Highlights from the reading list: Philip Agre's 1998 chapter "Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI". Agre, an MIT-trained AI researcher, narrates his growing disillusionment with AI discourse in incredibly prescient ways. www.dourish.com/classes/read... - ThreadSky

apmcpherson.bsky.social • 16 days ago

Highlights from the reading list: Philip Agre's 1998 chapter "Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI". Agre, an MIT-trained AI researcher, narrates his growing disillusionment with AI discourse in incredibly prescient ways. https://www.dourish.com/classes/readings/Agre-CriticalTechnicalPractice.pdf

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apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

This short paper has been a guide for me in navigating between engineering and critical theory. Some quotes: "Computers are representational artifacts, and the people who design them often start by constructing representations of the activities that are found in the sites where they will be used..."

apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

"A computer, then, does not simply have an instrumental use in a given site of practice; the computer is frequently about that site in its very design. In this sense computing has been constituted as a kind of imperialism; it aims to reinvent virtually every other site of practice in its own image."

apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

Agre writes about AI as a discursive practice which conflates representations with the things they represent. He also discussing the difficulty in challenging the prevailing discourse: "The seemingly commonsensical demand to prove alternatives in practice is thus actually...

apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

"... a demand to express disagreements with the existing language within the existing language itself, and this is nearly impossible... Critics will be asked, "what's your alternative?", within a tacit system of discursive rules that virtually rules out alternatives from the start."

apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

The paper is about AI in the 80's/90's, but it still rings true in 2025 and, to my reading, goes a long way toward illuminating the mindsets of the master-of-the-universe types who are wrecking so many things in the name of technical progress.

apmcpherson.bsky.social•16 days ago

But the answer isn't to just stop doing tech! Agre concludes: "A critical technical practice will, at least for the foreseeable future, require a split identity -- one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique."

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