Critical Technical Practice (CTP)
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Critical technical practice is a critical theory based approach towards technological design proposed by Phil Agre where critical and cultural theories are brought to bear in the work of designers and engineers. One of the goals of critical technical practice is to increase awareness and critical reflection on the hidden assumptions, ideologies and values underlying technology design. It was developed by Agre in response to a perceived lack in Artificial intelligence research in the late 20th century, and continues to influence critical AI in 2021.
— Wikipedia page on critical technical practice
“Critical technical practice” was proposed by Phil Agre in his 1997 paper: “Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI”. Critical AI and critical technology studies are adjacent areas that apply critical theory to study technology or AI. However, these areas are mainly in the humanities disciplines, not in the core of technical disciplines. To enable the critical thinking and critical theory to better guide the technical development and practice, especially in the current time when technologies have created significant social impacts, we revitalize Agre‘s idea and start this initiative of critical technical practice as an collective action to improve the scientific rigor, ethics, and responsibility of our technical practices in the technical community.
As mentioned in Jin et al., 2025, as technical people, we are good at solving the“how” question to develop various techniques, but asking the philosophical “why” question may not be what we are good at. However, the lack of critical reflections of our technical practice can be dangerous: it “may render the community susceptible to being trapped by suboptimal objectives, influenced by distorted research agenda, and manipulated for unjust purposes” (Jin et al., 2025). But no worries. We can train our “critical technical practice” muscles just like the way we learn to solve technical problems. We believe critical technical practice is a skill that can be learned by and taught to both technical and non-technical audiences. This is the goal of the “critical technical practice” initiative.