Engineering that engineers us

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

This tenet touches upon the extent to which technologies can modify our habits and behaviors. Having experienced dependency engineering in a variety of online and offline settings – Duolingo, Facebook and Scientology come to mind – I find that this tenet is particularly pressing. With an awareness of the potential for engineers to affect the behavior of their users, the critical engineer can go on to deconstruct and critique habit-forming structures.

A critical engineer might be interested in appropriating a tactic like gamification in an artwork or provocation, so as to bring it to the attention of the public sphere. Concretely, this might involve rewarding participants with a badge for every hour that they clean a window. As an aside, I think it’s crucial for an engineer or maker to be intensely aware of the ethical dimension of her work.