Technology and Imagination: Exploring Trends in Society, Culture and Design
By: Rocío Fatás
Tags: Subversive, Imagination, Design, Technology, Rationalization

A Workshop for India HCI, 2019, by Rocío Fatás, Sumita Sharma and Grace Eden

Please register to India HCI here. For direct information on workshop participation, contact Rocío rocio.fatas[at]srishti.ac.in, or Sumita sumita.sharma[at]tuni.fi

Have you ever wondered what is the role of imagination in the processes that shape technology? Do you think the current state of technological affairs is the only possible reality? What new forms of technology could emerge if we chose to look at the world from broader or more specific and more varied cultural lenses?

Learning objectives

This is a half day exploratory workshop delving deep into the concepts of technology and imagination by identifying current trends in society, culture, and design principles and practices. By putting imagination at the center, the workshop will parallelly explore:

Knowledge and experience in designing with the lenses of local cultural practices, whether existing or plausible

How technological impositions impact cultural realities, including

Reactions to existing technologies Adaptations, and Imagining alternatives (subversive rationalization [1])

New technological possibilities through

Systems and services Methodologies

Schedule

Introductions and Ice-breaker

Introduction to the topic by the moderators

Introduction to the group activity with an example

Group activity

Exercise 1 — TECHNOLOGY: critical analysis Exercise 2 — IMAGINATION: speculative design practices and guided exercises of imagination

Discussions

Wrap-up

Abstract

While we are said to live in a globalised world, cultural plurality is a reality. However, practices of design research and technological design are more often than not guided by very particular, non-diverse, non-plural ways of thinking. But does it need to be this way? This workshop aims to explore and understand culturally specific access to technological imagination through critical and speculative design. The outcomes will comprise culturally specific, non-hegemonic alternatives for technological artefacts and uses of technology.

Author Keywords

Technology and Imagination, Critical Design, Speculative Design, Technology and Culture.

Introduction

Does digital technology free us or does it enslave us? Theorists and philosophers such as Nick Dyer-Witheford[2] or Markus Gabriel are now referring to digital users as digital proletariat, or cyber-proletariat. While there is consensus in accepting that technological development has the potential to democratise societies, and design methodologies such as collaborative research support this claim in effect [4], it can be argued that we are still very far from living in a technologically mediated utopian world. Many of the practices that are embedded in the use and design of technology, are crafted with tendentious claims and purpose [6]. While widespread access to mobile devices such as smartphones grants many benefits across sectors in global societies, they carry with them multiple sets of impositions of meaning that modify societal behaviours without proper understanding of its implications.

These impositions of meaning (whether hegemonic or not) are the result of imaginations that belong in particular contexts. Imagination is a cognitive function that extends our understanding and experience of reality, creating possibilities that stem from what we know [7]. And what we know guides our processes as designers of technological artefacts and uses of technology. However, when the technological products of particular imaginations are removed from their origins and introduced in other contexts, cultural clashes may occur, which can lead to conflict or transformation, both at societal and individual levels. For example, digital access to information is often linguistically biased, which can affect social status and impact self esteem, or induce a negative attitude towards digitally underrepresented languages [9].

Imagination is key to human understanding and meaning making [8]. While each individual has their inescapable, singular imagination, there are imaginations that belong collectively (such as a particular form of script or a specific cultural practice). These reflections of common, plural imaginations, are harder to find in technological artefacts, but nonetheless still present in varied degrees of subtlety in less solid, less fixed aspects of technological design, such as interactions and experiences, aesthetics, and uses. For example, while the design of smartphones is virtually identical across nations, the visual appearance for a particular app may change to be more appealing for a culturally specific market, automated voice interactions may be customised to fit cultural norms, and experiences may be designed differently to adjust to cultural expectations [5]. Yet, these items of collective imaginations, are often put at the service of commerce or embedded in particular, less culturally specific contexts (healthcare, education, etc…). But what does it take to rethink technology in a globalised time from more cultural, more locally specific lenses of imagination?

Furthermore, what if the hegemonic logic behind technological design is challenged at its core, and the rationalization that it supposes to exercise is in fact questioned? What methodologies and ways of thinking would facilitate subversive rationalization in culturally specific contexts in practices of design of technological artefacts and uses of technology?[1].

The workshop aims to explore these themes in detail with designers, educators, researchers, and practitioners working in culturally diverse and rich contexts.

Expected Outcomes

The workshop is moderated by authors who have extensive experience in exploring technology, its adaption and design, through the lenses of various cultural narratives and realities. Participants will be guided to explore through group exercises using cards to generate maps, answering questions, and producing representative images. The exercises will employ critical design analysis and speculative design practices. At the end of the group activity, a moderated discussion will map the findings into relevant intersections of

Technology and Cultural Imagination

Society and Cultural Use of Technology, including, cultural pain points in using technology and culturally specific design practices.

Subversive rationalization [1]

Target Audience

This is a beginner level workshop targeted towards design practitioners, technology theorists, anthropologists, cultural theorists and design educators with experience in facilitating collective imagination and/or understanding of culturally relevant, culturally specific contexts in design practices and uses of technology.