Revisiting Responsible Technology for the Next Generation

Ethan Brue

Keywords: Responsible Technology

TL;DR: Legacy Review Paper of Responsible Technology

Abstract: It has now been a Biblical generation (four decades) since the publication of Responsible Technology, which provided the engineering community one of the first comprehensive texts on the modern activity of technology written from a Christian perspective. This text has influenced a generation of Christian engineering teachers and practitioners, and shaped Christian universities with engineering programs. The themes from this text have catalyzed an expanded dialogue across Christian institutions through conferences like CEC. The text is often known for its argument for the non-neutrality and value-ladeness of technology, and many engineering programs have found the chapter related to “norms” for engineering design particularly instructive. Numerous authors have challenged, expanded, and critiqued this normative framework in subsequent papers and publications. However, it could be argued that less than half of the text deals directly with engineering design, and the work is equally, if not more, insightful in addressing technology and its relationship to science, politics, economics, and citizenship. These insights challenge us to reconsider how Christian engineering education is done today. Beyond highlighting this often-overlooked content and its importance for contemporary Christians in the engineering profession, this paper will examine the historical context from which the text was written. Recognizing Responsible Technology as a response to both cultural conundrums and voices of the late 1970s and early 1980s, will demonstrate how the text remains both a product of its time and relevant for today’s engineers. Secondly, this paper will draw out the historical origin of the Christian-philosophical tradition that holds this collaborative work together giving us a richer understanding of Biblically-guided motivation and purpose for the initially proposed design norms. Finally, this assessment will argue that a careful re-reading of Responsible Technology with an eye to the spirits of our age, will reveal a number of key challenges that today’s engineers and scholars must re-articulate for a new generation to effectively carry out the task of responsible technology. The format of this paper will be written as an extended “legacy book review” from the vantage point looking back at technological history for forty years.

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Submission Number: 30