Abstract:

Starting with a disclaimer: I am not a professional forecaster neither a crystal ball reader, but just a Mechanical Engineer with a career of 40+ years as a researcher / professor in a field transversal to several disciplines and specialties – fracture and fatigue of materials and structures.
As with every other researcher, early in my career I was mainly asked to participate in activities and panels within the strict boundaries of my own research, but as time went by the scope of my activities was progressively enlarged, namely with membership of the board of AdI (percursor of the present ANI) and involvement in several EU activities in fields as aeronautics, civil engineering, transportation but also innovation and higher education management.
Awareness of the past and curiosity about the future motivated my growing interest in the interplay between society and engineering – the societal context within which engineering takes place. In this frame the intended talk at EJIL 2022 will touch the following major topics:

• The engineers – characteristics; tension science/practice; attracting new students to STEM; problem based learning; on-job learning; dual system ….;
• Technology foresight; engineering specialties – aero, mechanical, … ;
• Engineering and innovation – new industry paradigms; ‘industrie 4.0’ and cyber-physical systems;
• Circular economy;
• Sustainability – ocean, space, the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals; ‘Fratelli Tutti’;
• Complexity;
• Globalization – winners and losers; the way forward – John Maynard Keynes, Robert Reich, universal basic income …;
• India; China; demography; China’s output, science …;
• Geostrategy – Halford Mackinder … .