“5. The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user, proportional to that user’s dependency upon it.”

Some time ago, I went on a trip with my family. We drove for hours, so we had plenty of time to chat, listen to music, and enjoy the sceneries passing by. By end of the day we reached our hotel, and the moment I got into my room, my laptop sprang into my hand, and 3 Google Chrome tabs flew out to open my email, cnn.com, and Facebook. I need to catch up on all the information I had missed in those hours of non-connectivity. But in fact I just cut connection from my family and my immediate surroundings. “Catching up” to all the information is just an excuse; I am just an addict.

The more we rely on technology, the more it controls us. I am already affected by it, and chances are, I will one day be taking part in its evolution. I need to know what I am getting myself into.

4. The Critical Engineer looks beyond the ‘awe of implementation’ to determine methods of influence and their specific effects.

Tenet four of The Critical Engineering Manifesto denotes a time especially important during the formation of art.  To understand and engage in the dialogue of the work, and artist must anticipate its reaction among viewers. This is the way the artist progresses through his or her creative process: listening to the intentions, the decisions of execution, and the possibilities of impact of the work. The process is similar to testing code for bugs and tweaking its meat until it fulfills the desired or newly discovered purpose. I find this parallel process interesting. A programmer and an artist must be aware of the potential positive or negative effects of their creations on the world. Technology and art are open ended and their uses vary between users.  My uses for a cell phone are generally benign, though mobile phones can be used as spying devices or detonators; In this way the residue of one artwork could drive me to re-evaluate my life goals, but the same work could bring another peace of mind.

4. The Critical Engineer looks beyond the 'awe of implementation' to determine methods of influence and their specific effects.

In other words, instead of merely implementing something and marveling at how you made it, you should have the foresight to see what kind of influence the work will have, and how exactly the work will influence the world. I found this tenet interesting because it sounds like a tenet many people broke in the past (and still are). The easiest instance would be weapons of mass destruction. These things were created without thought to the future, without what the creations would mean to the world. It’s also relevant to the arts, to know the social and political repercussions you will have from creating your work.

A common example would be running hundreds of simulations for a new implementation of something. This is well practiced in industries today mostly because it’s cost-effective, not because the hand of the economy is looking at the social and political consequences the products would unleash upon the world. Sure, businessmen would look at how it would “engineer” the consumers, but not how it would “engineer” the people. A hypothetical situation would be an editorial on the potential of a new engineered product–though not so hypothetical, since these editorials are published all the time (“What ____ means for you”). Then again, these editorials are from the consumers, not from the creators, so it seems it is rare to find the purest form of this tenet being practiced.

1. The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat. The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision.

                                –“The Critical Engineering Manifesto” by Julian Oliver et al. (2011)

It is no wonder that society has come to rely on modern conveniences so much. Technology is upgrading itself a thousandfold as you read this entry. However, with all these upgrades, society also gains the responsibility of learning this technology inside and out. We need to be sure of a device’s reliability and be able to modify it into something even more dependable. After all, we are entrusting a great portion of our lives to someone’s invention, and if we are ignorant about the inner mechanisms of our technology, we are at the mercy of the inventors or the technology itself.

This point in the manifesto speaks to me greatly because I have felt the consequences of engineering illiteracy. When most of us see a smartphone, laptop, or television, we don’t see past their flashy screens all the time. We can’t help it. They are designed with such ingenuity that their inner workings could just as well be magic. But that leaves us at a disadvantage when we try to define and shape the foundations of our modern society.

Last class I learned about a group of critical engineers called the Graffiti Research Lab. They revised a Kinect camera into an Eyewriter for a graffiti artist who could only move his eyes. The project is an inspiration, for it created a device that revolutionized a patient’s way of living from a few hundred dollars, as opposed to thousands. In addition, they distributed the blueprints so others could implement the Eyewriter and make an impact.

5. The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user, proportional to that user’s dependency upon it.

This tenet expresses how the people who use these ‘works of engineering’ are in fact ‘used’ by the works themselves – in the sense that they allow themselves to be so easily shaped by their own devices. I find this tenet interesting and see a lot of truth in it because I believe that there is always a special dialogue in the interaction between the user and the creation. Utilitarian creations, in particular, have had a great impact on the lives of humans – and I feel that our lifestyles have been firmly molded by the objects we have made for ourselves.

Take, for instance, cell phones: whenever I go out I see people of different ages immersed in their tiny boxes of plastic and circuitry. Even I, on occasion, allow myself to get lost in the world offered by this small box when I feel the need to pass the time. Why do we do this? Well, what else can we do while we wait for our meal at the restaurant or stand in a long line at the grocery? Over the years, we seemed to have developed a dependency on our mobile devices, seeking a quick relief from the boredom of the outside world by going to the one presented on a 3-inch LCD screen. The question is whether we have conditioned ourselves to do this, or the item has conditioned us.