Classwork for 9/12

Conventions and Counter Conventions of the Stanford Engineering Website as a Member of the Engineering Community

1. Conventions used by Stanford Engineering
   1. Correct level of formality and voice
   2. Talk of big themes and overarching goal of enginnering, “big world” or global problems
   3. Short attention grabbing article headlines about application of research, not actual experiment
   4. Breakdown of engineering into structured disciplines
2. Conventions not used or Violated by Stanford engineering
   1. Emotional and sensory words used by headlines and articles
   2. Has an article that deals with the impact of a technology on society
   3. Article that deals with no technology and only a social/business survey and proposed solution. No experiment or engineering done

Discussion

1c. Attention grabbing headlines are common in the news, but are also frequent in the engineering community. It is very important that headlines and titles are clear, concise, and to the point so that an engineer looking to work with a certain item will be able to easily locate or find it and instantly know what it is about. This is also true in the area of engineering research, and the few articles about it on the homepage abide by this convention. The title of one article puts the few important details of discovery right on display,  and by reading two lines I know that the whole write up is about a new plastic with heat dispersing properties.

2b. Engineers are trained to work in the physical world, not the social. While it is common and even expected for engineers to know the details of things they design or work on, the large scale analysis of a broad front of new technologies and their impact on global society is not something professional groups of engineers usually spend time discussing. It did stand out immediately as something done outside of convention in order to grab attention.
2c. This Article’s title and content stuck out from the norm and grabbed my attention immediately. It’s title is misleading and attention grabbing, and it’s contents contain no quantitative data whatsoever. It seems entirely out of place, and if reading it out of context one would easily assume it had originated from a social science or business group, not from a website that is meant to deal exclusively with engineering.