The Structure of Engineering Revolutions

Program in Science, Technology, and Society /
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professors David A. Mindell (STS) and Charles Leiserson (EECS)
STS.185 / EECS.XXX, 3-0-9, Grad-H, Tuesday/Thursday, 930-11am

Prereq.: 6.033, 6.011, 6.012, 6.013, or 6.014 or permission of instructor, depending on student projects. EE/CS students will be awarded Engineering Concentration credit for this subject in the area of student projects. Enrollment restricted to thirty students.

How do engineers conceive major innovations?
How do ideas move from conception to changing people's lives?
What makes projects succeed or fail?
What role do engineers play in the process?

A new Subject: The Structure of Engineering Revolutions

Learn to pose and answer the critical questions for engineering projects — projects like those you'll soon work on.

Study engineers in action and how they make the critical difference between "just another good idea" and radical technological change. In this hands-on class, students work in teams and research the life cycle of a major engineering project

It's like 6.270, but instead of getting a box of parts and building a new device, you get a box of original documents and use them to explain how a new technology was born. Your team, for example, might examine the development of radar, or the first computers, the emergence of integrated circuits, or the success or failure of a recent startup.

You'll interview famous inventors, read their laboratory notebooks, evaluate their patents, visit development labs and look over the shoulders of engineers as they developed today's technologies.

Learn about engineering culture, project management and documentation, proposals and funding, and engineering epistemology (the philosophy of engineering knowledge).