
The Critical Engineering Manifesto - HugoMelo
http://criticalengineering.org/
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peterwwillis
This has got to be the most interesting way anyone has made money off a
combination of cypherpunk culture and paranoia over control of the internet.

    
    
      In the second phase of the workshop students learn to read network topologies
      as political control structures, seeing how corporations and governments shape
      and control the way we use computer networks.
      
      Students learn to study these power structures by tracing the flow of packets
      as they pass over land and sea.
      
      Macro-economic and geostrategic speculations are made.

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noir_lord
> The Critical Engineer deconstructs and incites suspicion of rich user
> experiences.

I've read that a dozen times and I still have no idea what it's supposed to
mean, is this meant to be a Koan?

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mlsptn
I read it as two things: 1) Critical Engineers are skeptical that "rich user
experiences" are the most effective way of interacting with systems, 2) "rich
user experiences" tend to oversimplify and misrepresent systems for the sake
of usability or aesthetics.

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dcre
> The Critical Engineer looks to the history of art, architecture, activism,
> philosophy and invention and finds exemplary works of Critical Engineering.

I'd be interested to hear some of those examples. Does describing a form of
government or human organization count as engineering?

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guizzy
Seems like a misguided attempt to break engineering the same way social
sciences were largely broken; by embedding left-wing politics at their core so
that their assumptions are not scrutinized and by substituting sound
scientific method with literary analysis.

~~~
mlsptn
You're really missing the point if you think this document is proposing an
alternative to engineering. It's addressed to a subset of artists and
engineers deeply concerned with the political and interpretative dimensions of
engineering.

While there is usually a technical aspect to critical engineering projects,
most engage issues well beyond the scope of the "sound scientific method."
See: CV Dazzle by Adam Harvey. [1] I suggest looking at Garnet Hertz's
_Critical Making_ for a more informed picture of this kind of work. [2]

[1] [http://ahprojects.com/projects/cv-
dazzle/](http://ahprojects.com/projects/cv-dazzle/)

[2] [https://twitter.com/criticalpdfs](https://twitter.com/criticalpdfs)

