@twryst collectively, if not individually, engineers have a lot of power to influence the way that things change. There are many engineering problems which are interesting but which also have problematic consequences.

For example, I recently attended a job interview for something which involved machine learning and where I would have been able to apply libdeep on some commercial problems. But it turned out that their application was fundamentally about implementing DRM (digital restrictions management) - i.e. about trying to take away the rights of users. Benefiting some people at the expense of the majority. When I asked the interviewers what their opinion of DRM was they suddenly became very uneasy and said they might give an opinion "if we were chatting down the pub" but not on the company premises. That is, their opinions were likely in conflict with the engineering which they were doing (i.e. they lacked personal integrity).

DRM is one among a growing number of what I'd call "technologies of disempowerment and dispossession".

@twryst I know literally nothing about engineering education, but if it doesn't involve those questions and topics you write about in the first link here, then yes--here is a big problem. As a philosopher I think that those kinds of questions should always be included and am surprised when they're not. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

@twryst We taught Brecht's play Galileo in a team taught course I'm a part of this year, and he talks about these issues. If you aren't considering how your work can be used, especially by authority for harmful ends, that's how you end up with the atomic bomb, he suggests in that play.