Happy WTD!

I just learned that November 19 is World Toilet Day, a holiday of sorts promoted by the World Toilet Organization (WTO), “a global non- profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide.” The WTO points out that 2.5 billion people representing 40% of the world’s population are without access to sanitation. The organization is looking for help from people ranging from artists to product designers-the latter to help design toilets, superstructure, and treatment plants. Although toilets are hardly semiconductor intensive, treatment plants are likely to require the application of data-acquisition and control technologies. (If you want to improve sanitation, you have to be able to measure the lack of it.)

The WTD announcement caught my attention because it brought to mind an address Geoffrey C. Orsak, dean of the Southern Methodist University School of Engineering, presented at a conference on mechatronics (sponsored by EDN and sibling publications) May 13, 2008, in Santa Clara. His focus was not sanitation but electrification (although the presence of the later could certainly help with the former). He commented that 1.6 billion people worldwide have no access at all to electricity. “We as engineers accepted the fact that we were only going to have an impact on three-fourths of the world,” he said, adding that we apparently concluded, “That’s good enough.”

But it’s not good enough, and Orsak advocated for a “new engineer”–one who is not gadget-oriented but rather people-oriented. That’s definitely worth reflecting on, and acting on, as we move past WTD into the more traditional holiday season.