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THE PRESENT ERA: MANAGING CHANGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE 36 Expansion of Government's Role As we have seen, the federal government had played a key role in technology development in the United Statesâin continental expansion, in public works and public assistance projects, in agricultural development, and through military systems development. The postwar economic boom was attended by a rapid growth in governmental participation in social and economic processes more generally. A legacy partly of the New Deal and FDR's long reign, federal planning, funding, and direction of major programs was now widely accepted. The large-scale support of national technological- social-economic objectives led to the establishment of new federal agencies: the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, to pursue peaceful uses of atomic energy; the National Science Foundation in 1950, to support scientific research in many areas of national importance; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, to develop a civilian space program; the Department of Transportation in 1966, to coordinate expansion and development of the nation's transportation systems. Perhaps most notable of all, in terms of its impact on engineering, was the establishment of the Department of Defense (DOD) (1949) to coordinate national defense efforts. Military technology development continued at a rapid pace in the postwar periodâparticularly in the nuclear submarine program, in military aircraft and engine technology, missile guidance and control, and military electronics. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers continued to carry out large-scale development and reclamation projects, particularly focusing on irrigation canals and the dredging of rivers, harbors, and inlets. Since the late 1960s one aspect of societal demand-pull on engineering has been the development of means of curbing technology itself and controlling its effects. In response to this demand, agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency emerged to regulate and direct technology development. Large numbers of engineers entered government service or the private sector to work for these agencies directly or under contract to them. The net effect was that engineers now acted as "technological policemen" through the application of engineering skills and knowledge to meet regulatory requirements. As a result of government funding for R&D in new areas, new engineering disciplines began to emerge, and older ones began to experience a subdivision into new specialties. Massive NASA and DOD spending on aircraft and rocket programs caused a considerable upsurge in the numbers of people engaged in aerospace engineering. Wartime and
THE PRESENT ERA: MANAGING CHANGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE 37 postwar programs to develop radar, communication, and computer technology, funded especially by DOD, led to the emergence of electronics engineering from the more established radio and electrical engineering fields. Nuclear engineering developed as a hybrid of chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering to support the late-1950s and early-1960s enthusiasm for nuclear power generation. Transportation engineering grew in proportion with the federal highway system. By the late 1960s environmental engineering was emerging in response to public concern about the disruption of ecosystems and the pollution of air and water by chemical by-products of industry and the internal combustion engine. These new fields were well funded from the start, and demand for specialists in them would often grow intense over a period of just a year or so. Curriculum development in the new fields as well as the older branches was driven to a great extent by large DOD and NASA contracts for pilot programs and R&D activities, which fed money and requirements back into the universities in the form of research grants. Indeed, in many cases the new disciplines were simply applications of an older set of skills in a specialized setting with enormous funding. It was the degree of specialization and the number of people involved that came to define a field. Apart from the setting of directions, the major new factor introduced by government support of technology development in the postwar period has been the tremendous scale of programs. The manned space program, defense command and control systems, the interstate highway system, urban development programs, and many other government-funded efforts all represent a quantum increase in the human and technological resources devoted to applying science to societal needs through engineering. The great expansion of the defense industry in particular meant that U.S. leadership in high technology now began to derive from defense rather than civilian needs. This new driver of development in the present era has surpassed the older, strictly commercial market-driven mechanisms for development that characterized the first century and a half of engineering in the United States. Its dominance has become so strong that, in fact, it may be threatening the continued health of those civilian market mechanisms. The panel is concerned that future problems may emerge from either of two directions: (1) a shortage of engineers to meet societal needs apart from those driven by government [e.g., defense and space) and (2) the possibility that government-based requirements will strongly distort the fundamental nature and purposes of engineering education. To be sure, defense R&D expenditures have stimulated the forma
