Why Earth Systems Engineering Management?

Michael E. Gorman Division of Technology, Culture & Communication University of Virginia [email protected]

repo-nt.tcc.virginia.edu

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Both groups conduct tug of war against truck Michael E. Gorman 2

Groups return home

together.

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Muzafer Sherif: Turkey and WWI As an adolescent with a great deal of curiosity about things, I saw the effects of war: families who lost their men and dislocations of human beings. I saw hunger. I saw people killed on my side of national affiliation; I saw people killed on the other side….It influenced me deeply to see each group with a selfless degree of comradeship within its bounds and a correspondingly intense degree of animosity, destructiveness, and vindictiveness toward the detested outgroup—their behavior characterized by compassion and prejudice, heights of self-sacrifice, and bestial destructiveness. At that early age, I decided to devote my life to studying and understanding the causes of these things. Michael E. Gorman 4

Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)

• 22 boys, all 11 years old from Oklahoma • Attend summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park • Same level of conditions: •IQ & Grades •Fitness •Eyesight •Ethnicity Michael E. Gorman •Behavior •Accent •Zero Past History •Religion 5

Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)

• Week 1: Group formation – Rattlers and Eagles bonded separately • Week 2: Group contrasts – Competitive Activities: baseball, tug of war – Fighting, sabotage, hatred Michael E. Gorman 6

Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)

• Week 3: Bring groups together: – Use of ambassadors to begin talks: failed – Integration around pleasant experienced: failed – Common enemy: worked temporarily – Series of super-ordinate goals: successful Michael E. Gorman 7

Members of both groups climb tree to see if tank is empty.

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Both groups take turns trying to clear faucet.

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Both groups push truck to try to start it.

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What are some superordinate problems/ opportunities that face our planet today?

Technological development as

(Amartya Sen)

freedom

“Economic unfreedom, in the form of extreme poverty, can make a person a helpless prey in the violation of other kinds of freedom” • Technological progress should involve enhancing human capabilities, quality of life • Technologies for Tier 4 markets--increased affluence, education, limits population growth, environmental damage Michael E. Gorman 12

Why doesn’t our global environment represent a superordinate goal?

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Barriers to Multidisciplinary Communications: Blind Men and the Elephant • Side of the elephant seems like a wall • Trunk like a snake • Leg like a tree trunk • Ear like a fan • Tail like a rope Exacerbated by ideological assumptions & expertise stovepipes Michael E. Gorman 14

Possible Relationships Between Technology & Society Michael E. Gorman 15

Ehrlich

I(impact)=P(population)*A(affluence)* T(technology) Michael E. Gorman 16

Means is the end

Technological or moral imperatives that do not honor the views of multiple stakeholders will reduce human freedom

Problem of Incommensurability (Kuhn)

• Converging technologies (nano, bio, info, cogno) cross disciplines, but • Expert judgement is typically domain specific, and sharing of expertise is not always valued.

• How can communication and collaboration occur across these different cultures of expertise, and incorporate ethics as well?

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Trading Zones as a solution to incommensurability

• • Galison-- radar, particle accelerators--scientists and engineers develop a creole to communicate • Baird--MRI--incomplete creole between physics and surgery led to an artifact being treated as a lesion – Solved by interactional expert who combined physics and medecine • Lambert--trades made by JPL engineers and scientists in designing the Mars rover

Nanocajun

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Other Case-Studies of Trading Zones and Moral Imagination

• Unilever develops a triple bottom line (Myles Standish) (http://it.darden.virginia.edu/unilever/) • Solar Electric Light Fund (Scott Sonenshein) • Monsanto and IP, Monsanto in Europe (Michael Hertz) • No nerds, no birds: Boeing engineers strike (Missy Cummings) (http://www.darden.edu/collection/index.htm) Michael E. Gorman 20

Three Network States

State 1: One group

(or elite: oligarchy)

• has the overall problem representation • black boxes others into specific roles whose purpose those persons do not need to understand.

• Communication downward (orders) & upward (evidence of obedience)

--no trade

– Rigid hierarchy • Examples:

Seeing Like a State

(Scott) McDonough principles if they were implemented in a top down fashion Michael E. Gorman 21

Three Network States

State 2:

Relatively

equal trading zone • Actors typically trade across a

boundary object,

“plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity” across the zone (Leigh Star).

• Boundaries of what constitutes an allowable “trade” are negotiated.

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Three Network States--2 (cont.)

• Unsuccessful networks include ones in which the boundaries are violated Example: Boeing engineers who felt they were in an unequal trading zone, regarding executive pay – Airplanes as boundary objects: engineers as designers or assemblers?

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Three Network States

State 3: Shared mental model • All participants need to share a common representation of the system and its goals.

• Dynamic representations, so sharing needs to be continuous .

• Examples: – Boeing 777 – ARPANET (Hughes, Waldrop) Michael E. Gorman 25

A Communications Continuum

State 1 State 2 State 3 One discour se dominates Creole Shared mental models Michael E. Gorman 26

Three levels of shared expertise in multidisciplinary trading zones (adapted from Collins and Evans) • None--participants speak different languages • Interactional--ability to interact using a limited creole • Contributing--each discipline contributes to a new breakthrough, developing new terms As with the states, these levels of expertise are on a continuum Michael E. Gorman 27

Trading Zones, Shared Expertise and Communication

Trading Zone Shared Expertise Communication Elite control (State 1) None Orders, evidence of obedience Boundary object (State 2) Interactional Pidgin to Creole Shared mental model (State 3) Contributing New terms, shared meanings Michael E. Gorman 28

Four Types of Expertise

1. Information (what) 2. Skills (How) 3. Judgment (When) 4. Wisdom (Why) Sharing requires deeper levels of communication and interaction as one goes down this knowledge hierarchy.

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Interactional expertise & information

• Information-sharing requires common definitions--the way AIDs activists taught themselves terms, and the MEMs exchange had to standardize meanings Michael E. Gorman 30

Interactional Expertise & Skill

• Skills within a domain require the interactional expert to apprentice--Collins and laser • The interactional expert must also possess the anthropologist’s skill of moving among cultures, of being a linguistic and cultural translator Michael E. Gorman 31

Interactional Expertise and Judgment

• Judgment in a domain implies contributing expertise--typically normal science • But the interactional expert can see opportunities in the gaps between disciplines--possibility of a new paradigm Michael E. Gorman 32

Wisdom and expertise

The interactional expert begins on the margins of each discipline but in the center of the zone--a good position from which to encourage all participants to reflect on why a potential discovery or invention is (or is not) worth pursuing, and to exercise moral imagination with respect to other stakeholders.

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Moral Imagination

• We learn practical ethics from stories, which become mental models for virtuous behavior – Crichton’s

Prey?

• These mental models can become unquestioned assumptions--’realities’ • Moral imagination consists of seeing that these realities are views, and that alternative views, e.g., those of other stakeholders, are worth listening to Michael E. Gorman 34

A Failure of Moral Imagination & Trading Zones: IP example • GMOs: A technology that could lead to the next green revolution, but companies like Monsanto want to protect their R&D investment, including preventing re-use of seeds – Farmer contracts that result in field inspections – A technology developed by USDA and Delta & Pine that ‘turns off’ trait--labeled ‘terminator’ by an NGO that now calls for a moratorium on nanotechnology Michael E. Gorman 35

McDonough’s Principles as Examples of Superordinate Goals (derived from Earlier Work in Industrial Ecology and other domains) • Waste = Food – biological/organic nutrient cycle – technological nutrient cycle – Cradle to cradle design • Work from Current Solar Income • Respect Diversity • Ecological justice – more local employment Michael E. Gorman 36

Successful example of moral imagination

• Design of an environmental furniture fabric • An architect, a fashion designer, an environmental chemist and a textile manufacturer adopt a shared mental model- waste equals food--and commitment to continuous improvement Michael E. Gorman 37

The potential relationships among social scientists, ethicists, engineers and scientists working together can be characterized by the three states.

Example: Nanotechnology Michael E. Gorman 38

Nanotechnology materials &

nanometer range

systems

• Have at least one dimension in the 1-100 • Are designed via control over physical chemical processes at the molecular level • Can be combined to form larger structures Mike Roco Senior adviser for nanotechnology National Science Foundation Michael E. Gorman 39

State 1 Elite control

Scientists and engineers create a technology that forces others to adapt OR Ethicists and social scientists dictate the future of the technology to the researchers- perhaps imposing a moratorium Michael E. Gorman 40

State 2 Trading Zone

Social scientists, ethicists, engineers and scientists develop a creole that allows them to interact across a trading zone--developing mechanisms to jointly regulate the growth of this new technology--perhaps through the kinds of advisory boards used regularly in medical ethics Michael E. Gorman 42

State 3 Shared Mental Model

Social scientists, ethicists, scientists and engineers work together to create new breakthroughs that will benefit society Michael E. Gorman 43

Societal dimensions and reflective practice Goal: to explore how scientists, engineers, ethicists and social scientists could collaborate on nanotechnology research • Student entering the UVA MRSEC has two advisors: a materials scientist (Groves) and a social scientist (Gorman). Together, we explore how depositing nanodots of one metal oxide on another can be directed toward ‘world ills’ – Medical or environmental sensors • • All three of us keep diaries of our cognitive processes and send them to a cognitive scientist (Shrager) ( http://aracyc.stanford.edu/~jshrager/personal/diary/diary.h

tml )

Supported by NSF ( SES-0210452)

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Metaphor: Mountains and Bridges

Bridges: 1. Growing nanodots in spots indicated by a focused ion beam 2. See if the difference in surface charge between substrate and dots is sufficient to bind target substances Mountain: Identify target substances related to a global problem Michael E. Gorman 47

Metaphor: Mountains and Bridges

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Mountain-bridge metaphor as a step towards the kind of shared mental model necessary to fully integrate societal dimensions into cutting-edge research. Requires moral imagination regarding the mountain. Suggests goals for educating a new generation of students and professonals regarding converging technologies

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3 States, Emerging Technologies and the Environment State 1: Control of the environment or of people • Engineers and scientists developing technologies while leaving others to deal with ‘end-of-pipe’ environmental consequences • Environmental technologies mandated from the’top’ by those who do not understand local circumstances • Ethicists mandating a moratorium on new technologies without consulting researchers Michael E. Gorman 54

State 1 Extractive Industry: Quincy Mine Shaft, UP

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State 2: Balancing interests

• The potential environmental impacts of new technologies need to be monitored and negotiated with agencies like EPA, with environmental scientists and with multiple stakeholders- – fisherfolk, students from the developing world • Everglades as example – SFWMD : reservoir – Army Corps: flood and reclamation – Park Service; wildlife refuge Michael E. Gorman 56

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Michael E. Gorman QuickTime™ and a Photo - JPEG decompressor are needed to see this picture.

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The impacts of breakthrough technologies on complex systems are not entirely predictable, therefore

State 3: Adaptive management of a coupled natural-human-technological system The Earth Systems Engineer has “to be in continued dialog with the creation that we are responsible for, and part of”—creating “new and more self-aware cognitive systems”.

Brad Allenby

Yellowstone to Yukon

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Requirements for such a dialogue

• Continuous and fine-grained monitoring of the system • Reversible technologies – Should be designed to permit alteration of technological systems as we get more data on their impacts – And hear from stakeholders • Adaptive management of resilient systems – What aspects of system most need to be resilient? • True interdisciplinary collaboration – Shared mental models at the level of systems goals – Axiological (values) component must be considered Michael E. Gorman 62

A Course on ESEM

• • • • Project-based Guest speakers provide multi-disciplinary background Environmental science and engineering students working in teams – – – On environmental systems Everglades Yellowstone to Yukon Phoenix, AZ Michael E. Gorman 63

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References Baird, D. and M. Cohen (1999). "Why trade?" Perspectives on science

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(2): 231-254.

Collins, H. M. and R. Evans (2002). "The third wave of science studies." Social Studies of Science

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(2): 235-296.

Galison, P. (1997). Image & logic: A material culture of microphysics. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Gorman, M. E. and M. M. Mehalik (2002). "Turning Good into Gold: A Comparative Study of Two Environmental Invention Networks." Science, Technology & Human Values

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(4): 499-529.

Gorman, M. E., M. M. Mehalik, and P. Werhane. (2000). Ethical and environmental challenges to engineering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.

Hughes, T. P. (1998). Rescuing prometheus. New York, Pantheon books.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Sherif, M. (1967).

Social Interaction

. Chicago: Aldine.

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