Engineering Innovation and Ethics

Running head: ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 0
ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
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ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
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Description
Indigenous Australians are arguably the first engineers, technologists, mathematicians,
and scientists in Australia. During the past century, they have an approach to innovation that
greatly shaped and informed the modern Australia community on how to address changes in
technological advancements, changes in climate, agriculture as well as mining of resources and
minerals. Within the past century Aboriginal Australians have been faced with disruption as well
several disadvantages that were mainly due to colonization by the Europeans. Currently, with the
emergence of internet, the initial structures that kept the Aboriginal Australians constantly
isolated and marginalized in the real world have been transformed into the digital world (Bird et
al, 2013).
The Aboriginal communities represented one of the countries in the world that were well
advanced in technology during the period when they initially arrived in Australia. The local had
to come up with several strategies that could enable them to adapt to the several challenging
situations within the country. The innovations and inventions are quite symbolical being that that
they represent one the earliest of that kind in the whole world and played a major part in enabling
the Aboriginal society to survive the harsh conditions of Australia at that time (Windschuttle,
2013). One of the largely kept beliefs in Australia is that before contact with other communities,
the culture of the Aboriginal people always stood and had never been lost. The culture of the
Aboriginal community was mostly never regarded by the Europeans t5at arrived at the shores
during the 18th century. The Europeans were a group of individuals who were used to staying in
huge well-built structures, moving around in wheeled vehicles on surfaced roads as well as living
permanently in a given location but with the ability to move between towns and cities. They
therefore anticipated the ownership of a lot of property such as houses and land. It became a big

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
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surprise when they met a group of people who had their own distinct culture and equally had no
time and need to own material things such as land (Chase, 2010). The way the Aboriginal culture
had evolved in the shorelines of Australia several decades ago had its own chosen path different
from the culture of other communities. The philosophical foundations developed various set of
actions that subsequently led to several developments that will always be associated with the
Aboriginal people.
Interpretation
The main motivation towards survival for the Aboriginal people in the kind of diverse
landscape they occupied was diversification. Australia was basically a diverse country just as
Europe in terms of social complexity. This was a continuously changing civilization that was
over fifty thousand years old with over five hundred various languages and cultures involved.
The diversities can be proven by he large range of technologies that were used by the Aboriginal
communities. The technologies were however simpler, easier to use and more elegant. They were
also made of materials that existed around. The various inventions represent a deeper
understanding of science and engineering (Coutts et al, 2012).
Despite the fact that colonial relationships have long been dissolved, there however still
exist a history of global power dynamics, economic strength, wealth as we as political influence
that has a major influence towards shaping the encounters of contemporary culture. In a bid to
prevent the replication of such dynamics, a participatory approach of design should be used to
develop digital technologies for the Aboriginal Australians. The basic concept for the
participatory design is recognizing the fact that it is the end users who know what is best needed
for them. all the engineering aspects and technologies developed by the Aboriginal Australians
mainly had the design users in mind therefore the outcome were mainly distinct products that