The Great Conversation
Within each of us there is a drive to move the human project forward.
We are told to maximize our agency, to "just do things."
But how do we know which things are worth doing?
We have been telling the story of technology backwards. Our tools—steam engines, silicon chips—take center stage, but these artifacts are the lagging indicators of progress, not the drivers.
Tools are the image of their creators. If we are to understand technology, we must begin by understanding technologists.
To be a technologist is to have a theory of what it means to be human, and to make that theory concrete through the craft of engineering and design. To shape the world through politics, media, medicine, culture, finance, and beyond. To be a historic actor; not an experiencer of the world, but a part of the great tradition of shaping it.
You are one of them.
As a technologist, you are the inheritor of a tradition, a grand swirling conversation across generations. You owe it to yourself to tap into this tradition and meet your ancestors: the thinkers, tinkerers, and misfits whose ideas influence yours, whether you are aware of their influence or not.
Our best resource for this self-understanding is history—the archive of our collective triumphs and learnings. We have a particular responsibility to understand our history as Canadians, with a unique technological culture rooted in the fight against a harsh wilderness and the peacetime use of military technologies.
We are all part of something bigger than ourselves: a conversation that stretches across millennia and collectively enables us to transform the world.
You have been part of this conversation your entire life. It's time to be formally introduced.
