From the very beginning, the idea of utopia has been purely hypothetical. The word utopia, as coined by Thomas More in his book by the same name (1516), comes from the combination of the Greek roots eu, meaning good, and ou, meaning no as well as topos, or place. Putting these together gives the double meaning of the good place that is no place. The literary history of utopian fiction predates Moore, going as far back as Plato’s Republic (ca. 360 B.C.). Later examples include Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1626), and L.S. Mercier’s Memoirs of the Year 2500 (1772).

During the peak of utopian writing, which lasted from the 1880's to the 1920’s, two main classes of utopia emerged, social and technological. Social utopias deal with the social change that must occur before mankind as a whole will be ready for utopia. Writings in this vein include Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1916) and Edward Johnson's Light Ahead for the Negro (1904). Technological utopias, on the other hand, show how through technological advancement society will naturally evolve into a utopia. They tend to focus on how, through the perfectly efficient use of technological tools extrapolated from those already in use at the author's time, all the wants and needs of the population may be provided. Notable technological utopias are The Crystal Button (1891) by Chauncy Thomas and Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) by Edward Bellamy.

From the 1920’s onward, science fiction saw a backlash to utopian fiction which led to the creation of dystopian fiction. These stories oppose utopias based on the necessary homogenization of the individuals living in such societies. The history of dystopian fiction overlaps that of utopian with E.M. Foresters The Machine Stops (1909) and progresses to include 1984 (1949) by George Orwell. Presently, the genre presents itself as hetero-topic and post-singularity fiction including The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson and Rudy Rucker’s Realware (2000) in which the writers struggle with the human problems posed by utopian ideals.

Regardless of the authors opinion about the desirability of utopian societies, the engineering tools and technologies used to create and maintain the societies are similar, whether used as either a means for providing equality or maintaining homogeneity. In order for the created societies to be plausible issues including transportation, power supply, land use, communication, and even domestic life must be taken up and answered in some, often, technological way. The specifics of the technologies applied to these issues are up to the engineer or engineers called upon to solve the problems they pose. Often, as seen in the extent of the extrapolations made by the earliest authors of technological utopias, a vast amount of creativity is required on the part of the engineer in order to anticipate and handle every possible outcome of the application of such widespread and powerful technology. In her book Shifting Gears Cecelia Tichi defines this character, the creative engineer, as a technological artist applying his craft in the most universally ethical manner. The following resources can act as guides for a new generation of creative engineers, helping them to foresee the endless applications of emerging technologies and their double edged capacity for destruction and advancement.