Can engineers change the world? Why we need to rethink a widely-held belief about tech
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- Can technology and engineers change the world?
- Professor Lelia Green argues that culture may be an even more powerful driver of change.
- Technology is often used to support the status quo instead of disrupting it.
Technology is ubiquitous in our lives from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. We use some form of tech at nearly all times throughout the day, from our smartphones to cars, TVs, refrigerators and microwaves, and of course, smartphones. Technology also influences what we think, feeding us news and political information based on algorithms of what we are already interested in. And much of this everyday tech has been developed in just the past century or so. But even with all the ways, the constantly re-engineered technology affects us and arguably improves our lives; is it really the driving force behind meaningful societal change or is culture more responsible? Such is the question at the heart of our interview with the Australian professor Lelia Green of Edith Cowan University, whose book Technoculture: From Alphabet to Cybersex speaks to this issue.
We had the chance to speak to Dr. Stiavelli, the head of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope project