Summit Wrap-Up, Part 1
Imagine waking up on a Spring morning in 2046. Over the last two decades, the U.S. has experienced a sustained period of technological progress, rapid economic growth, social prosperity, and environmental stewardship.
Central to the achievement of this abundant future has been the engineering community. Through their commitments, actions, and achievements the engineering community has emerged as the pre-eminent driver of economic growth and abundance in the 21st Century.
Looking back to 2025, the disruptive change and “future shock” experienced across the country due to governmental actions and the explosive growth of AI that year constituted, in the words of social scientist Kurt Lewin, an “unfreezing” moment. Previously frozen systems, policies, ways of doing things, and attitudes were suddenly tractable and new possibilities for positive futures emerged.
Acting on these new possibilities, the engineering community stepped up to take a major leadership role to drive positive changes and help create, what James Pethokoukis, in his book, The Conservative Futurist, termed an “upwing” future through developments such as:
- By 2027 the first net positive data center in the world pointed the way toward a solution for the massive increases in the consumption of water and energy by data centers.
- By 2030, a comprehensive national infrastructure master plan – with accompanying digital twins – was created to guide ongoing investment and development of critical infrastructure throughout the country.
- By 2030, small modular nuclear reactors were being deployed across the U.S and making a major contribution toward a carbon-free, sustainable energy supply. By 2046 abundant, inexpensive, clean energy was available for all.
- By 2032, quantum computing had graduated from the “hype-cycle” and moved into widespread use, accelerating positive use of digital technologies and AI across the economy and for the benefit of society.
- By 2035, an integrated transportation system, combining advanced surface and air transportation technologies began to emerge. By 2046, this system allowed people to travel anywhere within a 100-mile radius within 1 hour, and anywhere in the U.S. within 2 hours.
- Economic progress was balanced with environmental stewardship, resulting in substantial progress toward a “best case” environmental condition for the country.
Beyond actions driving technological innovations and addressing grand engineering challenges, the engineering community also deeply engaged in, and led, a range of collaborative efforts across society to create positive change in each of Ezra Klein’s five dimensions – grow, build, govern, invent, deploy – that, he argued in his book Abundance, are necessary for achieving an abundant future.
The engineering community’s embrace of a transformational imperative for itself was key to this success. After decades of struggling to make even incremental changes, the unfreezing of 2025 emboldened the engineering community to radically transform its education, practice, business, and licensure models and build the core capabilities and skills to meet the demands of the Twenty-First Century.
By 2036, engineering became the most sought after profession in society. Engineering education now tops all other STEM disciplines in attracting and retaining young, diverse talent. The adoption of a new growth mindset, removal of unnecessary barriers to entry, and rethinking of recruiting, admissions, curricula, and teaching practices transformed engineering education. A generation of graduates coming out of these re-invigorated programs has, in turn, fostered a new inclusive culture and innovation-oriented mindset across engineering practices of all types.
In 2026, major professional, non-profit, educational, and private organizations within the engineering community ecosystem fully embraced the urgency of this transformational imperative. Together, they created and communicated a new, shared aspirational vision for the engineering community in the U.S., charted a new trajectory into the future, and identified key strategies for truly becoming primary drivers of economic growth, prosperity and abundance in the decades leading up to the country’s tri-centennial.
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This scenario captures the heart of the collective inquiry and imagination that emerged during Engineering Change Lab – USA’s latest summit: Beyond Disruption: Pioneering a New Path for the Engineering Community.
Fifty leaders of all ages drawn from the engineering community convened in Austin, Texas on November 5 and 6, 2025, to take a clear-eyed look at the unprecedented wave of change and disruption being experienced in 2025. They envisioned aspirational goals and a new path forward that would allow the engineering community to fulfill its critical role in society.
In coming days, we will communicate more about the wisdom and perspective offered by the six summit evocateurs and a panel of engineering students, as well as the collective insights and possibilities that emerged as participants engaged in this deep dive into the future. Stay tuned.
