Reading into the Past and Writing into the Future

I have a lot of complicated feelings about speculative design as a practice. Its heralded to be this radical tool for guiding us in dreaming about the futures that we want to live in, therefore making us believe that what we can dream, we can create. While there is truth to this, much of the design fiction and speculation within tech spaces tends to fall short. Oftentimes theres this techno-utopianist vision that comes forth where emerging and fictitious tech is introduced and completely saves all of humanity. The issue with this narrative is that it obscures much of the role that technology plays, not as isolated actor, but as an interconnected part of socio-political systems. I think here is where speculative design has the most potential for impact within tech/design conversations. Interrogating the implications of different types of everyday technologies through fictitious narrative allows us to surface the socio-political values and impacts of these technologies through a critical lens. This exact use of speculation is exactly what I wanted to develop and improve upon within my creative research practice, hence why I signed up to join the class Reading into the Past, Writing into the Future with School for Poetic Computation (https://sfpc.study/sessions/spring-24/rpwf).

The goal of this class is to voyage into imagination and craft scifi narratives that explore ideas of justice and liberation. Science fiction, particularly from marginalized writers, is such an integral part of exploring paths and portals into new worlds with new structures, traditions, and ways of living. In order to practice exploring narratives of liberatory technology, I sough to practice this skill through this 10 week class. You will be able to find my reflections on this journey and some of the writings I produce in the coming weeks here on my nichless page.