Advance Praise for Citizen Engineer
“Engineers create many of the inventions that shape our society, and as such they play a vital role in determining how we live. This new book does an outstanding job of filling in the knowledge and perspective that engineers must have to be good citizens in areas ranging from the environment, to intellectual property, to ensuring the health of the innovation ecosystem that has done so much for modern society. This is exactly the sort of book that engineers and those who work with them should read and discuss over pizza, coffee, or some other suitable, discussion-provoking consumable.”
—John L. Hennessy, president, Stanford University
“Citizen Engineer is the bible for the new era of socially responsible engineering. It’s an era where, as the authors show, engineers don’t just need to know more, they need to be more. The work is an inspiration, an exhortation, and a practical how-to guide. All engineers concerned with the impact of their work—and that should be all engineers—must read this book.”
—Hal Abelson, professor of computer science and engineering, MIT
“Code is law. Finally, a map to responsible law making. This accessible and brilliant book should be required of every citizen, and especially, the new citizen lawmakers we call engineers.”
—Lawrence Lessig, director, Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, and cofounder, Creative Commons
“Just as the atomic bomb brought us the citizen scientist, the computer has brought us the citizen engineer. This book is for engineers who take their societal responsibilities seriously, combining the idealism of dreamers with the pragmatism of builders.”
—Danny Hillis, cofounder, Thinking Machines, Inc., and Applied Minds, Inc.
“In good economic times and bad, the forces driving companies to go green are getting stronger. Innovation will be the key to solving thorny environmental problems and creating lasting value for smart companies. Engineers are at the center of innovation. For businesses and the economy to experience the environmental and economic benefits of going green, we’ll need engineers who read, understand, and act on the ideas in this book.”
—Andrew Winston, author, Green to Gold
“The authors recognize the increasingly widespread impact of engineers on society in this new century and the resulting responsibilities that engineers now have. While engineering has long embraced safety in the designs of bridges and cars, not all of us consider the long-term environmental impact of our designs, or the importance of contributing to the knowledge base of engineering and honoring its intellectual property rights, as well as preserving the security and privacy of our fellow citizens who use our designs. I believe Citizen Engineer is a book that all of us teaching, studying, or practicing engineering should read, as well as those outside engineering who want to understand this force of change in the twenty-first century.”
—David Patterson, professor of computer science, University of California, Berkeley
“Douglas and Papadopoulos have created an essential road map for re-engineering products, services, companies, and commerce in ways that are environmentally responsible, economically profitable, and just plain elegant.”
—Joel Makower, executive editor, GreenBiz.com; author, Strategies for the Green Economy
“This book is the first to provide detailed guidance about eco-responsible product design and responsible use of intellectual property—two areas that are becoming vitally important to both the development of the engineer and the advancement of the engineering profession.”
—Dr. Bill Wulf, professor of engineering and applied science, University of Virginia; member, National Academy of Engineering
“With details and examples as well as principles, this book endows every engineer with a visceral connection to eco responsibility and to the new ways to create and use intellectual property.”
—Robert Sproull, fellow and director, Sun Labs
“Citizen Engineer explains a critical transition of the engineering profession from technical focus to include social responsibilities and business context. This shift has changed the very nature of engineering as it is practiced today and as it must be taught in engineering degree programs.”
—Professor Steven D. Eppinger, deputy dean, MIT Sloan School of Management
Citizen Engineer
Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco New York • Toronto • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid Capetown • Sydney • Tokyo • Singapore • Mexico City
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has intellectual property rights relating to implementations of the technology described in this publication. In particular, and without limitation, these intellectual property rights may include one or more U.S. patents, foreign patents, or pending applications.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, J2ME, J2EE, Java Card, and all Sun and Java based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. THIS PUBLICATION COULD INCLUDE TECHNICAL INACCURACIES OR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY ADDED TO THE INFORMATION HEREIN; THESE CHANGES WILL BE INCORPORATED IN NEW EDITIONS OF THE PUBLICATION. SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. MAY MAKE IMPROVEMENTS AND/OR CHANGES IN THE PRODUCT(S) AND/OR THE PROGRAM(S) DESCRIBED IN THIS PUBLICATION AT ANY TIME.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Douglas, Dave
Citizen engineer : a handbook for socially responsible engineering /
Dave Douglas, Greg Papadopoulos; with John Boutelle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-714392-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-13-714392-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Sustainable engineering. 2. Social responsibility of business. 3.
Engineering—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Papadopoulos, Gregory
Michael. II. Boutelle, John. III. Title.
TA170.D68 2010
620—dc22
2009020712
Copyright © 2010 David Douglas and Greg Papadopoulos
All Rights Reserved. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ and this work is licensed only to Sun Microsystems, Inc. under an unrestricted non-exclusive royalty free license.
Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permissions, write to: Pearson Education, Inc., Rights and Contracts Department, 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02116, Fax: (617) 671-3447.
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-714392-4
ISBN-10: 0-13-714392-3
Text printed in the United States with soy-based ink on recycled paper at R.R. Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, August 2009
Contents
Introduction: While You Were Busy Debugging...
Part I Advent of the Citizen Engineer
Chapter 1 “Citizen Engineer” Defined
Responsibilities of the Citizen Engineer
Knowledge Base of the Citizen Engineer
Chapter 2 How Engineering Got Its Paradigm Shifted
Changes in the Nature of Engineering
Engineering on a Whole New Scale
Broader Influence for Engineers
Externally Driven Changes in Engineering
Corporate Social Responsibility
Perspectives on an Engineering Transformation
Part I Summary, and What’s Next
Part II Environmental Responsibility
Chapter 3 Environmental Impact: The Big Picture
Eco-Responsible Engineering: An Enormous Opportunity
Core Challenges of Eco-Engineering
Chapter 4 Beyond the Black Cloud: Looking at Lifecycles
Chapter 5 A Pragmatic Approach to Lifecycle Analysis
Additional Lifecycle Considerations
“Mini Lifecycles” of Consumables
Embodied Energy and Embodied Carbon
Starting a Top-Level Assessment
Deciding When to Stop Assessing
Chapter 6 Setting Priorities, Requirements, and Goals
Business Requirements and Opportunities
Quick Wins and Low-Hanging Fruit
Chapter 7 Energy and Emissions
Energy Impacts: Finding the Cleanest Source of Power
CO2 Equivalents and Conversions
Putting a Value on Carbon (Dioxide!)
Heat, Noise, Light, and Radio Emissions
Energy Efficiency in Product Design
Energy Transmission and Conversion
An Example: Energy Efficiency in Data Centers
Where Energy Goes in Data Centers
Making Data Centers More Efficient
Chapter 8 Chemicals, Materials, and Waste
Chapter 9 Water and Other Natural Resources
Calculating the Water Footprint
Chapter 10 An Example of Eco-Engineering: Interface, Inc.
An Aggressive Initiative with Very Specific Goals
Chapter 11 Eco-Engineering: The Grass Is Always Greener
Carbon Neutrality: Good Start but Not Enough
Read “The Six Sins of Greenwashing”
Measuring and Sharing with OpenEco
Part II Summary, and What’s Next
Part III Intellectual Responsibility
Chapter 12 Intellectual Property Law Fundamentals
A Closer Look: Why Get a Patent (and Why Not)?
Applying the Standard of Novelty
Copyright Using Creative Commons Licenses
Additional Concepts: Copyleft and FairShare
Employment Contracts and IP Ownership
Participation in Open Source Projects
Tip Sheet: Inbound and Outbound IP
How to Protect Your IP in Emerging Markets
Back to Patent Protection: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Chapter 13 Open Source Software: Licenses and Leverage
Nonfree but Free-Sounding Software Licenses
Do I Lose the Rights to My Contribution by Signing a CA?
Will I Receive Credit for My Contributions?
Can I Contribute the Same Works to Other Projects?
What if I’m Working for a Company but Contributing as an Individual?
Chapter 14 Creativity and Control
Maximizing the Cycle of Innovation
Building an Open Source Community: Practical Advice from a Pro
Chapter 15 Protecting Digital Rights
Fair Use and Other Concepts for Reducing Restrictions
Part III Summary, and What’s Next
Chapter 16 Education of the Citizen Engineer
Updating Engineering Curricula
Advice for Engineering Students
Advice for Engineering New Hires
Chapter 17 Citizen Engineers in Action
Required Reading for Citizen Engineers
Preface
This book is a fusion of ideas, information, advice, and opinions from the authors, their colleagues, and dozens of other sources, brought together to provide you with the tools and insights you’ll need to maximize your success in a new era of socially responsible engineering.
The information in these pages will be most relevant to engineers who design and build “things”—engineers in fields such as electronic/computer engineering, software engineering, mechanical engineering, materials engineering, automotive engineering, and so forth—although we believe engineers in all disciplines, managers of engineers, and even consumers will find useful information in this book. We’ve divided the book into four parts.
• Part I: Advent of the Citizen Engineer defines “Citizen Engineer,” describes the trends that have led us to this new era of socially responsible engineering, and discusses what it all means—to engineers, to businesses, and to our society.
• Part II: Environmental Responsibility provides practical “how-to” information and resources to help you minimize the environmental impact of the products and services you’re designing. It gives you an overview of what you need to know, things you need to consider, and what you need to do as you create ecologically and economically sound products, including (to name just a few topics)
—Understanding and calculating the complete impact of a product or service
—Defining strategies for key impacts such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water usage
—Trends in environmental regulations
—Whether “carbon neutrality” is sufficient as a business goal
• Part III: Intellectual Responsibility includes basic information about patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, nondisclosure agreements, standards, and licenses—and offers practical advice about how to maximize the economic opportunities intellectual property (IP) law presents while avoiding the potential pitfalls. For example, we discuss
—The role of patents and when and how to file them
—How to encourage other engineers to adopt and amplify your ideas
—Pros and cons of various software licenses
—Whether our system of IP controls maximizes innovation fairly
—How to build communities to innovate and amplify your ideas
• Part IV: Bringing It to Life takes a look at some of the ways engineers—and engineering schools—are responding to the new realities and requirements of the new era, including
—The growing momentum behind broader curricula in engineering schools
—Advice for recent graduates and newly hired engineers
—Examples of interesting projects with which Citizen Engineers are involved worldwide
You’ll notice that the greatest emphasis falls on two broad topics that may not seem to be natural bedfellows: eco responsibility and intellectual property law. The reason is simple: These subjects have the greatest urgency to engineers today. They are redefining the way engineers do their jobs, yet most engineers are just beginning to understand the full impact each brings to bear on their work.
The book combines facts and viewpoints, and we’ve tried to be very clear about which is which. The subjects we discuss in each section can get enormously deep, so we’ve tried to give you enough basic understanding, along with pointers to further information, that you’ll be able to continue exploring each topic. We hope you’ll find the book useful in structuring your thinking and answering key questions.
Finally, a few notes about the book itself. Two of the key topics are environmental responsibility and intellectual property. Since the book will have physical manifestations and since it is, by definition, intellectual property, we’ve spent some time thinking about how this book lives up to the ideas it espouses.
First, let’s look at the environmental impact of the book. If you’re reading these words on a printed page, you’re charmingly old-fashioned. This book is available in three forms, and only one of them is printed at all. We recognize the pleasures of reclining in a comfortable chair to read a book—but we also recognize the need to diminish the negative environmental impacts of traditional books. The publisher of this book, Pearson, has developed its own procedure to track wood back through the production process to the original forest, allowing the company to verify the sustainability of the papers it uses. Pearson also measures the carbon footprint relating to the shipping of its printed books around the world. The reuse/recycle rate for Pearson’s unsold books and newspapers was 99% in 2007, in excess of the company’s target of 95%. Pearson regularly reports on its progress to the United Nations as part of the company’s commitment to the Global Compact.1
Our book is also available digitally. You can download it from a number of sources, and we hope you’ve taken the opportunity to acquaint yourself with the unique advantages of reading a book online: Digital versions are easy to scan; you can search for specific words or phrases; you can annotate and highlight electronically; and you can change the font size (those of us who are over age 40 appreciate this feature in particular).
Next, let’s talk about the intellectual property that this book entails. By writing the book in the United States, we automatically get the privileges of copyright. In addition to the copyright, we have decided to license the content under a Creative Commons license, namely the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.2 This means you are free to share this book (copy it, distribute it) and remix it to make derivative works under the conditions that your copies or remixes are for noncommercial purposes, that you provide proper attribution, and that you share alike any changes you make under the same (or a similar) license.
Finally, we have made every effort to properly recognize the works of others that we have leveraged in the writing of this book. If we’ve borrowed a line or a paragraph from someone’s article or book, we’ve cited the source and referred you to the complete text. If we’ve used a resource such as Wikipedia to help us define a term or provide statistics that support our point, we have attempted to verify the accuracy of the content and cite the original source of the information.
One additional form of the book is interesting as it embodies both eco responsibility and intellectual property: We’re making the book available as part of a living Web site (www.citizenengineer.org). We want you to do more than read the book; we want you to contribute to it. Add your thoughts about the new era of socially and environmentally responsible engineering. Insert your advice and lessons learned. Give the community tips for developing an environmental impact study. Got a better way to measure the carbon footprint of a new device? Have some new information about an energy regulation? Let everyone know. This is a community effort; we welcome your participation.
Acknowledgments
Everything engineers create is an integration of many ideas. This book is no exception. Our aim was to produce something novel and useful by building on insights from many sources. We owe a debt of gratitude to the many people who have lent their time and energy to making this a better book. In particular, we would like to thank Jonathan Schwartz for his support of this project and Sun Microsystems for providing many of the examples used throughout the text.
Special thanks go to Al Riske for his hard work in the early days of this project. We would also like to express our deep appreciation to the following individuals who agreed to be interviewed, provide feedback about drafts, lend their expertise, or help us remedy errors along the way: Michael Anastasio, Kaj Arnöo, Subodh Bapat, Craig Carlson, Sheueling Chang, Michelle Dennedy, Greg Doench, Lori Duvall, Damien Eastwood, Steven Eppinger, Michael Falk, John L. Hennessey, Christy Confetti Higgins, Daniel Hillis, Mary Holzer, Joel Makower, Sohrab Modi, Dean Nelson, David Patterson, Mike Shapiro, Robert Sproull, Hal Stern, Harold Steudel, Dr. Ivan Sutherland, Michael Thurston, Chuck Vest, Andrew Winston, and Dr. Bill Wulf.
Thank you also to Carrie Motamedi, for her persistence and drive in keeping this project on track; and to Ingrid Van den Hoogen and Anil Gadre for their encouragement and enthusiasm.
Finally, we want to offer our thanks to our families for the inspiration and wondrous gifts they give us every day, and also offer up the following personal acknowledgments.
David Douglas: I would like to recognize the people who helped make engineering such an important part of my life. Steve Ward, Danny Hillis, and Dave Patterson added to my technical education, but more importantly they taught me the fun and rewards of fully embracing a life of innovation. I’d also like to thank the eco team at Sun for being a constant source of inspiration. And finally, I’d like to thank my dad, Robert Douglas, who led the way and encouraged my technical learning from early on.
Greg Papadopoulos: I’m hoping that history will end up recognizing the essential work of Richard Stallman, the GNU Project, and the Free Software Foundation in pioneering the ideal of developer freedom. Richard, along with Lawrence Lessig, has had a fundamental influence on my views on the interplay between creativity and control. On the connection of engineering with society, much was catalyzed by my work with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and conversations there with the late Richard Newton were particularly encouraging. But here, the real seeds were planted years ago by my father, Michael Papadopoulos, and my mentor, Michael Dertouzos: two Greek-Americans who reveled in that beautiful intersection between science and the human spirit. They both live in my memory every day.
About the Authors
David Douglas
Dave is senior vice president of cloud computing and chief sustainability officer at Sun Microsystems. He oversees the strategy and execution of environmental initiatives across the company, including enhancements to Sun’s products in the areas of energy efficiency, cooling technologies, product recycling, and clean manufacturing. In addition, Dave is responsible for Sun's cloud computing business, with a focus on creating reliable, scalable, and sustainable computing and storage. He has been in the high-tech industry for more than two decades, including more than a decade of experience leading organizations to build more innovative, efficient, and eco-responsible products, and he has a long-standing passion about environmental issues. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Dave sits on the board of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and is a senior fellow at the Breakthrough Institute. He currently lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with his family.
Greg Papadopoulos
With more than twenty years' experience in the technology industry, Greg Papadopoulos has held several executive positions, most recently serving as chief technology officer and executive vice president, Research and Development, at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He is responsible for managing Sun's technology decisions, global engineering architecture, and advanced development programs. He has also founded a number of his own companies, including co-founding Thinking Machines, where he led the design of the CM6 massively parallel supercomputer. Papadopolous was also an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where he conducted research in scalable systems, multithreaded/data flow processor architecture, functional and declarative languages, and fault-tolerant computing. He holds a bachelor’s degree in systems science from the University of California at San Diego, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Papadopoulos resides in Los Gatos, California, with his wife, Laurie, and has passions for cooking, wine, and eco-responsible living.
John Boutelle
A professional writer for more than twenty years, John has worked with and interviewed hundreds of engineers and executives from a diverse range of enterprises worldwide, including Adobe, Apple, Cisco, General Electric, Hitachi, Lam Research, Nokia, Novell, Oracle, Pacific Bell, Seiko, Sony, Sun Microsystems, VeriSign, and dozens of start-ups. Previously he was editor-in-chief of the Orange County Business Journal in Santa Ana, California. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College. John resides with his family in Madison, Wisconsin.
Introduction
While You Were Busy Debugging...
Engineers have never been afraid of change. It’s our job to effect change. We transform scientific principles and theorems into useful products and services of all kinds. In the process, we change the way people work, play, and live.
Virtually everything people touch today has been designed by engineers—from the cars we drive and the roads we drive them on to the mobile phones and GPS devices we use while we should be keeping our eyes on the road. And everything that is engineered is constantly evolving. The perpetual cycle of innovation, optimization, and exploration of new possibilities is what excites us. We relish the fact that the half-life of knowledge in our field is measured in months.
But now change has come to engineering itself. Over the past few years, while engineers have been busy slinging code or testing tolerances, the core requirements and responsibilities of engineering have been evolving faster than any underlying science or technology. And many of us have discovered that the new world of engineering is not the one we prepared for.
What has changed? While it’s hard to put a finger on it, we all feel the effects. Some of us find that we’re spending more time in meetings than in the lab. Or that we’re working on an environmental impact analysis rather than a product design; or burning cycles trying to grok the nuances of the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3 as opposed to Version 2; or struggling to comply with yet another new data privacy mandate.
Taken together, these symptoms spell a seismic shift in what it means to be an engineer. Suddenly engineering is no longer solely concerned with finding a simple, elegant way to implement a set of design requirements. Success is no longer solely measured by the speed and efficiency with which design specs are met. Technological prowess and ingenuity are no longer enough; we need knowledge of subjects well beyond the scope of traditional engineering. A successful engineer needs to be part environmentalist, part intellectual property (IP) attorney, part MBA, and part diplomat—not to mention an expert in an engineering discipline, a great teammate, and a skilled communicator.
Recent trends are also redefining the role of the engineer in society. The increasing complexity of products leads to greater dependence upon engineering; yet most people don’t understand engineering or the underlying sciences and technologies. This situation can be scary to the general public, and can lead to bad public policy and misconceptions that hold back new innovations. There is a pressing need for engineers to become more proactive with society—to engage, to communicate, and to lead.
This book takes a closer look at the nature of engineering today and provides practical guidance on topics of increasing interest and urgency to engineers, particularly environmental considerations of product design and intellectual property, licensing, and contractual considerations. The book also explores how eco-effective, techno-responsible products and services can translate to new opportunities for businesses and an accelerated career path for engineers.
In the course of writing this book, we talked to engineers, students, and researchers. We consulted with lawyers, environmentalists, administrators, and managers. We’ve blended their stories, experiences, and advice together with our own observations, all with a single, overarching goal: to help you become a more effective engineer, while maintaining every iota of the passion, visceral excitement, and creativity that drew you to this profession in the first place.
We’re moving past the “Century of Science” into what we believe will be the “Century of Engineering.” It’s a period that will be both more exhilarating and more daunting for engineers than anything that has come before. It’s an era that will redefine the way we think about ourselves as we continue to shape the way people interact with their world. It’s an opportunity to become more socially responsible engineers and to create products that are more tightly aligned with our personal ethics. It’s the age of the Citizen Engineer.