The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

This book is probably about a very different kind of ”engineering” than what you had in mind, but it’s been highly influential to my thinking: “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.” Berger & Luckmann 1966. Perhaps the core insight to me is that not only does every practice of engineering exist as embedded in the context of a socially constructed reality, but the practice of engineering itself also fundamentally involves the continual construction of such realities. In other words, for a software engineer to be able to do their job, they must among other things be a kind of applied social epistemologist. I expect this framing doesn’t make much sense to many readers — I’m hoping the following articles might serve to illustrate: “Programming as Theory Building.” Peter Naur, Microprocessing and Microprogramming 1985 (https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-6074%2885%2990032-8)…