Communication of Engineers with The General Public

This report deals with the communication issues that have or currently occurred between engineers and the public. Good communication between the engineer and the public is essential in the future to help promote and develop the world. Engineers need to particularly realise how important this communication path is as their actions have a inevitable impact on society. Lack of education and poor skills are some issues to name a few that on behalf of the engineer have led to communication issues throughout the years but with a few changes it can be seen how easily these issues may be prevented or even resolved.

This report aims to examine the relationship between engineers and how they communicate with the public, while also investigate engineers' professional responsibilities given that relationship. This is a particularly important aspect for engineers to consider as their actions have an unavoidable impact on society every day. Even though engineering does have such a huge impact on society, for several reasons the public do not consider it such a huge part of an engineer’s world. They often question the professionalism of engineers such as their ethics because they view them as topics outside the usual realm of engineering and design. Truthfully in the real world, professional responsibility is an essential part of the engineering process. This report will explore some of the issues the engineer faces in their day to day relationship with the public and investigate ways these challenges may be resolved.

Social Impacts of Engineering on Society

Engineering has had a major impact on many different aspects of society and one of the main effects would be the social impact. Obviously there has been many positive impacts on society but there has also been a significant amount with negative effects too. It has been questioned if the societal consequences would have been different if engineers had been involved in the study of their complex role in society. For instance, could we have thought that the introduction of the automobile could lead to all the pollution in today’s world or that a TV in every household could have had such an influence on the increase in functional illiteracy in the 21st century. On introduction to society the engineer was obviously only concentrating on the positives but as time progressed the negatives became prominent. The list of impacts of technology is long and mounting and has contributed to society's uncertainty about technology. For this reason, society blames engineers for these ambivalences as they feel they have not been sufficiently informed which has led to a lack of trust in the engineers. But we know it would be wrong to blame the engineer as it is due to the majority of societies lack interest in understanding the technological process with its constraints and possibilities. This has made communicating with society difficult for engineers as the lack of trust provides a barrier.

Education of Engineers

Another aspect that must be examined when investigating the engineer’s communication with society is their education. Most people who study engineering around the world have much higher maths skills than verbal and social ones. This provides an initial barrier for the engineer when communicating with the public as they are viewed as narrow minded mathematical people with no interest with the rest of society. This stigma towards engineers has always been there and will certainly progress through to the future but the engineer needs to come up with ways of getting past this issue.

In conclusion, it is clear that open and clear communication between engineers and the public is vital for the future. Communication between both parties is acceptable at times but needs to be simplified greatly for most situations to inform the majority of society. The use of engineering jargon and other “Hi-Tec” terms make sense to the common engineer but mean nothing to rest of society. This is where communication issues occur in the information chain between these parties. Hence better communication training in the engineering world is the simplest and most viable solution to this major problem in today’s society.

“The rationale for teaching ethics to engineers and computer scientists seems fairly obvious. Their work (developing, designing and implementing technologies) has an enormous impact on the world. ” Recent developments in engineering education has led to vast improvements in the basic sciences of engineering such as physics maths and chemistry. These improvements although very important and relevant may have outshone some of the other different but equally relevant issues in the practice of engineering which may include:

• Communication
• Professional Ethics
• Environmental Responsibilities
• Safety and Welfare of the Public and of Clients

The above topics relate not to the knowledge of the engineer themselves but to their interactions with the public around them. These topics should become a lot more significant in the education of future engineers which would greatly improve how they can portray their ideas and designs to the public. This improvement in communication between engineers and society would inform society much better of the other issues that engineers are responsible for such as environmental responsibilities and their own safety and welfare.