awe of implementation

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.