The engineering's ethics and social responsibility

The engineering's ethics is a common notion for values respected by engineers who face moral problems in solving various technical tasks. These values are connected to cultural norms, life experience and practice, thus creating an awareness of responsible acting. This contribution on engineering's ethics is based on the cybernetic way of thinking of Norbert Wiener, exposed in his work Cybernetics, published in 1948. This way of thinking becomes more and more important, particularly today when humankind is faced with the development of new technologies - informatics, biotechnology, nanotechnology and social integrational processes (which consequences are not easy to foresee), as well as globalization and destabilization of large programs which are a challenge to numerous traditional conceptions, habits and customs. In his work The Symbiotic Man, published in 2000, Joel de Rosnay, relying upon the cybernetic way of thinking, draws one's attention to the fact that, while the parallel evolution of the humankind, the biosphere, the techno sphere and the echo sphere keeps going on, a new space is being opened which includes the creation of new forms of life, an amazing and audacious stage of evolution of life on Earth and a necessary condition of emergency of the planetary macro-life, with a foot-hold on the new scientific discipline, the artificial life, that he calls neo-biology. This is a challenge for re-consideration of engineering's ethics. Inter-generational gatherings and debates on influence of new technologies upon the future and the viability of engineering's ethics are advocated.