It is becoming increasingly apparent that negotiating the changing terrain of institutional and everyday life requires cross-disciplinary knowledge and sensitivity beyond the wildest imaginings of just 20 years ago. Even within the sciences and engineering, there is growing awareness of the need to think in terms outside the limits of "the box." Rosalind Williams (2002), historian of technology and a past dean of students and undergraduate education at MIT, has written about how these changes have affected engineering. Engineering, she said, emerged in a world in which its mission was the control of non-human nature and in which that mission was defined by strong institutional authorities.... Now, it exists in a hybrid world in which there is no longer a clear boundary between autonomous, non-human nature and human-generated processes, (p. 31).
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