IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 34

Commentary
Commentary
Growing a Culture of Technological
Stewardship
Jason Lajoie
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1,
Canada
 Daily heaDlines stress the ways modern
technologies disclose their most dystopian possibilities;
this magazine is replete with examples of innovative
technologies that prompt considerations of their
unethical applications. Numerous approaches have
already been proposed to advance critical thinking
about the social, cultural, environmental, and economic
implications of tech innovation, such as tech
literacy and philosophy of technology. What these
intellectual traditions have shown is that while the
negative effects of technological innovations may
be unprecedented, they can be foreseen, and, more
importantly, mitigated through more intentional and
skillful engineering. Nevertheless, systematic efforts
to address these impacts remain peripheral to the
engineering profession, with technological artifacts
deemed value-neutral, and intervention often seen
as luddite and unenforceable [1]. While this situation
suggests a need for systemic changes across
academic and industry contexts, it also points to
an immediate need to address the uptake of critical
thinking about the implications of tech innovation
within the engineering community.
Recent efforts to re-center the culture of engineering
around a vital ethical consciousness, such as
the Tech for Good movement [2], or the Improving
Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) framework
and Professional Formation of Engineers (PFE) initiative:
REvolutionizing engineering and computer
science Departments (IUSE/PFE: RED) program [3],
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3101828
Date of current version: 2 September 2021.
34
0278-0097/21©2021 IEEE
George Roter and Mark Abbott
Engineering Change Laboratory, Toronto,
ON M5G 1L7, Canada
point to the way industry and academia alike have
sought to engage professional and budding engineers
to think critically about the technologies they
design and use. The need for the engineering profession
to embrace a more substantial stewardship
responsibility has been a primary focus for the Canada-based
Engineering Change Laboratory (ECL).
Through six years of pilot projects and network
building-including deep engagement with more
than 350 leaders at 150 organizations, and broader
engagement with over 10,000 individuals within and
beyond the engineering community-ECL has identified
a set of overarching behaviors, which it terms
Technological Stewardship (TS), that involves taking
a value sensitive approach to embedding ethics, sustainability,
and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)
principles into the practice and culture of engineering
[4]. Though calls for these skills are growing
in industry [5], and particularly in professional
engineering domains [6], they are not widespread
among engineers or engineering-focused organizations
[7]. However, a TS mindset, which links ethics
and values to the skilled and intentional design,
development, and deployment of tech innovation, is
crucial for engineers and technologists to drive technology
adoption that is beneficial for all.
Reframing the culture of engineering toward TS
will require a tipping point effect, with broad uptake
of TS principles among students, faculty, and professionals.
Based on experimental evidence showing
that 25% consensus is needed to tip a minority viewpoint
into the majority [8], the engineering community
should strive to achieve 25% of its community
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