Customer Reviews

Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change

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This is the story of how the MIT Engineering curriculum evolved and changed with the advance of technology over the period of 1995-2000. It is written by a professor who has never held a non-academic job, and much of the content involves faculty meetings. Rosalind Williams became the Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education during this timeframe, and as a 'humanist' immediately sought to inject more humanities into the engineering program. This is the "epic account of the struggle to humanize engineering education" that Kirkus Reviews gushes over, but I, as a reader, found tedious.

What I did enjoy is the discussion of how MIT struggled to update their classrooms to keep pace with technology, first by networking, then struggling with bandwidth, and finally with fiber. Williams did have a cost-benefit analysis of upgrading vs. technological pacing, and that's about as close to 'Retooling' as the book gets.

I didn't really get much of 'technology vs. culture', other than MIT making policies for the internet as it evolved. The book was a window into the thought processes of a non-technical lifetime academic with an agenda of 'humanizing' engineers. Yeah, got some 'big sis knows best'. Obliquely included were some legendary backbiting college office politics. (Williams is unfailingly polite, but if you read between the lines...)

I'd only read the library copy if you are in a management position of a large organization (especially a college). Insight of how MIT upgraded their computing during the 1995-2005 timeframe might help your own IT/computing division. The perspective on 'Retooling' an engineer's exposure to a broader perspective is verbose, pads out the book, and is largely irrelevant. This isn't a book I'll be re-reading or keeping.

The subtitle of this book should be "A Historian Confronts Technological Change Within the Ivory Tower of MIT." The text, which is rife with abstractions and theories, and only rarely discusses specific events, has very little relevance outside of academia. Many of its anecdotes are seen from the vantage point of bureaucratic meetings of the MIT faculty and administration. I would guess that the author has spent nearly her entire adult life on a university campus. This is also reflected in the writing style, which rarely states in a sentence what can be stretched to a paragraph.

People at MIT or a similar instituation, or considering attending or working at one, or those interested in how engineering teachers view the history of engineering education theory, might find this book interesting. Others may have trouble finishing it (and it's a very short book).