Critical making, as envisioned by Ratto in 2011, was much more focused on the constructive process of making as opposed to building an artifact. While critical design is focused on building refined objects to generate critique of traditional industrial design, critical making was initially conceived as a workshop framework with the final prototypes existing only as a remnant of the process [19]. Critical design, on the other hand, tends to be focused on building objects that document well, with the artifacts themselves challenging concepts like optimization, efficiency, social norms, and utopianism. Critical design is object-oriented; critical making is process-oriented and scholarship-oriented: “Critical making emphasizes the shared acts of making rather than the evocative object. The final prototypes are not intended to be displayed and to speak for themselves” [19]. Ratto’s emphasis is on using hands-on techniques to augment the process of critical thinking about information systems, while Dunne and Raby’s critical design is primarily focused on building photo and video props for the construction of a speculative narrative to help us rethink designed objects and consumer culture.

If you don’t train the soul, the global/digital cannot be used right.

So yes, I’m very critical of people who come forward to help without any idea of what it requires to be able to understand. At the bottom, the first right is the right to refuse. This is something I say to my students in the villages. I say, “I’m your enemy. I’m good and my parents were good but two generations do not undo thousands of years.”

Activity trackers like FitBit evolved out of spreadsheet computer logs that the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports started keeping in the 1990s, to create better records of the fitness of American citizens, and establish national averages against which they could compare themselves. As a fat middle-school student, I huffed and puffed through the Presidential Fitness Challenge in sheer terror of that spreadsheet.

In December 2014, FitBit released a pledge stating that it “is deeply committed to protecting the security of your data.” Still, we may soon be obliged to turn over the sort of information the device is designed to collect in order to obtain medical coverage or life insurance. Some companies currently offer incentives like discounted premiums to members who volunteer information from their activity trackers. Many health and fitness industry experts say it is only a matter of time before all insurance providers start requiring this information.