The image of engineering: The silence of the nerds? - Ron Choi ENG 574

Braham, James. "The image of engineering: The silence of the nerds?" Machine Design, Vol.64, Iss.17, 1992: 75-80.

In this article, Braham offers an editorial examination of the engineering community’s attempts to bolster the public’s perceptions of engineers.  The author uses a combination of anecdotes, interviews and survey data to underline the some of the negative and inaccurate perceptions of engineers, and discusses the attempts of engineering societies to identify and correct these misconceptions.  Braham looks at engineers in society and pop culture, examining the Dilbert comic strip, engineers in politics, TV and movies.  Braham also explores a survey on how some engineers see themselves, noting that in some cases, the public perception is aligned with self-perception.  Both the general public and electrical engineers perceived themselves as socially awkward and lacking in good communication skills.  Braham concludes with a discussion of some of the actions being taken to increase awareness and understanding of engineering.

Although this was an editorial article in an engineering trade magazine, and not a peer-reviewed academic journal piece, I still found it to be quite useful in speaking to the conventional wisdom surrounding engineers and communication skills.  The author is an engineer who has contributed to articles which have been cited by many others.  Combining the anecdotes, pop culture references, interviews and survey data provides a multi-faceted examination of the poor image of engineers’ communication skills, both publicly and self-perceived.  For my research, I would attempt to track down the original survey sources, and more importantly, find newer equivalents, since this article was written in 1992.  

The pop culture references used in the article also made me wonder how the media may have affected public perception of engineers over the past 20 years.  TV shows like “The Big Bang Theory” have capitalized on the image of the socially awkward scientists and engineers – does public exposure of this sort only re-enforce the negative image, or perhaps increase the social acceptance of engineering or “geek” behavior?