Brief Talk for [proto:type]Y2014 – The Yogyakarta Meeting on Open Culture and Critical Making. http://www.natural-fiber.com/y2014/

1. Strategies, Tactics, and Critical
Making
Matt Ratto (matt.ratto@utoronto.ca)

3. 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❞

5. "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❞

7. 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/❞

8. “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 ❞

9. 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 ❞

11. 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).❞

12. 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).❞

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

14. https://github.com/mattratto/experiences

15. ☞ 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.

16. ☞ 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.

17. ☞ 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.

18. ☞ 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.