Barcelona TV showed a video in which David E. Goldberg is interviewed about the problems of the current engineering systems. Goldberg emphasizes that the role of engineers has moved from category enhancers to category creators in the current days. In addition, he also highlights the importance of teaching the human dimension of the history of technology that we use and of presenting the heroes that created the objects that seem to have become indispensable in our life. In summary, engineering schools, and specifically we as teachers, need to spread the joy of engineering and never forget that engineers are people that can build applications that may improve people’s life.
All these ideas are complemented in a discussion in which Ramon Ollé and Josep Amat participate. The discussion resulted in many valuable arguments that may explain the decreasing number of students that go to the engineering school and in some ideas of how this tendency could be reversed. Arguments in favor of both introducing more business concepts and introducing more technical concepts appear in the discussion.
To wrap up: a video really worth watching which I think that makes several key points about what engineering is and what the engineering of the future should be. The only drawback: the language. Except for Goldberg’s interview, the remaining part of the video is only in Catalan.
