Why does smooth know-how be triumphant so brilliantly in a few respects and concurrently fail in others? whereas he was once finishing a doctoral thesis in mechanical engineering within the past due 60s and early 70s, Willem Vanderburg turned confident that the environmental obstacle and the potential limits to development will require a basic swap within the engineering, administration and rules of technology.

In this quantity he exposes the restrictions of traditional ways in those fields. sleek societies urgently have to reconsider the highbrow department of labour in technological know-how and expertise and the corresponding association of the college, company, and govt on the way to get out of a self-destructive development the place difficulties are first created by way of a few than then handled by way of others, making it virtually most unlikely to get to the roots of whatever. the result's what he calls the labyrinth of know-how, a turning out to be patchwork of compensations that simply displace and rework difficulties from one position to a different. The author's prognosis indicates the treatment: a brand new, preventive procedure that situates technological and monetary development in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts, and demands a synthesis of equipment in engineering, administration, and public coverage, and of techniques within the social sciences and arts. He additionally means that this similar synthesis will be utilized in drugs, legislations, social paintings, and different professions.

The Labyrinth of expertise is a different and beneficial textual content for college students, lecturers and laypersons in all disciplines, and speaks to those that are torn among the advantages that sleek expertise offers and the problems it creates in our person and collective lives.