GRANDE ENGENHARIA OU BOA ENGENHARIA ( Texto para reflexão ) - INGLÊS

Great Engineering or Good Engineering: A Reflection Paulo F Ribeiro

1 – Great Engineering requires no explanation - - they are the great projects which have marveled the world, e.g., The Pyramids, The Netherlands Delta Works, The Great Wall of China, The Electric Grid, etc.

2 – Good Engineering, on the other hand, may be defined as the innovative and incrementally improved technological developments which have transformed our modern lives, e.g., The Computer, The Smart Phone, The Smart Grid, etc.

3 – Good Engineering may be understood as engineering which does something inherently good to society.

4 – Thus, Great Engineering would need to be also Good Engineering. The idea of Good Engineering is not quite extinct among power systems engineers. They know well it is no use at all trying to impress people with just smart functionalities. They look for reliability and overall performance.

5 – However, the great mass of people in all industrialized societies are the victims of a situation which almost excludes the idea of Good Engineering from the outset. Built-in obsolescence has become an economic necessity. Unless an article is made that it will go to pieces in a year or two and thus have to be replaced, you will not get a sufficient turnover. Engineering products nowadays must not be good by definition.

6 – But one must avoid taking a shallow moral view of this situation. This is not solely the result of human perversity. It has come upon us, unforeseen and unintended. Commercialism is quite as much its result as its cause. Nor can it be cured by purely moral efforts.

7 – Engineering products, however, should be made for use, or delight, or for both. There are still two types of engineering jobs. Of one type, an engineer can truly say, "I am doing a project which is worth doing. It would still be worth doing if nobody paid for it." The other kind is that in which engineers do work whose only purpose is the earning of money - work which need not be, ought not to be, or would not be, done by anyone unless it were paid.

8 - We must be thankful that there are still jobs in the first category. However, engineering work worth doing apart from its pay, enjoyable work, and good work is becoming the privilege of a fortunate minority.

9 - We should try to earn our living by doing well what would be worth doing even if we had not our living to earn. A considerable mortification of our avarice may be necessary.

10 - Beyond all this there is something subtler. We must take great care to preserve our habits of mind from infection by those which caused this situation. Such an infection has deeply corrupted the professional world. It was taken for granted that the business of engineering was to produce useful products to society. Now the customer user is kept as a hostage to the commercial world. This change is surely part of our attitude to all work - as "giving employment" becomes more important than making things people need or like, there is a tendency to regard every trade occupation as something that exists chiefly for the sake of those who practice it. Look at the defense industry - The smith does not work in order that the warriors may fight; the warriors exist and fight in order that the smith may be kept busy and employed.

12 - In industry highly creditable motives, as well as insanity, lie behind this change of attitude. A real advance in charity stopped us talking about "surplus population' ' and now use "unemployment." The danger is that this should lead us to forget that employment is not an end in itself. We want people to be employed only as a means to their being fed believing (whether rightly, who knows?) that it is better to feed them even for making bad things than for doing nothing.

13 - We have a duty to feed the hungry, but I doubt whether we have a duty to "appreciate" the ambitious - and there are plenty of them around ….

14 - Real honest work, so far as good engineering is concerned, now appears chiefly in low-level projects. The high-level productions may reveal a finer sensibility and profounder thought. But a sophisticated engineering project is not Good Engineering, whatever latest and smart technologies have gone into it.

15 - "Great Engineering” better also be “Good Engineering.” Otherwise we merely confirm the majority in their conviction that the world of Business, which does with such efficiency so much that never really needed doing, is the real, and the practical world; and that all this detailed and thoughtful engineering design process and considerations are essentially and simply technical, secondary, marginal activities to be controlled by technocrats and politicians.

16 - Finally, we must resolutely train ourselves that the survival of man on this earth . . . must be only by honorable and merciful means. . . Those who care for something else more than Engineering are the only people by whom Engineering is likely to be properly preserved and fulfill its functions. Thus we need to be anti-cultural / supra-cultural if we are to be effective as engineering professionals.