Much as some engineers would like to ignore politics, it’s irresponsible to do so. I’m not saying you have to be a political junkie, but an awareness of the ultimate purposes and effects of the organisation you work for is part of being a responsible engineer. Writing in the Human Life Review, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has issued a call to defeat technocracy before it takes over more of our lives than it has already. And every engineer should hear that call. The meaning of the word “technocracy” has changed over the years. Engineer William Henry Smyth coined it back in 1919 to mean democracy as mediated through scientists and engineers. For a brief time in the 1930s it became a small political movement of its own, favoring the management of society by engineers and other experts