"5. The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user, proportional to that user's dependency upon it."
I interpret this tenet to mean that the Critical Engineer is responsible for understanding the potential effects their work may have on the individuals who use it. Art and technology have the capacity to change people, with this capacity being "proportional to that user's dependency upon it," meaning that the more emotional investment the consumer has in the product, the more likely it is to change them. I thought this tenet was interesting because it addresses that people engineering inanimate objects happens just as often as the opposite. A real example of this is the modern man's relationship with his smartphone. It's cliched at this point, but most citizens living in the developed world today are dependent on their smartphone for communication, information, entertainment, transportation, and more. This dependency can lead to addiction, and can alter the user's lifestyle and relationships with other people. Simultaneously, this new way to connect people around the world and access to a growing multitude of information previously unavailable to previous generations can help contribute to the user's cultural and intellectual growth.