Engineering can and must promote social justice
Jean-Jaques Rousseau was born in 1712. During the 300th anniversary of his birth year I was invited to address the congress of the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) which that year was meeting in Buenos Aires. In response to Rousseau's position that technology was a barrier to a decent society I chose to address the topic of technology and more specifically engineering as a means to realisation of social justice. Here are the slides from my presentation.
The realisation of social justice, along the full length of the economic spectrum and under diverse political systems, is a practical task that requires the technical expertise of engineers. However, since technical expertise is insufficient to assure that a genuinely equitable and just society is achieved, and since --as is often the case--- the controlling economic and political forces are adverse such an outcome, it becomes imperative for engineers (as well as other technological experts) to enter fully into the political process.