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Sep 6, 2022

Technological Systems and Nationalism

Last week we talked about technological systems in class.  In recent weeks there have been articles showing how difficult it is to compete against or replicate fully developed technological systems.  Both examples involve China.  The New York Times reported that four years ago the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping,  launched a major initiative to make China… 

Aug 21, 2022

Engineering and Social Justice–The Empathetic Engineer

Can you believe this is on the webpage of a transportation engineering firm?  I see many Franklins come into our program with the goal of social justice and making people’s lives better.  That gives me great hope for the future.  However I worry that the engineering opportunities out there today are not tuned to those… 

Aug 20, 2022

The Control of Nature? France and Nuclear Power

As a historian of technology, I see one of the major themes of history as how humans have attempted to develop technologies that outmode or limit our dependence on nature.  We believe we can build systems that are more reliable.  One example of this is nuclear energy.  (We will leave out the mining of uranium… 

Aug 18, 2022

How Engineers Communicate–Learning from the French

You will find out over time that I am a person with some strong passions, some of them strange (steel-cut oats), some of them (perhaps) less so (bicycling).  One of my passions is France and the French language.  While English has become the dominant language globally, if we know another language, we can experience non-English-speaking…