A couple of months ago, I attended a lecture, where the guest lecture, Jon Wade, was talking about the importance of System Engineering in solving tomorrows problems. It made total sense, a lot of the challenges that America is facing in this new decade and century are systematic challenges.
For example, when the Christmas day suspect terrorist was able to board the plane, Obama said: “ System Failed in a major way”(SILOBreaker). He did not mention a particular agency or entity for the failure, like the CIA or HLS agency, but he mentioned a system level failure. That is because times have changed and true essence of synergy is shaping more as a reality than a myth. As Aristotle once said it, the whole is the sum of its parts, and that is a challenge that we are still facing and where Systems Engineer would have a big impact.
The same goes for the solution to the Health care reform or starting the green technology revolution for the future. As the complexitiy of problems increase, there needs to be a new set of tools and methods to approach these problems, and that is what Systems Engineers need to think about.