governments have to be involved to create the conditions for innovation.

Government involvement is also essential for the United States and European countries to compete with up-and-coming countries like China, Aho said. The capacity of the Chinese and Indian governments to create innovative environments is weaker than in the United States, but the United States and Europe are hampered by the fact that they do not have an explicit strategy to compete. “We don’t have awareness of what to do and how to do it,” he said. The United States and European countries can each have their own strategies, but there must also be an agreement to protect common interests.

Eric Haseltine said that the issue is less what the strategy is than who has the strategy. “I am very skeptical that anything the government could do or would do ever will make a difference,” he said. The United States is undergoing a slow erosion of its preeminence in science and technology, in part because the nation does not perceive the current situation as a crisis. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 was a crisis that impelled America to act, but no Sputnik exists today.

The focus of a competitiveness strategy must be on the individual, Haseltine insisted. Both in government and industry, time horizons continue to shrink, and reward cycles are becoming shorter and shorter. So industry is concerned largely with the next quarter, while the intelligence community is focused on the next week because terrorists operate in real time. A vision for tomorrow must pay off for individuals today so that innovation makes both tomorrow and today better. Some of the most important technologies of the past several decades have had revolutionary long-term impacts while also paying off for shareholders in the present. “If there isn’t a strategy that does that, we [will] have no success at all.”

“I am very skeptical that anything the government could do or would do ever will make a difference.”

Eric Haseltine

Ray Stata, in contrast, said that the United States has a “pretty good strategy, and it actually works pretty well.” That strategy is based on the relationship between research universities, the federal government, and industry. “It works remarkably well,” said Stata, “there’s just not enough of it.” Past federal investments have helped produce America’s scientific and industrial success, and continued investments will be necessary for this success to continue. Universities also need the freedom to exercise

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

their entrepreneurial judgment in taking on problems such as energy and health care. “It is a question of making that system work better and not allowing it to erode.”

Knowledge inevitably leaks into the rest of society, but “we don’t regret that. This is one of the outputs that we should value.”

Ray Stata

In the private sector, companies realize they have to be represented in emerging countries, which pushes them to establish technical resources outside their boundaries to access talent and markets. Multi-national companies in turn have a tremendous influence on the diffusion of technology. Stata’s company builds design centers in other countries and transfers knowledge to engineers working in those centers. This knowledge inevitably leaks into the rest of the society, but “we don’t regret that,” he said. “This is one of the outputs that we should value.”

John Seely Brown suggested that the game may have changed in a fundamental sense. Strategies may have to focus more on institutional innovation than on technological innovation. “Are there fundamentally new types of institutions that we need to create?” For example, the open- source programs Linux and Apache both have constitutions outlining acceptable practices. These kinds of innovations, which are unknown to most people, may be necessary to create the kinds of ecosystems being discussed. The Media Lab was another institutional innovation in terms of its relationship with MIT and with industry.

China is currently turning to institutional innovation to counter a lack of venture capital money for startups, Brown pointed out. Companies form networks among startups centered on good ideas. These kinds of institutional innovations may be the key to future success. For example, universities may have to find new ways of working with the outside world.

Strategies are only as good as the mindset that creates them, said Bernard Amadei. People in the developed world have an obligation, not just an option, to address the needs of the 5 billion people whose lives are precarious. People and nations also have a self-interest in pursuing this obligation, because isolation tends to create insecurity and instability. “In fact, I am quite surprised that we have not had much instability in Haiti after the earthquake.”

To change strategies, mindsets must be changed. For example, engineering projects that cross national boundaries are a powerful

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

way to build international understanding. Yet young people in the United States are ill prepared by their educations to address needs at the global level. When Amadei has brought civil engineering students into the developing world and asked them to pour concrete, they have no idea how to make concrete, even if they have studied concrete design. “They all want to change the world, but they don’t know how to do it.” Education must eliminate the gap that exists today between what students are taught and the needs of the real world.

China is turning to institutional innovation to counter a lack of venture capital for startups.

John Seely Brown

AVENUES OF COMMUNICATION

The benefits of openness and communication were a prominent theme of the panelists’ responses. Amadei, for example, pointed out huge opportunities in thinking and communicating across borders. For example, he has been involved in a sewage project in East Jerusalem where Israeli and Palestinian engineers are working together. “These people have been taught because of politics to hate each other,” he said. But “when it comes to solving wastewater and water issues, they talk to each other because they have something in common.” Engineers can be peacemakers and make the world a better place by helping people find the interests they share, such as energy, water, and telecommunications.

Engineers Without Borders is not a charity, Amadei emphasized. It is not about giving away fish but about creating fishing industries that can empower people who have the ability to succeed. “People have a lot of talent,” Amadei said. “I see more talent in some villages in Africa than I see at the University of Colorado to be frank with you: hands- on talent, skill-based talent, people who have lived through floods and droughts and difficult conditions, [people] who know the rules of the game. They know more about engineering than I do. They know how to survive.”

Engineers can be peace- makers and make the world a better place by helping people find the interests they share, such as energy, water, and telecommunications.

Bernard Amadei

International development is a two-way street, Amadei said. The

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

question is not only what the developed world can bring to the developing world, but also what the developing world can bring to the developed world. Engineers in India and China are coming up with frugal solutions to local problems. They know markets, and the markets are huge. They know how to package products and sell them to 3 billion people.

The most important outcome of a project, regardless of its original goals, may be communication…ending isolation.

Nicholas Negroponte

Negroponte observed that the most important outcome of a project, regardless of its original goals, may be communication. The One Laptop per Child program began with the goal of changing education, but the most important outcome of the project has been ending isolation. The combination of poverty and isolation is devastating, he said. It is critical for children to be exposed to multiple points of view. When he was working in Gaza, he was struck by the fact that none of the students there had ever met a Jew, even though Israel was just a few miles away.

Negroponte also pointed to the transformative power of communications technologies. It is not possible to ship 10,000 books to a village in Africa, but 10,000 books can be made available through 100 interconnected laptops. Just as the developing world taught the developed world that land lines are not necessary in a world of cell phones, the developing world can demonstrate the value and use of electronic publications. “This is a very interesting change, because the developing world is going to change it.” In response to a question from a forum participant, Negroponte said that, because of the value of communications, he believes that scientific literature should be open and freely accessible anywhere in the world.

Stata observed that hundreds of millions of people are entering the middle class because of the creation of wealth by technology around the world. The involvement of these people in a global conversation could help solve global problems. Corporations too can be powerful instruments for change, he said. Much of the development of the workforce occurs in the private sector, and the corporate world is more responsive to the marketplace, to customers, and to social change than other institutions. “From that point of view, I am a bit more optimistic about where we are heading in terms of the impacts of globalization and the opportunities for cross-border collaboration.”

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

The opposite of global is national, said Negroponte. He has lived in many countries over the course of his life and has always had multiple passports. “I look at nationalism as a disease, and as a consequence of that I don’t think of competitiveness the same way other people might.” For example, why is the United States more concerned about India than about Finland? The overriding focus on competitiveness can be destructive, Negroponte said. One reason MIT is such a powerful university is because it has so many students from other countries. Those students provide “different points of view that make the graduate programs and the research programs so strong.”

INTEGRATING SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Vest observed that the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering established by NAE—which address energy, water, climate, and sustainability; improving the delivery of health care; increasing security against both natural and human threats; and expanding human capabilities and joy—all require the integration of social and technological systems. How can this integration be achieved in a world where societal understanding and political will are often lacking?

“Until we get a lot better at integrating and understanding how human behavior plays into the solutions [to the Grand Challenges]…our progress will be limited.”

Ruth David

David pointed out that the Grand Challenges are “the mother of all systems problems.” Humans are part of these systems, and the problems cannot be resolved by technology alone. “Until we get a lot better at integrating and understanding how human behavior plays into the solution[s] of these issues, our progress will be limited.” Another complication with meeting the Grand Challenges is the existence of what David called the “legacy infrastructure”—technological systems already in place that reflect outdated thinking. In many cases, this infrastructure has to be replaced or altered, which may give an advantage to nations with less infrastructure that can leapfrog ahead of the United States.

Amadei observed that social issues are inevitably intertwined with engineering issues. To create a fishing industry, there have to be fish and water in a river. That raises issues of social and environmental justice. Fishermen have to be sure they can to go the river and that it will not be closed by insurgents. That is an issue of security. Fishermen need

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

access to good technology, which is engineering. People need to know how to skin a fish and how to sell it, which means they have to be social entrepreneurs. Engineers need to help create fishing industries, not just technologies for fishing.

Universities generally are not set up to advance understanding of complex social-technological systems, observed Brown. Instead, solutions often trickle up from below rather than being imposed from above. For example, marginalized children in inner cities have amazing creativity if they are given enabling platforms. Two-way avenues of communication should be established to permit ideas from outside the United States to work their way into this country. “Americans don’t see it. They hear about it, but they don’t feel it.”

Stata pointed out that institutional innovations can enhance the ability of universities to deal with complex social-technological problems. A model is provided by virtual centers of excellence that bring together people from multiple universities to work on a particular problem or issue. “You get better results. But also the people from universities get together. They learn to work together. They learn from each other.” The obstacles to collaborative work are usually posed by institutional policies and structures, not by researchers, Stata said.

Haseltine pointed out the tremendous impact of movies, television, and video games on people’s attitudes. For example, the television show CSI has led to a huge influx of people into forensic science because the show depicted technologists and scientists sympathetically rather than as geeks. “We can help ourselves by working more closely with the media, not on what we do, but on who we are,” said Haseltine. “What audiences relate to is the human story of someone who is trying to accomplish something, encounters an obstacle, and through strength of character overcomes that obstacle. And everyone in this room wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t done that in life.”

Obstacles to collaboration are usually posed by institutional policies and structures, not by researchers.

Ray Stata

BANDWIDTH AS A FACTOR IN COMPETITION

As an example of a particular technological need, one participant asked about bandwidth, pointing out that his daughter in the Colorado mountains can communicate with networks at 1.5 megabits a second,

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

whereas a person in Tokyo or Taipei can access 100 megabits a second and soon will have access to speeds of 1 gigabit a second. Given the importance of access to adequate bandwidth in a nation’s competitiveness, how can connectivity be broadened in the United States?

Governments do not fully understand why bandwidth is important, said Brown, although the new administration has begun to change that mindset. Governments think that increased bandwidth is appropriately used just for education, whereas what bandwidth really allows is for people to get together and create things they could not create on their own. The United States needs to reconceive what the broadband infrastructure can do, which will change the discourse. The current head of the Federal Communications Commission intends “to bring some of these changes about,” Brown said.

Aho observed that infrastructure alone is not sufficient. There must also be content to send over that bandwidth. “You need content, business skills, and talent as well,” and this is an area where the United States is strong.

24.jpg

Member participation in a group discussion.

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

CHANGING THE NATURE OF ENGINEERING

To achieve the far-reaching goals discussed at the forum, it may be necessary to make fundamental changes in the engineering profession, panelists and forum attendees said. Haseltine, for example, insisted that engineering is not what engineers think it is. Engineering is not about changing technologies. It is about changing human behaviors. New technologies can perish in the “valley of death” between the research lab and the marketplace because people will not change their behaviors. Therefore, engineers may have to focus on behaviors to develop a technology.

Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland observed that many university faculty are having trouble shifting their attention toward social-technological systems, in part because universities are still reluctant to consider collaboration a measure of academic achievement. As additional signs of this lack of commitment, the National Science Foundation has only $15 million in its budget for social computational systems, and NAE does not have a natural home for systems engineering or social media technologies.

Karl Pister of the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out that the National Research Council has a division devoted to the behavioral and social sciences, and NAE could do much more to collaborate with this division. Another option would be for NAE to abolish its 12 sections to encourage more cross-disciplinary work.

Another forum participant asked about the feasibility of engineering schools working with other parts of universities on multidisciplinary projects. David responded that when she was in graduate school the college of engineering worked with the medical center at Stanford. “That was one of the most rewarding sets of projects, because it gave you a very different perspective as an engineer on seeing what you were doing in practice. I applaud those kinds of collaborative efforts that cross disciplinary boundaries.”

Brown said that at the University of Southern California he has helped develop a collaboration between the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, the cinema school, and the school of engineering. The greatest problems with such collaborations are raising and allocating revenues and ensuring that young faculty members can work toward tenure, which is why institutional innovation is so important.

Another participant noted that engineering education currently tends to be very narrow and that NAE could be a positive force for

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

change in what engineers learn. Also, involving larger numbers of young people in NAE could have a beneficial effect on the profession.

WOMEN IN ENGINEERING

The panelists discussed the role of women in engineering, who could be instrumental in changing the nature of the profession. Amadei pointed out that 56 percent of the members of Engineers Without Borders are women. Engineers Without Borders emphasizes the compassionate aspect of engineering, he said, which may be why so many women are interested in the program. A traditional approach to engineering has been simply to try harder if brute force does not work. “Guess what? You are not going to attract too many young women into engineering with that kind of marketing strategy. It is time to change the discussion.” The problems addressed by Engineers Without Borders reveal that “engineering has a human face. It is not engineering just for the sake of the technology. It brings the left brain and the right brain and also brings the heart into the equation.”

David agreed that the closer engineering gets to the application of ideas, the more it will attract women. There are huge opportunities for getting closer to the impact of what engineers do. There also are opportunities for reaching out to girls at much younger ages and showing them role models and examples of the effects engineers have on the world.

Problems addressed by Engineers Without Borders reveal that “engineering has a human face.…It brings the left brain and the right brain and…the heart into the equation.”

Bernard Amadei

Brown said that engineering is going to shift more toward a sense of design as a part of engineering, and “designers have no trouble attracting women into their professions.” Infusing schools of engineering with the spirit of design from schools of architecture and other parts of universities could hasten this transition.

Vest noted that according to a survey of women with strong mathematics skills, 99 percent said they wanted to go into a field where they can make the world a better place. As a result, NAE has been investigating ways to highlight the impact engineers can have on the world.

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

THE GLOBAL ENGINEER

The changes cited and predicted by the presenters suggest a new role for engineers, one in which the increasing prominence of transnational problems and the globalization of technology will create a distinctly global perspective. But how can engineers learn to see beyond boundaries, a forum participant asked, when boundaries are so often used to divide rather than unite people?

Haseltine responded by saying that he had gone to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Washington, D.C., the week before. In the final movement of the symphony, hundreds of people were on stage all singing together. “It occurred to me that [we all have] different politics, different points of view, different neighborhoods, but music is borderless. [With the] people up on stage, what united them—and uniquely in Washington—was something of the heart, some passion.”

As digital communications lower or eliminate boundaries of time and space, people can readily find others who share their passions, and this trend is just beginning. “We are not at the end of social networking,” said Haseltine. “We are at the very beginning of it. Some of these social networks will help people find each other based on what connects them versus what separates them. I think that is one of the great and exciting things about cyberspace.”

“I am optimistic…that new methods [will] create local, national, and global communities that will have their impact.…It [will take] time before we…see all these human and social impacts…[but] we have good reason to expect that many of them will be possible.”

Esko Aho

Brown agreed that passion can unite people across boundaries. The new Chicago public library has a huge digital media learning center where students from inner-city neighborhoods throughout Chicago gather to create things. “It is amazing if you go in there at 3:30 in the afternoon to see people from all the different neighborhoods, almost all marginalized kids by the way, coming there to actually do things. These creation spaces offer more to work with than does formal education.”

The coming changes in engineering are momentous, and the problems that must be solved are pressing. Yet change of this magnitude will take time even if it begins immediately, cautioned Aho. When Gutenberg’s printing press first came to Europe, it was used exclusively to do old things in a new way—printing books that monks had

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
×

been copying for hundreds of years. Only in the 16th century was the printing press used in new ways, helping to inaugurate religious and scientific revolutions. “I am optimistic,” he said. “I believe that these new methods [will] create local, national, and global communities that will have their impact. But it is not coming overnight. We are just in the beginning.” Bangladeshis now have a mobile device in their hands with the same computing capacity as the Apollo moon lander. “It takes time before we are going to see all these human and social impacts, [but] we have good reasons to expect that many of them will be possible.”

Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Charting a Path into the Future." National Academy of Engineering. 2011. Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13073.
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Next: Appendix A: Forum Agenda »
Global Technology: Changes and Implications: Summary of a Forum Get This Book
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Engineers know what they mean by the word technology. They mean the things engineers conceive, design, build, and deploy. But what does the word global in the phrase global technology mean? Does it mean finding a way to feed, clothe, house, and otherwise serve the 9 billion people who will soon live on the planet? Does it mean competing with companies around the world to build and sell products and services? On a more immediate and practical level, can the rise of global technology be expected to create or destroy U.S. jobs?

The National Academy of Engineering held a three-hour forum exploring these and related questions. The forum brought together seven prominent members of the engineering community:

  • Esko Aho, Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Responsibility, Nokia; former Prime Minister of Finland
  • Bernard Amadei, Founder, Engineers Without Borders, Professor, University of Colorado
  • John Seely Brown, Visiting Professor, University of Southern California; Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation
  • Ruth A. David, President and CEO of Analytic Services, Inc.
  • Eric C. Haseltine, Consultant, former Associate Director for Science and Technology in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and former head of research and development at Disney Imagineering
  • Nicholas Negroponte, Founder, One Laptop Per Child Association Inc., Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the MIT Media Lab
  • Raymond S. Stata, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices Inc.

In the first half of the forum, each panelist explored a specific dimension of the global spread of technology. The topics varied widely—from reducing poverty to the impact of young people on technology to the need for systems thinking in engineering. But all seven presenters foresaw a world in which engineering will be fundamentally different from what it has been. In the second half of the forum, the panelists discussed a variety of issues raised by moderator Charles Vest and by forum attendees.

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