ПРОБЛЕМЫ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ 1/2005

(2)Microtrend, Appleton, WI, USA

This paper examines developments in engineering and their impact on society from a post-structural perspective, focusing on social impact, especially on labor, and on the environmental impact of technology, particularly in terms of global increases in consumption. Displacement of labor is discussed in terms of growing underemployment as machine enhanced productivity evolves from production of tangible goods to skilled and professional work. Ethical questions need to be re-framed to be relevant to reflect the evolution of work structures. Current developments create a positive feedback loop with adverse consequences for socio-political and environmental systems. Some analysts believe our current social system has already become highly unstable.

 Л. Степлтон, Ф. Кайл

 Рассмотрена ситуация, сложившаяся в инженерно-технической сфере и ее воздействие на общество в постструктурной перспективе. Особое внимание уделено социальному воздействию техники, в особенности на рабочую силу, а также на окружающую среду, в частности, в терминах глобального роста потребления. Изменение характера труда рассмотрено в плане роста неполной занятости, связанного с увеличением производительности машинного производства и распространением его от выпуска материальных благ на выполнение квалифицированной и профессиональной работы. Отмечено, что этические аспекты должны быть пересмотрены так, чтобы они могли правильно отражать эволюцию трудовых структур. Сегодняшние разработки создают положительную обратную связь с неблагоприятными последствиями для социально-политических и экологических систем. Некоторые аналитики полагают, что наша сегодняшняя социальная система уже стала крайне неустойчивой.

Advances in technology continue to accelerate. However, there is increasing concern at various levels of society, up to the United Nations, that developments in AMAT (Automation and Machine-Assisted Thinking) and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) are creating new sets of problems for our global society. This paper argues that these new problems lie at the heart of ethical analysis of AMAT and ICT and raise serious questions regarding both current and planned engineering research and development. Specifically, this paper addresses two major issues:

1. Downward pressure on labor forces, in both developed and developing areas, resulting from AMAT. This pressure is felt in an increasing need for advanced training in applications of technology. Labor markets change as skilled persons are replaced by less skilled persons using AMAT to create a man-machine pairing which elevates the functional skill level of the worker. Pressure on labor forces displaces people at skill level “n” with machine-assisted people at skill level “n – 1, and so on through a spectrum of labor expertise”. The final consequence of this downward cascading of pressure on labor results in underemployment among many in both developed and developing economies and total loss of employment opportunities among the least qualified in developing areas, except subsistence farmers, who are not in the labor market.

2. “Markets” are evolving from exchanges of products and goods to markets based on the sale and procurement of “signs” (“simulacra” in the idiom suggested by J. Baudrillard). This evolution of “markets” does not exclude exchange of tangible products and goods; rather, this transformation of markets stems from how tangibles and intangibles are blended in the minds of both sellers and buyers. Increasingly, “market exchanges” are moving from products apart from attributed images in the direction of exchanging “signs” through which both tangibles and intangibles are identified. Thus, one “purchases” status through possession of an expensive, carefully marketed high-end automobile, though this automobile may in no way be superior to a less highly “imaged” machine.

Although, superficially, these two issues may seem unrelated, recent analyses show that this is not the case. However, to date, the literature in engineering ethics, systems engineering development and related work, have not juxtaposed these two issues in one paper. Neither has the post-structural analysis presented here received very much attention, with one or two notable exceptions.

This paper explores the implications of recent post-structuralist theory for engineering and technology programs of research and development. It merges certain aspects of post-structuralism with the current debate on ethics within automation and control engineering, indicating that this debate must (re)evaluate at a very deep level the core assumptions which underlie the current research trajectories, both in terms of social and environmental impact. It is self-evident that any discussion of ethics for engineers in the 21st century goes far beyond a “code” and goes to the heart of global engineering research activity.

The analysis reveals that, as has long been the case, development of ethics trails development of technology, often at staggering cost.

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