ITR: Transformation of Engineering Design: Digitization and Global Distribution of Engineering Work

该研究项目由信息技术研究计划，数字社会和技术计划以及国际科学工程办公室共同资助。它将研究如何利用复杂的数学技术的信息技术正在重塑技术工作，通过一个概念化的过程，作为抽象的强化。 抽象的强化集中在用虚拟代替物理，即，对代表和替代物体的符号的操纵。 这项研究将在汽车工程设计的背景下与通用汽车公司合作进行。 它将集中在信息技术工具，采用有限元分析和计算流体动力学等技术的方式带来的变化，在工程师如何思考和做工程，在组织结构和流程的变化，在工程知识的变化，并在工程劳动分工的变化。 它还将追踪这些技术如何改变汽车公司与其供应商之间的关系，并为外包工程工作铺平道路。 这项研究将需要对美国和印度的转基因工程师进行详细的人种学观察，并辅以对制造分析工具的公司和开发工具所基于的技术的研究人员的采访。 到目前为止，很少有系统的研究审查了这些变化的社会技术动态。 这项研究的智力价值在于它有可能改变技术和工作研究如何理解信息技术在知识经济中的作用。 由于技术和专业职业现在代表了美国劳动力的最大部分，抽象的强化可能会改变现代知识工作，就像自动化在20世纪世纪改变生产和文书工作一样。 更广泛的影响包括对美国经济和国家在国际劳动分工中的地位的影响。

This research project is jointly funded by the Information Technology Research program, the Digital Society and Technologies program, and the Office of International Science & Engineering. It will investigate how information technologies that employ sophisticated mathematical techniques are reshaping technical work through a process conceptualized as intensification of abstraction. Intensification of abstraction centers on the replacement of the physical by the virtual, i.e., the manipulation of symbols that represent and substitute for objects. The study will be conducted in the context of automotive engineering design in partnership with General Motors Corporation. It will focus on the way in which information technology tools that employ techniques like finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics are bringing about changes in how engineers think about and do engineering, changes in organizational structures and processes, changes in engineering knowledge, and changes in the division of engineering labor. It will also trace how these technologies alter relationships between automotive firms and their suppliers and pave the way for outsourcing engineering work. The research will entail detailed ethnographic observations of GM engineers in both US and India, supplemented with interviews in firms that manufacture analysis tools and the researchers who develop the techniques on which the tools are based. To date little systematic research has examined the socio-technical dynamics of these kinds of changes. The intellectual merit of this study lies in its potential to alter how studies of technology and work understand the role of information technologies in a knowledge economy. Since technical and professional occupations now represent the largest sector of the American workforce, intensification of abstraction may transform modern knowledge work as significantly as automation did production and clerical work in the 20th Century. The broader impacts include implications for the U.S. economy and the nation's place in the international division of labor.