Disruptions of Progress

This article focuses on the engineering profession that is currently facing an unprecedented array of pressures to change. Economic and environmental problems facing industry and society are increasingly global and intractable. The skills that must be brought to bear on their solution go well beyond the historical scope of engineering practice. The profession is becoming more complex, with the boundaries established in the 19th and 20th centuries between the traditional engineering and science disciplines blurring or disappearing. The pace of technological change continues to accelerate. Technological advances are fueling more technological advances and are providing exciting opportunities as well as challenges to the engineering profession. New knowledge is created at a faster rate than anyone can learn it. A number of disruptive technologies emerging from the biology, nanotechnology, and information fields are likely to cause radical changes in the way products and systems are developed, as well as in the way engineering work are performed.