On the necessity of rocking the boat Computers and digitalization have greatly shaped our world and are now an unavoidable part of modern society. Weiser’s (1991) vision of ubiquitous computing has in many respects not only been met but has in affluent parts of the world been surpassed (Bell & Dourish, 2007). Digital artifacts and devices surround us and have invisibly and seamlessly permeated everything we do. Our modern societies are however not sustainable. We have overstepped several planetary boundaries and risk overstepping several more (Steffen et al., 2015). We are about to reach limits as to the resources we can extract from the earth (Bardi, 2014), and the changes wreaked are by now so profound that they will likely last for a geological period of time (Steffen et al., 2007). In light of this, it is of utmost importance to strive towards a sustainable society, and this is a responsibility that falls on many disciplines and sectors. We believe that engineering students could be key drivers in this change since many will eventually enter positions of power from which they will make decisions that will shape our future society.
ISBN: 9781315465968, QC 20190107