social engineeringn.
/ˌsəʊʃl ˌɛn(d)ʒᵻˈnɪərɪŋ/, U.S. /ˌsoʊʃ(ə)l ˌɛndʒəˈnɪrɪŋ/ 1. Politics (originally U.S.). The use of centralized planning in an attempt to manage social change and regulate the future development and behaviour of a society.
ΘΚΠ
society > society and the community > study of society > [noun] > other branches
social history1814
social geography1828
social dynamics1843
social statics1843
socio-economics1893
genetics1896
biosociology1897
social engineering1899
social morphology1899
psychosociology1902
socionomics1902
political sociology1905
sociobiology1912
social planning1913
social constructionist1925
futurology1946
sociobiology1946
structural anthropology1950
squalorology1961
proxemics1963
future research1969
women's studies1969
future study1971
social constructionism1976
social constructivism1981
1899 Social Engineering Sept. 18 The following subjects were adopted for A Course of Lectures on Modern Social Problems... Social Engineering a New Profession.
1920 M. Beer Hist. Brit. Socialism II. iv. xiv. 287 The Fabian Society appears to form an institute for social engineering.
1945 K. R. Popper Open Society, Notes 318 The name ‘interventionism’ could indeed cover the three main types of social engineering in our time: the collectivist interventionism of Russia; the democratic interventionism of Sweden and the ‘Smaller Democracies’ and the New Deal in America.
1993 Time 18 Jan. 36/1 Singapore, long an object of curiosity for its unique blend of open economics, authoritarian politics and social engineering, is attracting attention as a model society.
2. Chiefly Computing. The use of deception in order to induce a person to divulge private information or esp. unwittingly provide unauthorized access to a computer system or network.
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1990 Super(cilious)Nova in comp.org.eff.talk (Usenet newsgroup) 5 Oct. Hackers..are quite adept at ‘social engineering’ to obtain information useful to their purpose.
2002 K. D. Mitnick Art of Deception i. 4 Social engineering attacks can succeed when people are stupid or, more commonly, simply ignorant about good security practices.
2008 Guardian (Nexis) 3 Apr. (Technology section) 2 The attack..uses ‘social engineering’ to get users to install something else, such as a video codec that is actually a Trojan.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1899