A Roadmap to the Future of American Engineering Practice, Research, and Education
We live in a time of great change, an increasingly global society, driven by the exponential growth of new knowledge and knitted together by rapidly evolving information and communication technologies. It is a time of challenge and contradiction, as an ever increasing human population threatens global sustainability; a global, knowledge driven economy places a new premium on technological workforce skills through phenomena such as outsourcing and offshoring; governments place increasing confidence in market forces to reflect public priorities, even as new paradigms such as open source software and open content knowledge and learning challenge conventional free market philosophies; and shifting geopolitical tensions are driven by the great disparity in wealth and power about the globe, manifested in the current threat to homeland security by terrorism. Yet it is also a time of unusual opportunity and optimism as new technologies not only improve the human condition but also enable the creation and flourishing of new communities and social institutions more capable of addressing the needs of our society.