nature vs. nurture and social engineering

Anita Mage mage at zedat.fu-berlin.de
Sat Sep 9 01:20:44 PDT 2000


I have a question on terminology: do people really say they're doing social engineering today? the term has a definite early 20th century tone to me.

"social engineering" certainly didn't emerge fullgrown from the head of a rockefeller foundation officer, but, according to lily kay, it was - or rather the perception at the time of its failures was - a big part of the background to the rf's push into molecular biology (see Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life. Caltech, the Rockefeller Foudation and the Rise of the New Biology. Oxford 1993).

Anita

Mikalac Norman responding to kelley:


>
>"who said anyone was interested in social engineering in the first place.
>the only people i've ever heard say that the left aree, exclusively, the
>social engineers were people who self identified as conservatives. as such,
>the label and assumptions behind it are already suspect."
>
>- ---------------------------
>
>i am interested in it because lots of people all over the globe do social
>engineering all the time. i like to follow the intended and the actual
>effects.
>
>correct, social engineering, i.e., intentionally changing people's behavior
>patterns within some environment, wherever that may be, can occur from the
>Right, Left, Center, etc. happens all the time by people who have power,
>e.g., ED, DOL, HHS, WTO, IRS, OPEC, CCP, USSR, parents, etc.
>
>strange, unexpected things often happen when social engineers make little
>changes and stranger things happen when they make BIG changes. anyway,
>that's what i see.
>
>norm



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