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Founder's Award Acceptance Remarks
C. D. Mote, Jr., President
Presented to the National Academy of Engineering
October 9, 2005
Thanks President Wulf, chairman, committee, Patsy, and colleagues who actually make things like this happen.
On the day of my induction into the Academy I sat out in the auditorium, inspired by the entire Academy enterprise, especially by its members, its responsibilities, its opportunities and indeed its mandate to leadership in the most advanced technological society in history. I haven't gotten over all that yet. And over the years since, the Academy has gotten stronger, more confident, and more active in fulfilling its responsibilities.
On my induction day, Gordon Moore received the Founder's Award recognizing his remarkable accomplishments. I recall thinking that it was indeed a fitting tribute for Moore but I would sooner be elected President of the United States than qualify for it myself. Actually, I feel the same way at this moment. This is truly humbling.
As is customary, the Founder's awardee offers some comments to the captured audience that has some obligation to listen if the remarks are short enough. That, I can promise. This may be an opportunity to offer you a non-traditional thought. As my friends lament, I seem to have a few of them. But one in particular has gnawed on me for decades so this may be an opportunity to loft it before you.
While in high school I drove a delivery truck for a fuel and ice company in my hometown. On my last day on the job, and after dropping off a 50 pound sack of ice cubes to a local bar, I told the proprietress that I was quitting my job and going to Berkeley to become an engineer. She responded, "Hey, that's great. Those driv'n jobs pay real good." At the time I thought she was a little out of touch. I was so young and didn't see the underlying message
But ever since I have been continually amazed by questions like "what do engineers do?" And "what is engineering?" In the 1970's I ran the undergraduate mechanical engineering program at Berkeley and got these questions all the time from anxious parents and bewildered students. I used to say, "Look at everything around you. If you didn't dig it out of the ground and didn't grow it, it's engineering." Now even growing it is probably engineering too.
It is not possible to exaggerate the enormous importance of engineering in our society. How could something so obvious, so omnipresent and so increasingly critical to the future of the world, let alone to each of us individually, remain so obscure to so many smart people—even the majority of people?
Compounding this confusion is that essentially every engineering professional society has been promoting the public understanding of engineering for decades. It is a plank in every professional society mission statement, in every annual agenda. These societies have put time and money into increasing public understanding of engineering through books, photographs, TV programs, our own "A Century of Innovation" coffee table book and other truly marvelous stuff. We deserve an A+ for effort to be certain.
But still, most of us agree, that the patently obvious remains remarkably obscure. Highly educated people, and many on our university campuses too, still ask, "What is engineering?" They simply don't get it.
So we need to face the reality that so far the "public understanding of engineering" theme has not sold well. If we were a business selling it, we would have gone bankrupt long ago. But still, we persist, possibly because it seems like the right thing to do, or possibly because nobody has a better idea or possibly because we don't really care.
One time my wife went shopping with a friend who bought scarves for her daughters. When asked if her daughters wore scares, her friend said no . . . but they should! Does that remind you of anything? Our public understanding theme seems to fit Einstein's definition of insanity fairly well. He noted that, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
So why hasn't it worked? Why does the public still not get it? That might be a good place to start. I have only a speculation for it is obviously a difficult question. But I will give it to you anyway.
I believe the statement itself, "Public Understanding of Engineering," projects the problem. The statement characterizes a divide between engineering and the public that needs to be bridged. Ironically, the statement is an engineering concept itself (as well as the Academy logo) that fosters the idea that "engineering" is represented by engineers on one side of the bridge and the "public" represented by everybody else is over on the other side. It says that we engineers on this side need to teach them over on the other side about the values of engineering. "Public Understanding of Engineering" is framed as a "them and us" concept. Further, it seems that both engineers and the public have accepted this "them and us" idea.
Our acceptance of it shows up in various ways like our engineering curricula at universities giving favor to technical/scientific topics and lesser emphasis on humanistic and social sciences. It shows up in Dilbert cartoon characters with their dress, wit and cynicism signaling them as engineers. It shows up in the "nerd characterization" that many engineers and the public alike use to describe the bright, eccentric, anti-social character that can do things but is a little strange. We don't mind it. Actually, we like it. The engineer as highly organized but lightly humanized is widely accepted. Just recently at a charity event in Washington, a CEO expressed surprise to me that an engineer can serve as a public university president. I mean, it's so public, I heard! And that was not the first time either.
Many of us lament that the engineering profession is not well represented within the Congress. But we are more likely to fault Congress for this deficiency, rather than ourselves. Congress is more them than us. I don't recall us ever deciding to get after this problem.
I have long suspected that it is this "them and us" positioning that has kept the public distant from engineering. The society's deepening technological base has further excavated this divide more than bridged it. If we engineers decided to be a part of the public, felt a part of the public and were seen as part of the public, the task of increasing the public understanding of engineering might be more successful. After all, in that case us would be them.
It seems that a necessary first step to finding a solution to this problem might be a mission plank titled "Engineering Understanding of the Public". The better we understand the public, the more likely we would come up with an efficacious method to increase its understanding of all sorts of things...including engineering. Our understanding of the public would lead us to new problems and new values for engineering, possibly even new commitments for the Academy.
On Earth Day 1970 Pogo remarked, "We have met the enemy and he is us." I wonder if Pogo was an engineer. But alas, we are who we are, and will shape what we will become. It's the latter thought that offers me hope. Thank you for your patient attention and the truly esteemed honor conferred by the 2005 Founder's Award.
CDM, JR.
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