The Engineering Project: Its Nature, Ethics, and Promise

NINE Balance

The colonization and contextualization intrinsic to the engineering project will come into balance as the modern engineering enterprise shifts toward the focal engineering venture. The focal engineer contributes a new perspective from within contemporary technological culture, a perspective that will challenge our apparently accelerating plummet into a hypertechnological postmodern future. The hypermodern spirit seems to be on the verge of overwhelming us today, and our worldview seems to be uncritical of, indeed totally complicit in, that process. What we need is a balance of that spirit with a more critical worldview. What we witness, however, is a proliferation of all kinds of technologies, Wlling every corner of contemporary life. Some of it is of course useful, but it is hard to see how much of it contributes to advancing the quality of human life. The result, in Borgmann’s palpably poetic expression, is “a suffocating overlay of disposable reality.”1 To counter this descent, Borgmann recommends focal things and focal practices, and along Borgmannian lines, I am promoting a focally engineered reality. The focal engineering I am proposing is a speciWc kind of focal practice, the process of engineering itself as a focal practice, resulting in products that will either be candidates for focal things or will contribute to other focal practices. Such products can promote a commanding reality that balances the proliferation of disposable reality. In this book I have been in pursuit of several states of balance that encompass the project of engineering. The balance of the old with the new, emotion with order, the general with the concrete, the one with the many, are all involved. But to be more speciWc, in this Wnal chapter, I look at the nine balance 1. Borgmann, “Moral SigniWcance of Material Culture,” 299. balanced engineer as the focal engineer, the balanced engineering project as the focal engineering venture, and the balanced engineered product as the focally engineered product. Focal engineering will bring the colonizing forces of modern engineering and the contextualizing forces of premodern engineering into a state of equilibrium around the focally engineered product. These activities, within the consideration of the focally engineered product, become explicit concerns. Context is no longer side-stepped but becomes a crucial element in the focal engineering conversation of the lifeworld. Within that conversation, the material ethics assessment evolves, and harmony becomes the measure against which any proposed focal product stands. If the product does not yield a harmonious accord among end-user, product itself, and the lifeworld, then it cannot be called a focal product. If it does, then nothing stands in its way. If the assessment happened to reveal a harmonious accord after a product is designed and produced, then we are generally pleased. But the more thoroughly focal product is the one designed from the ground up to exhibit that harmonious accord. Balance refers not only to product but also to the process of focal engineering, speciWcally the local/global balance that the focal engineering venture strives for. To be focal is primarily to be local. But we are deluged these days with claims of a globalized world and with positions favoring the essentiality of the globalization process. It connects us all, so the stories go, on a very high level, and it may be the only salvation for the future of the human species. Upon closer observation of those connections, however, they appear to be primarily economic in nature. But, in point of fact, I fail to engage, in a full sense of the word and for the most part, with anyone I cannot meet face to face. There are exceptions . Feenberg mentions a medical support bulletin board devoted to people with Lou Gehrig’s disease. The people on the board connect globally with others and share deep feelings about dependency, dying, and sexuality . These online networks certainly exhibit focality. Though the frankness in some of these discussions “may owe something to the anonymity of the online environment,” generally speaking, the quality of these discussions and involvements are buttressed by face-to-face meetings at picnics and other gatherings.2 And though the focal is generally focused in the local, the global nature of human connection will no doubt continue to 192 part iii: the focal engineering venture 2. Feenberg, Questioning Technology, 192. thrive and will probably remain essential to most future endeavors. What the focal engineering venture really seeks is not local over global involvements but rather a...