Engineering as intervention

Engineering today, is dominated by what may be called "creation science." Much of what we study in engineering is in the form of creating something-- be it a machine, software, structure, etc. Most of our effort goes into designing our creation and implement it in a way that makes it effective. 

But every engineering deployment is actually an intervention into an existing live system. Be it creating a building, a bridge, a car, a software, a gadget, or whatever, we are not only creating something, but this creation is intervening into an existing system and affecting the way it functions. 

Of course, by creating something, we wish to affect the way something functions. Like for example, by creating an automobile, we are affecting the way people commute. But for every creation, there is an intended affect, and many forms of unintended or collateral affects. 

In many cases, our created solutions can be so good that it can become a victim of its own success. For instance, suppose a brand new road is constructed to link two parts of a bustling city. This new road passes through relatively less populated areas, and hence, vehicles can zip through these to reach the other end of the city very fast. The very success of this brand new road, will now cause the land adjacent to the road to go up in value, and attracts many new businesses, residential properties and industries. Each business locating themselves there would use this brand new road as their locational advantage. Soon, this area becomes so crowded that any time advantages obtained earlier is lost. 

When we only focus on the design of our creation and its intended affect, and not really understand how systemic intervention works, we get into situations like these. 

If we want to bring about changes in a sustainable fashion, we need to change our perspective of engineering, from creating a solution, to designing interventions. 

The axiom of sustainability: One of the key things to understand about systemic interventions is the axiom of sustainability. Essentially, this states that any bounded system of being, when perturbed, strives to reach a state of "low energy" or stability. In Indian thought, this has been called the principle of dharma, since several thousands of years 

An atom for instance, is organised into "low energy" configurations, where electrons occupy specific orbits around the nucleus. When we excite an electron by giving it some energy, it may move up to a higher-level orbit. But very soon, it would shed its excess energy and come back to its low energy state. Similarly, if we intervene in an atom and knock out an electron, it becomes ionised and unstable. This causes phenomena like static or lightning, where the system that is the atom is trying to reach back to its low energy configuration. 

Similarly, what we call as solids, are actually intricate and tightly knit patterns of atomic interactions. When we try to deform a solid by pulling it out or pushing it in, it strives to come back to its original low energy configuration. This is what we call elasticity. 

Similarly, all biological creatures settle down into optimal states of being, where it has the maximum health, strength and pleasure that it can afford, given its circumstances. This is called homeostasis. When we perturb homeostasis (like for instance, illness or injury), an elaborate biological system kicks in, to bring the being back to homeostasis. 

This is one of the most fundamental axioms that we need to consider, when we're intervening in an existing system. Be it building a new road, adding a new train track, creating a new web service, building a new car, or bringing a new mobile device into the market, we will need to consider how will this intervention perturb the system and where the system is likely to settle down. 

The engineering solution may provide the intended outcomes soon after its deployment. But over time, the system responds to the intervention, and the state it settles down may be very far from what was intended. 

Intervention science-- dealing with understanding how complex systems respond to engineering interventions, is something that is not taught in engineering curriculum today. There is a dire need to develop this science systematically, and introduce it in our engineering curricula.