Is engineering ready for prime time?

 

Historically, engineering has been an uncool profession. Popular culture's focus has always steered clear of our career choice, probably because we're viewed as overly practical, even boring. Flip channels during prime-time hours over the past couple of decades, and you most likely would find ER, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues, or similar shows touting the excitement and drama of being a doctor, lawyer, or policeman. Apparently, Hollywood types found nothing sexy about engineers ... or maybe I missed big hits with names like Youngstown Design, Drafting Brothers, and CAD. About the closest we ever came to the spotlight was Mike Brady in The Brady Bunch, who worked as an architect. True, there was that show called Designing Women, but that was about something else entirely.

Popular movies have been a little more liberal with casting engineering or science types as central characters. But, unfortunately, the majority that come to mind are dweeby, almost mad-scientist inventors. Think of Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown in Back to the Future or Rick Moranis' Wayne Szalinski in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Now, before you tell me that average engineers simply aren't interesting enough to base entire characters on, think about the computer programmers who are featured on television and the big screen: Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, the Lone Gunmen in The X-Files. Hackers have been in film at least since War Games &emdash; heck, they even had a whole movie called Hackers in 1995. You won't convince me that sitting in front of a computer writing code is inherently more interesting than designing a product or machine.

But maybe things are changing since Dilbert hit the papers. Scott Adams' amusing caricatures of our profession have introduced millions to the trials and tribulations of engineers. And checking out some of the cable channels yields a few pleasant surprises. The Discovery Channel has been showcasing a series called Extreme Engineering, focusing on amazing engineering projects, both real and imagined. Episodes have covered Boston's Big Dig, a proposed Bering Strait tunnel, and Hong Kong's new island airport, to name a few. Junkyard Wars on TLC features everyday citizens trying to engineer something out of garbage (literally). Even the Travel Channel is into the act with shows like World's Best Megastructures.

Engineering probably isn't ready for network prime time, at least just yet. But considering that the doctors, lawyers, and policemen shown usually have substandard morals, maybe we don't want to be the next big thing. The main characters in most popular programming are usually having an affair, killing someone, or plotting something nefarious. And, crazy or not, at least Doc Brown got the girl in Back to the Future 3.

Send us your favorite engineering-type characters from television or the movies, or your best ideas for an engineering sitcom, and we'll print some of the best.

Paul J. Heney
senior editor