This was going to be an article on how writers on computer security misuse the term “social engineering.” However, my research quickly showed that the tech usage has almost completely displaced the original meaning. When that happens, it’s useless to say it’s wrong.

An example of the original usage can be found on encyclopedia.com under “Large Scale Social Engineering”:

Large scale efforts to improve the human condition are a modern phenomenon. Such endeavors require technical knowledge, political muscle, and economic resources. In supporting these claims, James Scott (1998) characterizes the rise of high modernism in social-political, agricultural, industrial, and architectural contexts during the last two centuries. High modernism encompasses a quest for authoritarian control of both human and nonhuman nature, a belief that carefully crafted social order surpasses happenstance, and a confidence in science as a means to social progress. Once the improvement of humanity becomes a plausible state goal, the convergence of rising social science, state bureaucracy, and mass media undergirds five-year collectivist plans, colonial development schemes, revolutionary agricultural programs, and the like, often under the control of a single planning entity.

It’s “engineering” in the sense that society is treated as a system, a machine. If you understand how one part is linked to another, how ideas flow, how the components react, you can try to control a society as if it were a machine. The movie Metropolis provided some unforgettable images of what an “engineered” society looks like.

Norton provides a form of the new definition:

Social engineering is the act of tricking someone into divulging information or taking action, usually through technology. The idea behind social engineering is to take advantage of a potential victim’s natural tendencies and emotional reactions.

That’s not social, and it’s not engineering. It would be interesting to find out how the term came to be used this way, but shifts of meaning don’t have to make sense. They just have to get into widespread use. “Corn” originally meant any kind of grain. “Steins” for drinking were originally stoneware (from the German word for “stone”) but now are rarely made from stone. “Noon” comes from the Latin word for “nine”; in ancient Rome, noon didn’t happen till nine hours after sunrise, or something like that.

I can’t claim that it’s wrong, but I still dislike the term “social engineering” for an activity which is neither. If a client insists that I use the term in my writing, I won’t refuse the assignment for that reason alone, but when I have a choice, I avoid it.