Durant wrote:
>
> Engineers can get things wrong even when they are working in the
> field where they are experts; so there are loads of formulas and
> legislations to adhere to, even if they create something new,
> even then they usually apply what an artist or a scientist
> sketched.
> We have to learn from history, we cannot delegate
> an elite to create our future, we all have to be there at the design
> and at the completion.
>
> Eva
>
> > We should "draft" the best system engineers in the country, give them the
> > system design objectives, and then let them design the system. It's the
> > last chance we have.
> >
> > Jay
> >
> >
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yes, that's precisely the point, isn't it: What *should be* the
objectives?
Surely engineers can help us clarify what the range of possible
objectives *can be*, given our current cultural and natural
resources (since part of what they can do is to give us
a best guess estimate of
exactly what the inventory of resources is).
And, as citizens, engineers can have valuable input
from their perspectives of what objectives are desirable
to pursue -- combining their personal views and desires
with their knowledge.
But the key thing, it seems to me, is that whatever
objectives are agreed upon be ones which (as Eva said in
a previous posting:) enhance opportunities for
*every* person actively to participate in the process
and thus both to accomplish something and have a sense of
accomplishment (contrast: "the society of spectacle" with
its lumpen consumertariat).
As Fredric Jameson writes in _Postmodernism, or, the
cultural logic of Late Capitalism_:
Under the circumstances, nothing is served by substituting
one inert institutional structure (bureaucratic planning)
for another inert institutional structure (namely,
the market itself). What is wanted is a great collective
project in which an active majority of the population
participates, as something belonging to it and constructed
by its own energies. The setting of social priorities --
also known in the socialist literature as planning --
would have to be a part of such a collective project. It
should be clear, however, that virtually by definition the
market cannot be a project at all. (p. 278,
Duke Univ. Press, 1991)
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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