Why Earth Systems Engineering Management?

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Why Earth Systems Engineering Management?

• Michael E. Gorman
• Division of Technology, Culture Communication
• University of Virginia
• meg3c_at_virginia.edu
• repo-nt.tcc.virginia.edu

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

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Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)

• 22 boys, all 11 years old from Oklahoma
• Attend summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park
• Same level of conditions

• Behavior
• Accent
• Zero Past History
• Religion

• IQ Grades
• Fitness
• Eyesight
• Ethnicity

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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

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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

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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?
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Technological development as freedom

• Economic unfreedom, in the form of extreme
  poverty, can make a person a helpless prey in the
  violation of other kinds of freedom (Amartya
  Sen)
• Technological progress should involve enhancing
  human capabilities, quality of life
• Technologies for Tier 4 markets--increased
  affluence, education, limits population growth,
  environmental damage

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Why doesnt 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

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Possible Relationships Between Technology
Society
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Ehrlich

• I(impact)P(population)A(affluence)
• T(technology)

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Means is the end

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

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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)

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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

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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)

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A Communications Continuum
mental models
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Three levels of shared expertisein
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

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Trading Zones, Shared Expertise and Communication
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Four Types of Expertise

• Information (what)
• Skills (How)
• Judgment (When)
• 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

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Interactional Expertise Skill

• Skills within a domain require the interactional
  expert to apprentice--Collins and laser
• The interactional expert must also possess the
  anthropologists skill of moving among cultures,
  of being a linguistic and cultural translator

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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

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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
• Crichtons 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

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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 RD 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

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McDonoughs 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

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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

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

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Nanotechnology materials systems

• Have at least one dimension in the 1-100
  nanometer range
• 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

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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

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Problems with a nanotechnology moratorium

• Moratorium on what? Nanotechnology spans
  multiple disciplines and technologies--a
  moratorium could simply lead to a shift in
  labels, e.g., back to surface science
• Certain lines of research could and probably
  should be forbidden, at least for a time, but
  only after discussion--hence, the need for
  ethicists and social scientists to be present at
  breakthroughs

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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

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State 3 Shared Mental Model

• Social scientists, ethicists, scientists and
  engineers work together to create new
  breakthroughs that will benefit society

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Similar approach should be taken with other
technologies that have environmental consequences
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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/pe
  rsonal/diary/diary.html)
• Supported by NSF (SES-0210452)

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Table of World Ills
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Metaphor Mountains and Bridges

• Bridges
• Growing nanodots in spots indicated by a focused
  ion beam
• 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

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Metaphor Mountains and Bridges
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Sensor design using bio-nano example.
Metal oxide nanodot and substrate will need to
have different surface charges
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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 thetop
  by those who do not understand local
  circumstances
• Ethicists mandating a moratorium on new
  technologies without consulting researchers

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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

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

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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 ofcreating new and
  more self-aware cognitive systems.
• Brad Allenby

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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

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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

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Ethical principles

• Establish trading zones involving multiple
  stakeholders--including those affected by new
  technologies
• Exercise moral imagination
• Follow the golden rule do unto others as you
  would have them do unto you
• End result A shared commitment to technologies
  that improve human capabilities, globally

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References

• Baird, D. and M. Cohen (1999). "Why trade?"
  Perspectives on science 7(2) 231-254.
• Collins, H. M. and R. Evans (2002). "The third
  wave of science studies." Social Studies of
  Science 32(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 27(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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Back-up slides
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Examples

• Nanomembranes whose permeability can be adjusted
• Nanoparticles that can serve as sorbents,
  facilitating study and precipitation of
  pollutants
• http//www.ruf.rice.edu/cben/FateAndTransport.sht
  ml
• Nanomaterials that become food rather than
  contaminants

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Types of knowledge and the tacit dimension