Politics Needs Engineers

Summary:

    In this post, I am going to argue that engineers play a crucial role in modern society, which is why they should take part in "political" political decision-making.


Scientists and engineers are similar to politician in many ways. They deeply affect their era with iPhones, vaccines, air conditioners, sports cars, skyscrapers, cross-sea bridges and manned space flights, as well as pollution, ethics problems, weaponry, over-consumption and climate changes. All of our serious challenges have a scientific or technological component, and that half of all economic growth over the past century can be attributed to technological advancement. It is reasonable to take engineers' ideas into consideration as to find out what kind of heart surgery a patient should has, how to address the challenge of producing clean energy, how to deal with environmental change, or how to create jobs in a high-tech economy.

Moreover, the value of engineers taking an active role in decision-making is immeasurable. It is in our nature to think logically and systematically, which could enrich the policy-making process, and we could perhaps help develop a clear course of action without becoming distracted by the intricacies of politics. Joseph Schlesinger, political science professor at Michigan State University, claims that amateur politicians, those who join politics without formal political background such as scientists and engineers, are driven by the policy goals they wish to enact, whereas professional politicians are motivated predominantly by the pursuit of power and political ambition.

According to a release by Congress, there were a grand total of "three physicists, one chemist, six engineers including a biomedical engineer, and one microbiologist" among the 541 members of the Congress in 2010, accounting for about two percent of the United States’ legislature. By the end of 2011, with the retirement of Vern Ehlers and unfortunate defeat of Bill Foster, there is exactly one scientist in the entire 535 member. Depending on how wide we define engineering, there is also one engineer. In contrast, there are well over 200 lawyers in Congress. Scientists and engineers are vastly underrepresented in Congress. Actually, approximately 36.4 percent of college-educated citizens have science or engineering degrees, so it is not proportional even if merely thinks about equal representation.

"Engineering would be a highly political activity even if no engineer ever voted." (The Future of Technological Civilization, Prof. Woodhouse" I believe, however, that adding some scientific and engineering new blood to Congress would efficiently take political decision-making to another level. The composition of Congress would be more equitable and representative. Politics needs engineers to help make sound decisions in such a technologically-driven modern society and to provide advised, experienced counsel on issues that are critical to the well-being and health of present and future.

Pitfalls in Trial-and-Error Learning of Synthetic Biology

Summary:
    In this post, I am going to introduce and exemplify three main kinds of pitfalls in trial and error learning of synthetic biology.


Around 1860s, the invention of textile machinery and the mechanization of production using water and steam power marked the first technoscientific revolution. Around 1970s, the second technoscientific revolution introduced mass production, telecommunication and transportation with the help of electric power, followed by the third technoscientific revolution, the development of space technology and atomic technology, and the use of electronics and IT to further automate production. And here comes the fourth revolution, in the beginning of the 21st century, a revolution inside the physical world, integrating data analysis, space technology, nano technology, material science, and synthetic biology.

Synthetic Biology, which has emerged over the last decade, aims to engineer cellular regulatory circuits and the genomes of organisms, much like electrical engineers design and fabricate microchips. Just like any other complex new endeavors, few fully understands even the direct and intended consequences of synthetic biology, much less the secondary and unintended consequences. With this said, trial and error learning is a must-covered topic in the research and development of synthetic biology. According to Prof. Edward Woodhouse's thesis ("More Intelligent Trial and Error", The Future of Technological Civilization), there are three main pitfall that people will have to face when proceeding in the face of uncertainty:

"A misguided innovation may produce unbearably costly outcomes before error correction can occur."

Human cloning is an example of misguided innovation. When Dolly the Sheep became the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell, the US government explicitly banned any sort of human cloning. This is because the development of biological technology has out-ridden the ideological progress on ethics about lives. The world is not yet ready, at least mentally, for the outcome of human cloning. The concept of human cloning conflicts with the code of bio-medical ethics, with the traditional value and way of living, and with the evolution law of nature. 

Biological weapon is another example of misguided innovation. Biological weapon is often described as "the cheap nuclear bomb": according to statistics published by United Nations in 1969, the cost of 50% death of the people in an area of 1 square km by using biological weapon is only 1 dollar. In WWI, Germany's use of biological weapon made over 500 billion people suffer from Viral Influenza, caused over 20 billion deaths. Besides the fact that it is extremely cheap and efficient, the harm it leaves lasts terribly long. The Great Britain tested its newly developed anthrax bacillus bomb at Gruinard Island, and it not until 1990 the Islan was officially out of danger. The anti-human characteristic of biological weapon obviously gone way too far from playing a role in wars.

"Innovative actions may retain too little flexibility, preventing errors from being corrected readily."

Low security level of research contributes to a low flexibility, which makes it hard to make sure the positive outcome of the research. Egypt’s primary public health laboratory in Cairo had been raided during the riots that ultimately toppled the Mubarak regime in early 2011 and that vials of germs had gone missing -- including samples of the H5N1 virus, which might left a fatal impact on the country and its neighbors. The extensive security precautions taken by developed countries, such as those Dutch used to ensure the security of the research of H5N1 and the ones that the Americans had adhered to, were not going to be followed in biology labs in many other countries, mainly because of poverty and social unrest.

Flexibility goes low also when the information and details of research are too accessible. For example, the methods used to create new mammalian forms of H5N1 failed to be published by Science and Nature. The finding was redacted, out of a stated concern on the part of advisory board members that the information constituted a cookbook for terrorists. You can can also consider this issue security, secure the breakthroughs in synthetic biological research from being used deliberately against social welfare. There is also a great number of consumer-friendly synthetic biological products on market, such as 250 dollar for a set of DIY kit to grow your own plant. Such project is not without its detractors and skeptics. Environmental groups are raising concerns about the such project, demanding those companies abandon such project, because it makes synthetic biology too accessible to people without professional skill and awareness of the potential outcome.

"Learning about errors may be very slow."

People need time to accept the brand new values and products brought by the revolutionary synthetic biology, and to come to an agreement on the answers to ethics problems it raised. Laws and regulations need time to catch up with the accelerating development, just like they did some 30 years ago when the introduction of the Internet brought countless security and responsibility problems onto the table. The society needs time to realize all the pros and cons of synthetic biology, to adopt this game-changing technoscientific trend, and to make full use of it in sustainable development. 

Ethics Education Is Essential

Summary:
    In this post, I am going to introduce two main focuses in ethics education, and argue that they should be mandatory in college education.

Economy is now growing at the expense of over-consumption. Too many goods and services are being discarded, non-regenerated energy resources are being used, toxic substances are being released into air and water, and happiness in affluent countries is declining. One main reason of over-consumption, as illustrated in "Does Engineering Promote Over Consumption?" (The Future of Technological Civilization by Edward Woohouse), is that engineering practitioners and educators are "... unaware of the key role they are playing in steering technological society". Prof. Woodhouse thus suggest offering engineering students ethical education "... aiming at awakening students' social, cultural, ethical, and environmental responsibilities."

Lack of awareness is often because of lack of education. There is actually a number of companies, organizations and technical universities in the US that publicized some sort of codes of ethics in engineering. At RPI, there are courses like Engineering Ethics that provides future engineers guideline in dealing with the conflict between professionalism and the demands of business, but they are elective courses. In the US, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), recommends the study of ethics so that students acquire "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility". In my opinion, ethics education should be an essential part of college education.

Understanding professional responsibility, engineering disasters are less likely to happen. A recent study conducted at the Swiss federal Institute of technology in Zurich analyzed 800 cases of structural failure in which 504 people were killed, 592 people injured, and millions of dollars of damage incurred. The top three causes of engineering failure are "insufficient knowledge", "underestimation of influence" and "ignorance, carelessness, negligence". Besides death and injuries, these disasters actually generate great amount of over-consumption by turning investment and anticipation into debris and disappointment. 

Understanding ethical responsibility, engineers' contribution will be more long-lasting and beneficial. In China, choice of bad quality in buildings is gaining awareness for ethics in engineering. After the earthquake hit Wenchuan, people started realizing that lots of their houses were cheaply built by engineers, which is one main reason why such natural disaster cause so many deaths. An engineer, as a professional, has a responsibility to their client or employer, to their profession, and of course, to the general public, to perform their duties in conscientious manner. Government definitely plays and important role in this regulation, but for engineer as a part of the society, acting within the bounds of law is not good enough. 

More generally, ethics education is better defined as character education. A number of universally sound values would call to mind when speaking of good characters: truth, honesty, and trustworthiness; respect to human life and human welfare, including those of future generations; a sense of fair play; transparency and competence. These characters, which could literally apply to any other professional field, form the basis of engineering ethics. This education is not only beneficial to the society, but also helpful for future engineers and scientists, even other non-technical majors, as individuals. When more people are able to tell right from wrong, are responsible of what they create and build, and are aware of the importance of ethics in technological society, more people will become voluntary supervisor of ethical engineering. That is the ideal state of regulation of engineering. 

Web-Based, Family-Based Representation

In The Future of Technological Civilization, Prof. Woodhouse introduces two proposals that could revolutionize the basis of the future way of governing: moving campaigning, meetings, and other parts of political system onto the web; providing bottom-up mechanisms for every person to be represented fairly in every important public decision. Yes, it is ideal to have everyone, including young and old, educated and non-educated, participating online, or to have everyone being somehow represented, but I would like to say that these are nice, technological and democracy-directed notion.

What if we combine these two proposals, and make them work simultaneously? Will web-based political system help more people being represented? Will bottom-up representation mechanism help more people participating in the online decision making?

Let's say if there's a family including a college kid like me, my parents and my grandparents. The only thing my grandparents know about the Internet is online card games. They are those that most likely to be excluded in web-based decision making, but they do have political opinions. They know how the country was like decades ago, witnessed reforms carried out by various presidents and maybe participated in movements and revolutions, which has their insight a certain reference value. Luckily both my mom and my dad knows the Internet very well, so they could represent my grandparents. However, my parents are too busy at work to care about politics, but they do have considerable political insight. They made possible the economic boom late 20th century, interact with the contemporary society as well as its government in different dimensions and some of them might have occupations directly related to the political system. Luckily they have me, a 20 years old son who could represent them and their political opinion. I am the member of my family who knows the Internet the most. I am energetic and dedicative to speak for my family and its rights on the internet. As the most educated family member, I also have my own political opinion, built on the stuff I have learnt during the past decade and on my understanding of the world. 

You see, as a family with members of three generations, there could easily, naturally be a bottom-up representation mechanism. I represent my parents, and my parents represents their parents. As a result, I will be the representative of us 7 people to express our minds on and to get information from the web-based political system. 

Disagree with Prof. Woodhouse's "8 levels of representative" in The Future of Technological Civilization, I suggest each family with one representative, who is also the ultimate representative. First of all, if we move political meetings onto the web, we don't have to narrow down the "top-level" representatives to some 5 hundreds of people. A nice cloud server, just like Facebook's, is definitely able to include millions even billions of users representing their own families. Secondly, if there are too many "levels" of representation, one would be less likely to express their opinion, believing that "someone else might have the same opinion and might have express it already" or that "if my opinion failed to be perceived by 'top-level' representative, I really don't know who to blame on." If have immediate access to the 'top-level' representative, who in my thesis is one's family member, one will participate in the political decision making more actively and effectively. Thirdly, family is the party that like no other. Family is the party in which each member truly cares about others' well-being. With that said, instead of friends-based and organization-based, I personally prefer a family-based representation mechanism.

Commonly speaking, each family's representative would better be its youngest adult, who will benefit the most from democratic policies. She is physically and mentally mature to represent her family and take part in politics, and is qualified to communicate with others efficiently online. 

Reform of Voters

Summary:

    Voters should also be included in democratic reform. To improve democracy, change is directed to encourage people to vote and to ensure that voters understand their decision.

Thinking about improving political democracy, first thing comes to one's mind is how to change the existing political system, such as the way representatives are selected and the procedure of government decision-making. There is no doubt that making a more equitable political system could achieve the goal, but I would suggest some changes to better voters' participation as well. More basic and fundamental than change in federal or state policies, change in voters' participation could benefit the democracy of society in comparatively longer term.

One vital attempt in improving democracy is to encourage people to vote. The voter turnout in the US is low (less than 60% in many elections), which means the scale of democracy is low and many further endeavors are meaningless. In order to include more people, we should firstly find out who are being excluded: 1. People who are not aware of the significance of their right to participate and to represent. They mostly holds a pessimistic belief on politics. They don't realize that their participation could make such difference. 2. People who are willing to vote but not enough information is available for them to make a decision. Not understanding who and in what way would be benefited, they choose to let go the precious opportunity. 3. The poor, who is the majority of the former two groups. Poor people are lack of money and time to dive into political stuff. They spent most of their time making a living. To this extent, they are unable and unavailable to participate in democracy. 

What can we do to help include these people in voting? Well, I have to say that comparing to my home country, which is a communistic country, the US has way more inherent democratic possibilities. Candidates are almost free to express their political tactic and ideology, and are open to suggestion and criticism from people. Political advertisement can be seen on newspaper and television. In my opinion, the advertisement is a good way to inform people what a politician can do and how will people be benefited. Comparatively, newspaper is affordable to the poor. I would suggest government subsidize political advertisement on newspaper. In this way, more information will be provided to the poor and more likely to arouse their enthusiasm in politics. Simultaneously, pay to everyone who does vote - which would have the effect of immediate boosting the economic well being of poor people. Money is a motivation that can raise their attention to political elections.  

When more poor people start caring about and participating in voting, the voter turnout will increase markedly, and therefore further reform in political system will be more effective. 

An other attempt in improving democracy is to ensure that voters understand their decision. A few online courses will be nice, just like the online mandatory alcohol course we take before freshman years. I believe a mandatory, not challenging online course before high school about basic political information and election procedure will help a lot. 

Consider requiring voters to take a simple test before being allow to vote, inasmuch as a majority actually cannot name a single that their representative has done in the past two years. This will also help choosing better representatives locally. When people are more informed and more enthusiastic about being informed about voting, every piece of vote will be more exactly beneficial to the democratic society. 

Redefining Workplace Democracy

Summary:
    A better way to achieve workplace democracy and improve working satisfaction is to implement democratic policy in two dimensions: inner-group and inter-groups.


I went to several information sessions hosted by different companies last couple of weeks. In information session, the company will introduce who it is looking for and what the requirement is, as well as some basic information of the company, such as what it does, where it is, and most importantly, how it works. Nearly all the companies that held information session, ranging from local retail store to cloud service provider, proudly describe their working environment as "everyone has access to everyone", "no separated rooms for individuals or departments", "feel free to bring your pet to work", "you can literally talk to the CEO if you would".

Regardless of whether or not they are telling the truth about their companies, they seems to be sharing the same belief that workplace democracy is desirable and attractive. Basically, they illustrate workplace democracy by describing how easy it is to reach out to people on different position or in different department, by depicting their office as a place where you can do whatever you what to, even if it is nothing related to your nor others' work at all.

In my opinion, however, this kind of "employee friendly" working environment has nothing to deal with the concept of democracy. Think democracy and what comes to mind is an image of people lining up at voting booths to pick their country's next leader. In dictionary, democracy is defined as "fair and equal treatment of everyone in an organization, etc, and their right to take part in making decision". Workplace democracy is not necessarily about everyone works happily and comfortable, nor about having the right to bring pets to work and to work in the same room as executives. Instead, workplace democracy is more about the way workmates collaborate and make decisions. Well, I am not saying it is not important to make sure people work in a good mood, but claiming the freedom in office is probably creating an illusion of workplace democracy, similar to political situations in which too much freedom will lead to chaos instead of democracy.

How to actually improve workplace democracy instead of just making the office policy and environment "employee friendly"? In order to benefit both employer and employee, I suggest democracy inside a group and democracy inter-groups, due to two reasons: it helps achieve workplace democracy and makes firm more productive.

Inside the same group, there are relatively small number of people, sharing largely the same focus in work. Making possible immediate access to other workmates, democratic managing policy helps a department work efficiently and collaboratively. However, it is not realistic to have everyone easily accessible, especially in large firms. Each group should have a representative who serves as the link among groups. In this way, democracy is achieved in a great order and a reasonable way. In most cases, a group is probably a department in a firm, or a couple of people who have to work collaboratively during most of their time in office.

Productivity is the ultimate emphasis in a firm. It is obvious that employer is willing to make productive workplace policy; however, I believe that by working productively, employers are more likely to feel engaged, satisfied and achieved. Happiness brought by productive working is more meaningful and long-lasting compared to that brought by the right to bring a dog to work.

By separating workplace democracy into two dimensions - inner-group and inter-groups, a democratic and satisfying working environment will be possible.