This book is about understanding technology using the perspective of systems. It addresses the need for an accessible approach to understanding the broad range of technological devices and systems that create the modern world. Understanding technological systems offers an introduction to engineering and technology centered on the underlying structure common to all technological objects. This framework views technological systems as created using components to provide specific capabilities or functions. Components contributing well-defined functions interact with other components to create systems. Major topics include the concepts of technological function and the embedding of functional capabilities in physical components, the hierarchical nature of systems, and the clustering of related systems into technological domains. The book fills the gap between engineering science and engineering design.
Introduction.- Technology: Form and Function.- Transforming Materials,
Energy, and Information.- Components and Subfunctions.- Phenomena and
Models.- Diversity of Underlying Principles.- Component Parameterization and
Transfer.- Components, Systems, and Sociotechnical System.- System Design.-
Technological Domains.- Evolution and Innovation.
John Krupczak, Jr. is a professor of engineering at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He has been a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Advancement of the Scholarship of Engineering Education (CASEE) of the National Academy of Engineering. Krupczak was founding chair of the Technological and Engineering Literacy Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). From 20132016 he served as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. Krupczak received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and a B.A. in Physics from Williams College. He is a contributing author to 30-Second Engineering: 50 key principles, methods, and fields explained in half a minute (Ivy Press 2019) and Philosophy and Engineering Education: New Perspectives, An Introduction (Morgan & Claypool 2022).
