Transcript
Serving Needs, or Quality of Life, or
Wants?
• “Traditional cultures, having more limited means to satisfy human needs, tend to meet as many needs as possible with as few resources as possible.
• In contrast, industrial capitalism emphasises the creation of specialised products that fight for market niches to fill ‘needs’ that, as often as not, cannot be satisfied by material goods. (Natural Capitalism, Ch. 14)
Example: which of these is more worth
an engineer’s energy & interest? Hasbro's Tooth Tunes toothbrushes have an MP3 player
built in. They use bone-conduction to rattle the sound through
your teeth for 3 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ViXgz0pGjQ&feature=related
Example: which of these is more worth
an engineer’s energy & interest?
Thousands of refugee deaths from
hypothermia could be prevented every
year if a new hi-tech UK-designed tent
lining performs well in tests in
Afghanistan. A team from the University
of Cambridge has developed linings for
existing refugee tents that will pay for
themselves in saved heating costs in one
winter.
They are made of a sandwich of
materials: polyester wadding like you'd
find in a puffa jacket and a cheap
breathable waterproof membrane.
Design of Temporary Shelters for Refugees
Choosing what you are engineering
for - engineers can’t be neutral
OK NEVER NEVER
GOOD MAYBE NEVER
BRILLIANT GOOD MAYBE
Aff
luen
ce
Technology
Luxury
Quality
Needs
No net impact High impact In - between
OK NEVER NEVER
GOOD MAYBE NEVER
BRILLIANT GOOD MAYBE
Engineers’ reputation as professionals, not
mercenaries - whose interests do we serve? • “Video toothbrush”
• “In development by
Panasonic, this
electric toothbrush
has a miniature video
camera mounted
beside the bristles to
allow the user to see
on a monitor the
‘40%’ of debris they
normally miss.”
• (TYNKYN - EC 11/01)
What do you think? -
• Engineering is never neutral - every product
or project - or research topic - lies
somewhere on that matrix, and is going to
affect the sustainable/unsustainable
balance…. SO:
• What are the social responsibilities of
engineering – whom do we want to serve?
What defines a socially
sustainable product?
• Is being manufactured sustainably enough,
whatever the product’s social impact?
• Or, should engineers push for socially
sustainable features in the products: for
instance….affordability and accessibility for
the ‘excluded’ - the poorest 10%?
• Or, should we put our energy and interest into
products and projects which serve ‘needs’
rather than artificially created ‘wants’?
Enterprise relation to Society
The company is part of a supply chain, with suppliers and customers and a market, our
share of which we hope to increase. Products flow through that supply chain in one
direction; money flows in the other direction.
• service oriented
• resource-efficient
• wasting nothing
• solar driven
• cyclical (no longer take-make-
waste linear)
• strongly connected to
stakeholders: communities
(building social equity),
customers, and suppliers—
and to one another.
• Our communities are stronger
and better educated
7. Redesign of commerce
Redesigning commerce probably
hinges, more than anything else, on
the acceptance of entirely new notions
of economics, especially prices that
reflect full costs.
It means shifting emphasis from
simply selling products to
providing services
Relationships based on delivering, via
leasing agreements, the services our
products provide, in lieu of the
products themselves
7. Redesign of commerce Other examples:
Photocopies:
Elevator:
We can go farther:
In ICT: You can buy hours of word editor instead of hardware
and software.
In civil engineering: you can provide the service: connection
between two places instead of roads. The enterprise is
responsible for maintenance, in case of interruption enterprise
is fined.
Schindler, Sells vertical transport maintenance free
instead of elevators
Xerox: Sells copy services instead of copy
machines.
Redefine engineering culture away from
‘Building things’ to ‘meeting needs sustainably’?
I built all
this!
I didn’t need to build
anything new!
Providing and Refurbishing the minimum to meet society’s needs
Visible construction, at great public expense, to meet society’s wants
The 19th (& 20th?) Century Engineer The 21st Century Engineer
Environment -
‘inevitable’
Engineers provide the
interfaces...
Society - instinctive?
• Becoming
sustainable
requires leaders
who recognise
this world view,
and act
accordingly.
Infrastructure
Products
Economy
- invented!
top related