- "The Critical Engineer expands "machine" to describe interrelationships encompassing devices, bodies, agents, forces and networks."
Tenet six, essentially claims that a "Critical Engineer" expands the notion of a "machine" beyond its particular physical manifestation and function (and certainly beyond the abstracted sense of "a machine") and understands and seeks to highlight that its existence requires and is inscribed by several other material and social factors. For example, when personal computers were first being disseminated into the wider public, engineers had to find a way to make them accessible to an unfamiliar, unspecialized public. How, for instance, could they get amateur or professional writers (accustomed to pen, paper, typewriter and desk) to convert to a digital writing platform? Some early word-processors and desktop interfaces chose to adopt the features of their analog predecessors (i.e. Microsoft Bob). Basically, these engineers had to understand that these "machines" had to be translated to accommodate (and slowly adjust) existing social, cultural, and material norms-they certainly did not exist in some vacuum.