Retooling

Abstract

A humanistic account of the changing role of technology in society, by a historian and a former Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT. When Warren Kendall Lewis left Spring Garden Farm in Delaware in 1901 to enter MIT, he had no idea that he was becoming part of a profession that would bring untold good to his country but would also contribute to the death of his family's farm. In this book written a century later, Professor Lewis's granddaughter, a cultural historian who has served in the administration of MIT, uses her grandfather's and her own experience to make sense of the rapidly changing role of technology in contemporary life. Rosalind Williams served as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT from 1995 through 2000. From this vantage point, she watched a wave of changes, some planned and some unexpected, transform many aspects of social and working life—from how students are taught to how research and accounting are done—at this major site of technological innovation. In Retooling, she uses this local knowledge to draw more general insights into contemporary society's obsession with technology. Today technology-driven change defines human desires, anxieties, memories, imagination, and experiences of time and space in unprecedented ways. But technology, and specifically information technology, does not simply influence culture and society; it is itself inherently cultural and social. If there is to be any reconciliation between technological change and community, Williams argues, it will come from connecting technological and social innovation—a connection demonstrated in the history that unfolds in this absorbing book.

Toward A Contemplative Technopedagogy Framework: A Discourse Analysis

“…Used to refer to household appliances as well as ethereal software applications, technology is a term with a "tricky history" (Oldenziel, 2006). Moreover, technology is infused with power dynamics (Williams, 1985), sociocultural context (Marx, 1997;Williams, 2002), politics (Winner, 1977), among other variables that shape and are shaped by the conceptualizations of human actors (Schatzberg, 2006). More than merely the mechanistic, not exclusively the domain of engineering, nor purely about progress, this manuscript understands technology as one aspect of a complex sociocultural ecosystem.…”

Academic and Professional Values in Engineering Education: Engaging with History to Explore a Persistent Tension

“…37 MIT, "Committee on Educational Survey," 1949. 38 Williams, Retooling, 2002. by the prestige' of expansion and 'diverted from education to income-producing work'. 39 They recognised the interdependence of industry, government and universities, but recommended sponsored research to be incorporated 'in such a manner as to strengthen and sustain the educational program' and without compromising academic freedom.…”

“…She remembers listening to her grandfather and other male relatives discussing engineering and the engineering profession, but 'not once do I recall their discussing or ever noticing the absence of women in it'. 53 Likewise, Söderberg mentions no female engineer, student, or faculty member in his comprehensive and detailed memoirs. Once, much later, he speculates that to increase the number of engineers the reserves must be women and underrepresented social strata, but already in the next paragraph, he establishes that, 'exceptional men will be in perpetual demand' and so the text continues.…”

Characterizing engineering work in a changing world: Synthesis of a typology for engineering students' occupational outcomes

“…The 21st century has brought an expansion in the variety of occupational roles associated with product, service, and technology development (Downey, 2005; National Academy of Engineering [NAE], 2018;Stevens et al, 2015;Williams, 2002). As a result, it has become more challenging to classify the types of occupations engineering students undertake in their careers.…”