human and societal Behaviours determines technology and engineering

 

Behaviour determines technology and engineering

Prof D K Subramanian

we are trying to see whether technology stands alone or is interconnected. If interconnected, does it include human and societal behaviours and impacts on society also. This second aspect is normally ignored. We are trying to look into this aspect here.

Technology is no more a single or simple device. It has many components and many effects. It has become complex. Example is computer on chip. It is becoming a system with lots of complexities. Also Technology development and use has many dimensions like technology generation, technology acceptance, technology use, technology diffusion and maturity, technology changes/ dynamics and transformations etc. We see only technologies. We need to see other aspects, their interconnections and impacts. People decide on acceptance of technologies, they select technologies ; they move from one to another like from analog to digital to web to AI. People try to use it effectively and change usages and modifications. So success of technology depends on many factors like ease of use ,cost effectiveness, ruggedness and reliability. Users and deciders of technology are people. That means human behaviours determines the absorption of technology. We need a comprehensive study of the whole, not technology alone. We need a multi dimensional holistic human centric approach not just on technology alone.

This opens up a lot of new areas of research.we can look for not gaps but huge holes that exist and this us gives phenomenal opportunities for research. We need to open our eyes and mind to these grey holes and go for great and meaningful research.

Next let us compare technology and engineering. This is similar to agriculture that produces raw materials and food technology that uses raw materials and produce food. Engineering selects a number of relevant technologies ,combines them ,integrates and architects them with connectors ,controllers ,communication units and computers so that a usable, rugged, scalable, maintainable ,efficient, fault tolerant ,reliable and cost effective system is available and ready for use. Stand alone technology can't be put to use in complex cases of use. Such engineering is also multidimensional with architecture, design, analysis, synthesis,  optimisation , failure diagnostics, operational strategies and mechanisms. It adds several degrees of complexities. Some technologies like system on chip need engineering actions. There are a large number of parameters and ecological, sociological, economic and behavioural considerations needed in engineering activities. Scope for research is enormous. Remember both technology and engineering are growing – exploding and changing very fast in the past decades. We are today in a data and digital driven world.

We have built engineering institutions and hence the practices based on many disciplines like civil, mechanical, electrical etc. We extended this further to new areas like electronics, communications and computers. To day we are talking about programs on AI converting AI into a new discipline. But in reality, technology is agnostic of engineering disciplines. Technology is existing from the olden days. many will say engineering is also old. Agreed. We have been using tools for wood cutting, for attacks and killing animals for food ,ploughs for agriculture, stove for cooking etc. Same is true of applications which happens in household activities, agriculture, health, transportation ,industries , etc. But in teaching,we have a strong attachment to our disciplines. We ignored utilitarian technologies. We don't look at other disciplines and practical applications. I have been arguing for decades on allowing students from mechanical branch to register for say, electrical courses. This is being resisted or not accepted by many institutions. The situation became chaotic when electives were introduced in curriculum in the colleges. The registration for management courses was exploding because of the restrictions imposed on electives. We were looking to create new courses. Another comedy was many departments taught electronics separately. When we see technology and engineering are interdisciplinary, it becomes necessary to break this barrier. Interdisciplinary, holistic approaches to teaching ,research is needed. Particularly when all engineering technologies and systems have become cyber physical systems. Land, inventor of Poloroid camera says that best inventions take place at the intersections of disciplines like engineering and humanities. We do see many PhD thesis following this approach but within engineering disciplines, mostly with computers. Why not with biology , with social sciences? Remember what Newton said “ I am standing on the shoulders of others and get all advantages of their knowledge”. Can we also look at Upanishads and many treatise dealing with exploration and cognisence. The urgency is more now to act on a restructuring of institutions to remove the barriers.

We need close to 50 % or more of multi disciplinary courses in the curriculum and at least one interdisciplinary integration project. Interdisciplinary does not mean multiple engineering disciplines but also includes humanities ,behaviour sciences.

Let us have a quick look at education. Initially ,when education at a higher level started , every aspect of learning came under philosophy. May be the influence of religion. While Indian education system of early days integrated all aspects like mathematics, logic, reasoning, geometry, metallurgy, heat, biology and ecology and cosmic science into practice. Both diversity and integration were quite strong. The bias was both for spiritual and practical usage.It was Pythogorus who divided the gamut of knowledge into sciences and humanities. While west looked at language as part of humanities ,India , particularly , Panini looked at it from mathematical and correctness perspectives. He built a grammar called Ashtadhyayi to provide precise rules and procedures. Later the formalisation of education in the west led to the establishment of universities dealing with all areas. That is why they are called universities. Later segmentation started. We got institutes of technology, universities of science/medicine etc. We set up departments. They became islands. The need of the hour is to break the barriers. It is not done by regulatory actions ; though the government has come up with a policy for education, the devil is in implementation. How do we make an effective implementation? By breaking barriers, and mind sets through participation, training, thought leadership, mindset changes and cross fertilisation amongst disciplines to dismantle the existing borders. . Interdisciplinary activities exist but they consider themselves different and become a separate stand alone department. They should integrate but not doing it. They don't help in integration and diversification.

The problem is deep. It starts at admission level by fixing qualifications and sticking to the letter. Supreme court had the good sense to tell Allahabad high court not to over rule expert views. Actually, it is a trivial point. The court says MEd is not equal to MSc(ed) . see the strong myopic views. We need to change this. We need to remove the barriers, relax a number of regulations and change mindsets.

We need to start our approach from interdisciplinary perspective , not a narrow view of a discipline. We have a lot of applications of technology . Hospitals use expensive devices and systems . Most of us are aware of this . But Operation and maintenance is difficult leave alone manufacturing and improving technologies for these devices. Many industries like steel use many machines ,lots of measurements and heavy automation. Do we touch upon them? Health can be improved by many times with good , inexpensive devices and technology is existing. Agriculture is crying for attention. So we need to look at different aspects of use and build a holistic education system. We need to look at core components -materials, energy, sensors and measurements, control and automation, basics of design, analysis , problem solving techniques, basic engineering principles and manufacturing principles, visualization, problem generation and exploration ,social behaviour science, technology diffusion, social ecological and life style impacts of technology, smart networks of water, gas, power and transportation, systems science and engineering, engineering practices ,integration methodologies, cyber physical systems , technology trends and futures, engineering philosophy etc before we talk of disciplines. So we see a sizable chunk of these appearing before disciplines. This will change our over all views. This will bring in a first step for holistic approach. This needs discussions and consensus. Many believe there is interdisciplinary approach in our education. But that is minimal and peripheral. We need to know why there is urgency for such an approach. That is due to the explosive developments of new digital technologies and the possibility of many new applications of ML and AI - machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.This heralded the arrival of autonomous driverless cars and a brand new look cyber physical systems. They will dominate in the years to come.

Let us look at the impact of technology on our nature and resources. Bacon said exploit nature. Engineers did that. It led to rapid depletion of resources , degradation of nature, destruction of forests and a very large levels of air and water pollution plus climate change. A river called Lakshmana theertha has a lot of sewerage flowing in it particularly during summer months. This leads to cholera in many places on the river. Air pollution story of Delhi draws supreme court's attention. London suffered for several decades due to fog or smog. This was due to coal burning in houses for heating. This reduced visibility. Sherlock Holmes suffered from this. When electrical and gas heating were introduced ,this problem disappeared. So remember Isa upanishad which says all nature and its resources belong to god. Use them with sacrifices in mind and action. Gandhi said " nature can meet our needs but not greeds." So it is clear engineering and society are strongly related. Engineering impacts our living.

Some persons understood this. Several movements started. This led to movements like clean Ganga, water and energy conservation, save forests and ecology etc. We saw the importance of efficient use of firewood in the development of wood burning stoves. This will reduce fire wood consumption by more then half and reduce destruction of trees. One example was ASTRA ole with efficiencies of 30%. The study of choolas was mocked at by several faculty in engineering colleges . But the governments accepted this and implemented in a mission mode.Similarly when we started studying rural technologies and biogas plants and solar energy devices in the seventees and eightees, we got a lot of backlash and mockery from a very large number of faculty including from IITs and IISc. Some suggested it will take us backwards in development. Fortunately people accepted it but still faculty did not work on it or include it in teaching. Only renewable energy like solar and wind energies got an acceptable status now. When Karnataka Government proposed Bedthi Hydro electric project, I did a calculation to show that energy balance is better with run of the river plant and not a storage reservoir. So no big dams were needed. Cost came down. Ecology got preserved. But it was not accepted. Only political pressure stopped it.So the aspects of preserving nature and resources conservation is the responsibility of engineers.

This leads to the question of development versus environment. We need a golden mean. We need o know the difference between environment and ecology. There is unfortunately some confusion. People give priority to air pollution and not destruction of forests. We also need to know the difference between a tree and a forest. A forest is not a collection of trees. It is a highly complex eco system with many insects, birds, animals coexisting with large number of plants and fungi. It stores water. A single tree can not do that. Urban concrete and polluted eco system have trees have without a variety of birds . So the question is - Can we stop every activity saying it hampers ecology. Examples are cutting trees to build roads. Sure the impact is marginal. But look on the other side. do we need such wide roads. Can we concentrate on public transport and rail network for transportation of people and goods. Why millions of cars clogging roads and producing enormous amount of carbon dioxide. Policy directions are poor. That is the crux of the two sides of the problem. We many times bark on the wrong tree. For example, cutting trees for roads will not harm ecology. We need maturity, we need to establish standards ,practices, and create metrics for ecology and society. The first step is to create awareness. It is happening sporadically and not systematically or scientifically.

Past decade plus has seen phenomenal new innovations . Three aspects stand apart. One 3D printing which is changing manufacturing, skin grafting and dental surgery, construction of buildings and may be cooking food. It is also going autonomous way. The second is the major area called digital innovations . It has brought out very powerful computing systems with enormous capabilities, heralded IOT and sensors which can connect billions of devices and generate peta bytes of data and consequently big data and analytics. 5G will bring thousand fold capacities in mobile communications with hundreds of operators and great bandwidth . Latency will not be an issue. It provides us giga hertz frequencies compared to mega hertz in 4G. So every one and every thing will be connected- hopefully no rural/urban divide.this will bring resources at our finger tips and on demand. Health, agriculture , retail , home will all be data and digital driven. Are we ready to accept this change. We need to know how it changes our living ,more isolated, less friendly and more dependent and addicted? Most physical systems like water / power/ transportation, government, education, cars , manufacturing and control of pandemics will have a digital twin leading to cyber physical systems. The third is the development of AI. We are moving into the domain of cognitive computing. Already machine learning is seeing a lot of use in our systems and life. All these are impacting on our personal, social and professional lifes. There are no intermediaries. Humans are not only connected to each other, but also with devices and activities . Robots will work with people to get cobots. So behaviour and engineering are interconnected closely. Is the education system at all levels prepared for this?

The next question is what should be the role of regulators. We have many of them. It gives a good excuse to many not to do anything. I do not understand why regulators do an audit function. UGC is better, governed by eminent academics and not involved by audit. But AICTE is the biggest culprit in this fixing norms for land , buildings, books and computers- very unfortunate. This led to only the rich to start engineering colleges. Genuine educationists running other types of institutions could not start a college. Many are going bankrupt. AICTE could not protect faculty tenureship. This increased fees and affordability. We need to have a brainy regulation – regulation on academics and quality , not on money, norms on land/ buildings/ equipment etc. It should be outside beaureaucratic control . We dont need multiple control with universities, directorates of educations, education departments jumping into the fray and creating chaos. We avoid duplication. We will get good freedom for academics; this will also reduce costs by dismantling a lot of administration.

So we are reasonably clear that nature and society are the backbones of engineering. There is a strong interrelationships between all these three. But the dominant aspect is not engineering but nature. When I say society, it is not people alone. Let us now pose the question what are we as humans doing - eating and sleeping. No, we do lot more. We perform many activities from cooking, cleaning ,agriculture, shopping, professional ,teaching and many more. These are done every day and several times in a day. We need to take many decisions as a normal person in the house ,as a person in the society, as a person in a job. These decisions vary from trivial ones like what to wear or eat? to very complex ones like how to bring up children, how to improve working in the office. We need to solve these. So essentially all of us are problem solvers. Mr F C Kohli ,who started and headed TCS used to say we are in the business of problem solving. Our focus was to solve problems. Should we not focus on solving problems correctly, justly ,courageously, inclusively and beneficially looking at all options and alternatives and including social, political, economic and ecological constraints. there is no straight jacketed mathematical approach to solve a real life large problem with many constraints. Heuristic and common sense approaches are needed. In addition Should we not look for new problems, gaps and grey holes .That is what innovation is all about. Our education need to change its focus. It should first look at life, its purpose, living ,goodness, values , correct problem solving before moving on to the methods of solving problems.

Dump the algorithmic approach

our thinking is straight jacketed one directional and conditioned. it is almost a bandwagon approach. most of us - there are millions of teachers - follow the routine well trodden paths. even industry managers also follow the well trodden paths. that is why as Clayton Christenson  says disruptive innovation has destroyed many industries . the reasons are (1) not being aware of the developments happening now and in future. the opportunities for knowing this is high as we have a lot of resources to browse through and did not do it; (2) design and lateral thinking and looking for alternative problems and solutions. now a days every one should move away from problem solving to problem generation and look at grey holes.

Our focus in engineering has over time become more mathematics and computational algorithm centric. All aspects of engineering and technology can not be resolved through mathematical approaches or algorithms alone. As Atul Gawande says " ineptitude has become more important than problem solving." He also talks about check lists playing a major role in the success of complex activities.  Machine learning has found ways of getting solutions through experiential approaches.  Prof. Roger Penrose who got the Nobel for physics says that every problem can not be converted to a pure digital solution. Many are not amenable for digitalization. Mind can not be replaced through AI completely. Our focus need to shift from problem solving to problem creation. We need to interpret results. some problems have many solutions and we need a common sense approach to solutions . engineering practices create many situations where the engineers have to take decisions and he/she does it using mostly based on experience, practicality, and common sense. we need a balanced view in teaching. We need impact studies, acceptance criteria ,life style changes. We need to look at a new discipline - call it engineering philosophy.