New Zealand Engineering 1997 February

Editorial

Of change and comfort

Peter King is managing editor of New Zealand Engineering magazine

In the late 1970s when Alvin Tofler published Future Shock the idea that change would increase in pace to a point that people would no longer be able to cope with it was an intriguing idea for discussing in kitchens at parties.Today as engineers, with the half-life of their academically furnished skillset diminishing at an ever increasing rate, know only too well, the pace of change has stopped being a matter of mere speculation.

What if in five years' time biotechnology and genetic manipulation had become the social and economic phenomenon computers were in 1981? What if the boundaries between medicines and foods started to blur? What if genetic outcomes really could be engineered with rigorous precision?

Now look at IPENZ. How many software engineers does it have in its membership? As our columnist Lindsay Groves has been pointing out in recent articles, software development is beginning to play such a role in shaping the safety and future of our society that both clients and the community should start to demand the sort of rigour we expect of a structural engineer of the software engineer. It is no longer enough to say "wow it doesn't crash", a software engineer has to know why a control or emergency management or hospital system will not fail _ even under unusual circumstances.

Over the past few days I've had one or two interesting conversations with Massey University lecturer Tuoc Trinh about food engineering. His mission, if I may call it that, is to see food engineering recognised as a different form of engineering to traditional chemical process engineering. For while traditional process engineers want to achieve a known final state, Mr Trinh argues finding out exactly what makes up the flavour or texture a customer wishes to create, is but one of the points of the divergence from process engineering a food engineer faces routinely.

The first computers were built in the 1940s, the first commercial machines came to New Zealand in 1961. Crick and Watson identified the DNA helix structure in 1953, recombinant technologies were developed in the early 1960s. In the space of 40 years the technological possibilities of humankind have magnified beyond all recognition from the world that emerged from World War Two.

Now look at IPENZ. Nearly two-thirds of the membership are civil engineers and yet this organisation claims to want to represent the full spectrum of engineering and technology in this country. It wants to be at the forefront of championing innovation, and the vital importance that doing things smarter, better, and with more panache will play in New Zealand's economic development.

Obviously an organisation with these sorts of goals, but with the stodgy style and reputation IPENZ has gained for itself, faces something of an internal contradiction. Something is going to have to give. Something is going to have to change. It may not be safe or comfortable but it is going to happen.

What if in five years' time biotechnology and genetic manipulation become the social and economic phenomenon computers were in 1981? What if IPENZ not only represented software engineers but also genetic engineers? What then?