Strategies, Tactics, and Critical MakingMatt Ratto (matt.ratto@utoronto.ca)

Critical making signals the ways in which productions—whether of video, web-based communications, gardens, radio transmitters, or robots—are understood as politically transformative activities by the individuals and groups described in each chapter.

❝Ratto & Boler, introduction to DIY Citizenship, MIT Press❞

"Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy”

❝Matthew Crawford❞

This is really the main asset of the maker movement… it creates a community of enthusiastic people who share for free. Our company has hundreds of developers around the world, who we don’t have to pay or to hire, because we have created a place where they can feel part of something… how do we reward them? We teach them. How do we pay them? With a coffee mug.

❝Chris Anderson, quoted from http://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2014/04/29/making-the-other-story/❞

“Indeed, the underlying profit motivation of these companies’ support for DIY suggests that customization—of apps, of handsets, of knowledge—will occur only insofar as it is profitable.”

a problematic tension between “do-it-yourself” and “do-it-for-them"

❝Murphy, Phillips, and Pollock, Ch 18, DIY Citizenship ❞

We suggest that, moving forward, conceptions of DIY citizenship require a more robust account of power relations to avoid familiar and empty invocations surrounding “democracy” rhetoric that too easily slide into liberal assumptions of individualized agency.

❝Ratto & Boler, introduction to DIY Citizenship ❞

A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper (propre) and thus serve as the basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it (competitors, adversaries, "clienteles," "targets," or "objects" of research).

❝De Certeau, 1984, p. 17).❞

The place of a tactic belongs to the other… It has at its disposal no base where it can capitalize on its advantages, prepare its expansions, and secure independence with respect to circumstances…

…because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time – it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized “on the wing. Whatever it wins it does not keep."

❝De Certeau, 1984, p. 17).❞

Can we move beyond the temporal limitations of ‘tactics’ without falling into the objectifications of ‘strategies’?

https://github.com/mattratto/experiences

☞ Ratto, Matt and Megan Boler, eds. DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (2014)

☞ Ratto, Matt, Kirk Jalbert and Sara Wylie. “Critical Making as Research Program: introduction to the forum on Critical Making.” Special Forum issue on Critical Making, The Information Society 30(2). (2014) 85-95.

☞ Wylie, Sara, Kirk Jalbert , Shannon Dosemagen & Matt Ratto “Institutions for Civic Technoscience: How Critical Making is Transforming Environmental Research,” The Information Society 30:2, (2014) 116-126.

☞ Record, Isaac, Matt Ratto, Adriana Ieraci, Nina Czegledy and Amy Ratelle. “DIY Prosthetics Workshops: ‘Critical Making’ for Public Understanding of Human Augmentation.” International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS) 2013, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, June 27-29, 2013.

☞ Schmidt, Ryan and Matt Ratto. “Design-to-Fabricate: Maker Hardware Requires Maker Software.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. (November 2013).

☞ Ratto, Matt and Robert Ree. “Materializing Information: 3D Printing and Social Change.” First Monday 17.7-2 (2012): n.p.

☞ Ratto, Matt. “Textual Doppelgangers: Critical Making as Pedagogy, as Research.” Canadian Communications Association (CCA), proceedings of the Technologies and Emerging Media track, CCA 2012, Ottawa, Canada, May 28-30, 2012. Online proceedings at http://www.tem.fl.ulaval.ca/en/waterloo-2012/

☞ Ratto, Matt. “Open Design and Critical Making.” Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive. Eds. P. Atkinson, M. Avital, B. Mau, R. Ramakers and C. Hummels. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2011. 203-209.

☞ Ratto, Matt. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.” The Information Society 27.4 (2011): 252-260.

☞ Cohn, Marisa, Tobie Kerridge, Ann Light, Silvia Lindtner and Matt Ratto. “Tracing Design(ed) Authority in Critical Modes of Making.” Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2010. New York, USA, August 18-20, 2010. 440-441.

☞ Ratto, Matt. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.” Hybrid Design Practices workshop, Ubicomp, Orlando, Florida, USA, September 30-October 3, 2009.

☞ Ratto, Matt and Stephen Hockema. “Flwr Pwr: Tending the Walled Garden.” Walled Garden. Eds. A. Dekker and A. Wolfsberger. Amsterdam: Virtueel Platform, 2009. 51-60.