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Published online 22 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.616
Column: Muse
Engineering for the better?
Many of the grand technological challenges of the century ahead are inseparable from their sociopolitical context, says Philip Ball.
At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston last week, a team of people selected by the US National Academy of Engineering identified 14 ‘grand challenges for engineering’ that would help make the world “a more sustainable, safe, healthy, and joyous — in other words, better — place".
It’s heartening to see engineers, long dismissed as the lumpen, dirty-handed serfs labouring at the foot of science’s lofty citadel, asserting in this manner their subject’s centrality to our future course.
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