Engineering for Humanity

Abstract

When one looks at the twenty-first century it is clear that the extrapolation of high technology must lead to disaster. The factors are arms escalation, increase of the gap between rich and poor countries, growth of deserts, exhaustion of easily won raw materials, especially hydrocarbons, the cumulative effects of pollution, and increasing unemployment. Necessary steps towards a stable world are for the rich countries to accept a considerable reduction in their use of resources, to provide everyone with an interesting and well paid job and to shift a steadily increasing fraction of their engineering R & D resources from weaponry to co-operative production of equipment for the poor countries.