Exposing Technology
Tenant 0 of the Critical Engineering Manifesto
The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.
In my own words
A “Critical Engineer” is an engineer (in this context, more likely a programmer/hacker/roboticist than, say, a mechanical engineer) who believes that Engineering (which I read as technology/products of engineering) has immense cultural influence. Such an engineer, beyond learning about and deconstructing technologies, uses his or her knowledge of those technologies to infiltrate them, and to show others how those technologies affect their behavior and assumptions.
Based on the tenant’s description of such a Critical Engineer, I imagine someone deeply understanding web technologies, then using that understanding to, say, hack Facebook, and replace a person’s newsfeed with a message to go offline.
And as much as hacking Facebook and telling people to get off it is an appealing idea, I worry that that idea and the Critical Engineer’s manifesto are naive. They focus on critique of new technologies, assuming tech is nefarious and needs to be “exposed”, rather than on really thinking about the role technology plays in people’s lives, and how the people they wish to inform will react to the “exposure”.
Questions this raised for me:
- How much does technology shape the way we move, communicate, and think? Is it enough to really make a difference in people’s lives? Does it make the basic experience of being a human now that different from that of humans of the past?
- How aware are people of the influence technology has on their lives, and what is the best way to make them think reflectively about this?
- How do the roles of critic/outsider and creator/insider overlap? What can someone in each role achieve?
- Are hackers (in general and specific ones) doing it for the attention and recognition, or to really change things for the better?