ENGINEERING AS SOCIAL
ENGINEERING AS SOCIAL ENGINEERING AS EXPERIMENTATION Engineering should be regarded as an inherently risky activity as many products of technology present some potential dangers. Therefore in order to explore its ethical implications, it is suggested that engineering should be viewed as an experimental process. This experiment is not conducted solely in the lab under controlled conditions. Rather it is an experiment on a social scale involving human subjects. Experimentation is commonly recognized as playing an essential role in the design process. Preliminary tests or simulations are conducted from the time it is decided to convert a new engineering concept into its first rough design. Materials and processes are tried out, usually employing formal experimental techniques. Such tests serve as the basis for more detailed designs, which in turn are tested. At the production stage further tests are run, until a finished product is developed. The normal design process