What Engineering Can Learn from the Social Sciences and Humanities

It was a great honour to have been invited to speak at the annual Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) workshop that took place this year in my favourite Moroccan city of Tetouan, at Abdelmalek Essaâdi University. Having spent two days discussing various aspects of sensing technologies, I provided a perspective on the key problem in which the introduction of technology is also at the same time a revelation of some aspect of the world, and it is up to societies to decide what that revelation means and how it should be addressed. Needless to say, the convergence of engineering with sociology and philosophy was rather thought-provoking.

Engineers generally seem to excel in posing how questions: How can one design a better sensor? How to increase the effectiveness of an algorithm? How to develop more intelligent systems? However, the social sciences and humanities have a completely different agenda when it comes to technologies: Why do some communities embrace some technologies but reject others? How do people negotiate the meaning of new technology? What social, political, and ethical worlds are formed after the exit of a technology from the lab into the public sphere? What does AI reveal about the problem of speed and modern alienation?