[Music]
do you even remember the joy of
discovery as a kid a sitting next to a
rock pool and looking all the little
critters inside and discovering that
actual animals lived inside the shells
all the sheer mind-blowing enormity of
realizing that the light from stars
started its journey billions of years
ago I don’t I think I’ve just been
described as functional but not
attractive but anyway I was that little
muddy kid off in the distance and I was
sitting next to a pile of rocks and
sticks and what I was trying to do was
figure out if I could use waves to get a
leaf from one side of a puddle to
another and so what I didn’t realize at
the time was that what you’re looking at
is an engineer
and what I want to do today is to
encourage all of you to think about who
might be the prospective engineers in
the world around you or indeed a you
yourself an engineer in denial just like
I was and I want to do that by
completely repainting the picture that
you have in your mind about what an
engineer is and what it is we do and we
need to do that because the next great
wave of engineering is coming and this
time it’s going to be about the
engineering of us of our society so now
I come from a family of engineers so you
would have thought that if anyone would
have had a clue it would have been me
but I didn’t and basically it’s because
I wasn’t listening so my dad was a
mechanical engineer and he used to tell
me lots of stories about his passion but
what I heard were stories about crank
shafts and gearboxes and things he also
used to tell me lots of stories about
his dad who was a civil engineer but
what I heard were stories about roads
and bridges
really so what I should have heard were
stories that spoke to the idea of
technology and service to people all
stories of moments of profound
creativity like the diet time that my
dad was so taken by his muse that he
actually drew the design for a gearbox
on a piece of toilet paper instead of
using it for something else entirely
what I should have heard was that
engineers are creative professional
problem finders we’re motivated by
making a difference in people’s lives
using technology and for us science and
maths are tools they’re actually not the
point and so when it came time for me to
work out what I was going to do after
school I walked away from that little
kid my understanding of engineering was
crank shafts and gearboxes and things
and so I chose the only thing I knew I
was good at which was science and it
took me 10 years to unwind that decision
and find my way back to that little girl
who is just so gripped by a problem she
just couldn’t quite solve now it turns
out that actually coming late to
engineering is being really good for me
and of course it’s all about me I get to
participate in one of the most profound
transformative periods in the
interaction between technology and
society we live in a highly
interconnected world and technology has
been democratized disrupted and it’s
being distributed in completely
unprecedented ways and so that means
that the opportunities for all of us are
enormous as other risks and it turns out
that that’s what engineers are good for
wait we are the people who balance
technological opportunity with
technological risk and all impeccable
staff fashion and style so now more than
ever we need engineers we are the people
who bring together people technology in
society but we need to do a whole lot
better at explaining what it is we do
and honestly we need more and we need
different and that’s my mission in my
own fashion and I need your help so in
my day job I spent a lot of time talking
with parents educators and employers of
young people and I see a number of
really worrying trends in fact most of
what I see is that my journey away from
money stick bill kid is actually quite
normal still we’re simply not getting
enough people who want to be engineers
and they’re getting knocked onto other
career paths so for example in Australia
Australian universities produce about
three times as many
scientists can actually find employment
and half as many engineers as we need
the participation rates of young people
taking the kinds of courses that get
them into engineering at university is
less than 10% and dropping and the
percentage of female engineers in
Australia is still stubbornly stuck
below 20% in fact there are a quarter of
a million engineers in Australia and
fewer than a thousand of them are women
over 50 so we all need to care about
this this is not about employability and
career prospects this is about the world
in which we all live so think about all
of the transformative periods in the
interaction between technology and
society civil engineers gave us clean
water and the roads and bridges that
allowed us to travel trade with our
neighbors Mechanical Engineers brought
us the boats trains and cars that
allowed us to trade and travel our
previously unprecedented distances
aeronautical engineers gave us access to
the globe and electrical engineers
brought us the safe clean cheap energy
that freed women from domestic purgatory
an electronic engineering followed by
computing brought the world to us
through television and then the Internet
and every one of those engineering
disciplines interacted so profoundly
with the society that it in which it was
located that it actually gave rise to
the next engineering discipline and
right now the combination of the
Internet of Things social media and
artificial intelligence means that the
next great engineering discipline is
just about to be born and this one
because it’s about how we’re connected
we are to each other and to things is
actually going to have us inside the
machine now that’s really profound and
if you are not wondering about the level
of the sophistication of design that
sits behind most of your tech you really
need to start wondering about that so I
spend a lot of time talking with people
who are used to thinking on a national
and global scale and when I ask them
questions like well so what are you
gonna do with all that data once you’ve
got it the answer that comes back is
silence that’s really telling we’re just
about to have access to precise detailed
real-time data about our actions and our
interactions and that’s going to mean
that people and algorithms can make
decisions that will affect the way that
we behave now that’s actually a control
loop and up until now control
engineering has been used to engineer
things
but guess what not anymore this time
it’s us so let me give you an example
think about the ride-sharing service
uber so we all know what happens when
surge pricing kicks in which is
basically prices go up and we suck it up
until such time as prices become
ridiculous and then we find some other
way of getting home and then demand
drops prices drop and everyone’s happy
again but my point here is that that
algorithm is actually dictating or
driving the way that we interact with
each other so let’s think about and in
and of itself that kind of doesn’t
matter because at least in principle
engagement whether with a ride-sharing
service is optional but what about
situations where it’s not optional like
dynamic delivery of taxes or welfare
payments or something like that what
about another example so this one’s not
hypothetical
imagine what what if the next source of
social disadvantage is actually poor
access to data so imagine you’re running
and living on a cattle station in a
remote part of a country somewhere and
you need to make use of precise detailed
real-time data about the weight and
condition of your cattle so you can work
out where to send them on the station
and then what are you going to do when
your internet connection drops out
because a couple of million people in a
city on the other side of the continent
all simultaneously decide that they want
to be in touch the next season of Game
of Thrones that one’s not hypothetical
so here’s another example it’s actually
really easy to imagine ways of making
use of Twitter usage to optimize the
delivery of public transport in a city
it’s also really easy to imagine ways
that that algorithm could spin out of
control and deny public transport to
great swaths of the same city and then
what happens when that interacts with
the dynamic delivery of in-home health
care or in-home education that’s a
situation where you need a detailed
technical and quantitative approach to
system design as well as a technical
assessment of risk and do we really want
business owners insurers and politicians
making those sorts of decisions for us
on the basis of a passing understanding
of tech in the socket and see attitude I
really don’t think so what we actually
need is a new type of engineer to do
that but before we do that we actually
need to create the new engineering
discipline and so that
new engineering discipline is going to
be about the safe design and operation
of the engine that’s composed of all of
us now we actually don’t know what that
means because we don’t know what it
means to be living in such a
technologically rich world whatever this
thing is it’s going to involve computing
control engineering anthropology design
psychology take a whole bunch of stuff
and that’s what my colleagues at the
Australian National University are doing
basically right now in collaboration
with some of the most interesting
thinkers in the world we’re trying to
give shape to this thing whatever it is
and that will be our contribution to the
evolving relationship between technology
and society and then what we need to do
is go find the next great wave of
engineers and these are going to be
people who are willing and able to
engage in the complexity of bringing
together people technological systems
and science in a highly distributed
interconnected world and the way we’re
going to find them is through the
stories we tell they’re heard in ways
that you can’t anticipate and that they
shape lives and they show choices not
just for me and my choices but actually
for hundreds of thousands of others and
so let’s be really clear about this you
don’t have to choose between changing
the world and being an engineer in fact
look around you we don’t live in a
natural world you don’t have to choose
between being a creative and a tech
creatives love to make things and so
just think of all of the really cool
things you can make if you master
science and maths but let’s also be
really clear this is not just about just
making cool stuff using tech my people
engineers understand that this is about
technology and service to people not the
other way around so here’s what I want
you to do I want you to take this new
picture that you have in your mind of
what an engineer is not that actual
picture and go out and talk to as many
people as you can find and please
encourage them to think completely
rethink the way that they remake the
world around them thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
do you even remember the joy of
discovery as a kid a sitting next to a
rock pool and looking all the little
critters inside and discovering that
actual animals lived inside the shells
all the sheer mind-blowing enormity of
realizing that the light from stars
started its journey billions of years
ago I don’t I think I’ve just been
described as functional but not
attractive but anyway I was that little
muddy kid off in the distance and I was
sitting next to a pile of rocks and
sticks and what I was trying to do was
figure out if I could use waves to get a
leaf from one side of a puddle to
another and so what I didn’t realize at
the time was that what you’re looking at
is an engineer
and what I want to do today is to
encourage all of you to think about who
might be the prospective engineers in
the world around you or indeed a you
yourself an engineer in denial just like
I was and I want to do that by
completely repainting the picture that
you have in your mind about what an
engineer is and what it is we do and we
need to do that because the next great
wave of engineering is coming and this
time it’s going to be about the
engineering of us of our society so now
I come from a family of engineers so you
would have thought that if anyone would
have had a clue it would have been me
but I didn’t and basically it’s because
I wasn’t listening so my dad was a
mechanical engineer and he used to tell
me lots of stories about his passion but
what I heard were stories about crank
shafts and gearboxes and things he also
used to tell me lots of stories about
his dad who was a civil engineer but
what I heard were stories about roads
and bridges
really so what I should have heard were
stories that spoke to the idea of
technology and service to people all
stories of moments of profound
creativity like the diet time that my
dad was so taken by his muse that he
actually drew the design for a gearbox
on a piece of toilet paper instead of
using it for something else entirely
what I should have heard was that
engineers are creative professional
problem finders we’re motivated by
making a difference in people’s lives
using technology and for us science and
maths are tools they’re actually not the
point and so when it came time for me to
work out what I was going to do after
school I walked away from that little
kid my understanding of engineering was
crank shafts and gearboxes and things
and so I chose the only thing I knew I
was good at which was science and it
took me 10 years to unwind that decision
and find my way back to that little girl
who is just so gripped by a problem she
just couldn’t quite solve now it turns
out that actually coming late to
engineering is being really good for me
and of course it’s all about me I get to
participate in one of the most profound
transformative periods in the
interaction between technology and
society we live in a highly
interconnected world and technology has
been democratized disrupted and it’s
being distributed in completely
unprecedented ways and so that means
that the opportunities for all of us are
enormous as other risks and it turns out
that that’s what engineers are good for
wait we are the people who balance
technological opportunity with
technological risk and all impeccable
staff fashion and style so now more than
ever we need engineers we are the people
who bring together people technology in
society but we need to do a whole lot
better at explaining what it is we do
and honestly we need more and we need
different and that’s my mission in my
own fashion and I need your help so in
my day job I spent a lot of time talking
with parents educators and employers of
young people and I see a number of
really worrying trends in fact most of
what I see is that my journey away from
money stick bill kid is actually quite
normal still we’re simply not getting
enough people who want to be engineers
and they’re getting knocked onto other
career paths so for example in Australia
Australian universities produce about
three times as many
scientists can actually find employment
and half as many engineers as we need
the participation rates of young people
taking the kinds of courses that get
them into engineering at university is
less than 10% and dropping and the
percentage of female engineers in
Australia is still stubbornly stuck
below 20% in fact there are a quarter of
a million engineers in Australia and
fewer than a thousand of them are women
over 50 so we all need to care about
this this is not about employability and
career prospects this is about the world
in which we all live so think about all
of the transformative periods in the
interaction between technology and
society civil engineers gave us clean
water and the roads and bridges that
allowed us to travel trade with our
neighbors Mechanical Engineers brought
us the boats trains and cars that
allowed us to trade and travel our
previously unprecedented distances
aeronautical engineers gave us access to
the globe and electrical engineers
brought us the safe clean cheap energy
that freed women from domestic purgatory
an electronic engineering followed by
computing brought the world to us
through television and then the Internet
and every one of those engineering
disciplines interacted so profoundly
with the society that it in which it was
located that it actually gave rise to
the next engineering discipline and
right now the combination of the
Internet of Things social media and
artificial intelligence means that the
next great engineering discipline is
just about to be born and this one
because it’s about how we’re connected
we are to each other and to things is
actually going to have us inside the
machine now that’s really profound and
if you are not wondering about the level
of the sophistication of design that
sits behind most of your tech you really
need to start wondering about that so I
spend a lot of time talking with people
who are used to thinking on a national
and global scale and when I ask them
questions like well so what are you
gonna do with all that data once you’ve
got it the answer that comes back is
silence that’s really telling we’re just
about to have access to precise detailed
real-time data about our actions and our
interactions and that’s going to mean
that people and algorithms can make
decisions that will affect the way that
we behave now that’s actually a control
loop and up until now control
engineering has been used to engineer
things
but guess what not anymore this time
it’s us so let me give you an example
think about the ride-sharing service
uber so we all know what happens when
surge pricing kicks in which is
basically prices go up and we suck it up
until such time as prices become
ridiculous and then we find some other
way of getting home and then demand
drops prices drop and everyone’s happy
again but my point here is that that
algorithm is actually dictating or
driving the way that we interact with
each other so let’s think about and in
and of itself that kind of doesn’t
matter because at least in principle
engagement whether with a ride-sharing
service is optional but what about
situations where it’s not optional like
dynamic delivery of taxes or welfare
payments or something like that what
about another example so this one’s not
hypothetical
imagine what what if the next source of
social disadvantage is actually poor
access to data so imagine you’re running
and living on a cattle station in a
remote part of a country somewhere and
you need to make use of precise detailed
real-time data about the weight and
condition of your cattle so you can work
out where to send them on the station
and then what are you going to do when
your internet connection drops out
because a couple of million people in a
city on the other side of the continent
all simultaneously decide that they want
to be in touch the next season of Game
of Thrones that one’s not hypothetical
so here’s another example it’s actually
really easy to imagine ways of making
use of Twitter usage to optimize the
delivery of public transport in a city
it’s also really easy to imagine ways
that that algorithm could spin out of
control and deny public transport to
great swaths of the same city and then
what happens when that interacts with
the dynamic delivery of in-home health
care or in-home education that’s a
situation where you need a detailed
technical and quantitative approach to
system design as well as a technical
assessment of risk and do we really want
business owners insurers and politicians
making those sorts of decisions for us
on the basis of a passing understanding
of tech in the socket and see attitude I
really don’t think so what we actually
need is a new type of engineer to do
that but before we do that we actually
need to create the new engineering
discipline and so that
new engineering discipline is going to
be about the safe design and operation
of the engine that’s composed of all of
us now we actually don’t know what that
means because we don’t know what it
means to be living in such a
technologically rich world whatever this
thing is it’s going to involve computing
control engineering anthropology design
psychology take a whole bunch of stuff
and that’s what my colleagues at the
Australian National University are doing
basically right now in collaboration
with some of the most interesting
thinkers in the world we’re trying to
give shape to this thing whatever it is
and that will be our contribution to the
evolving relationship between technology
and society and then what we need to do
is go find the next great wave of
engineers and these are going to be
people who are willing and able to
engage in the complexity of bringing
together people technological systems
and science in a highly distributed
interconnected world and the way we’re
going to find them is through the
stories we tell they’re heard in ways
that you can’t anticipate and that they
shape lives and they show choices not
just for me and my choices but actually
for hundreds of thousands of others and
so let’s be really clear about this you
don’t have to choose between changing
the world and being an engineer in fact
look around you we don’t live in a
natural world you don’t have to choose
between being a creative and a tech
creatives love to make things and so
just think of all of the really cool
things you can make if you master
science and maths but let’s also be
really clear this is not just about just
making cool stuff using tech my people
engineers understand that this is about
technology and service to people not the
other way around so here’s what I want
you to do I want you to take this new
picture that you have in your mind of
what an engineer is not that actual
picture and go out and talk to as many
people as you can find and please
encourage them to think completely
rethink the way that they remake the
world around them thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
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