FutureCrafting: Speculation, Design and the Nonhuman, or how to live with digital uncertainty

How can design craft potential futures in a scenario shaped by planetary computation? Unlike 4th revolution narratives that frame the future of human-machine interaction as techno-dystopias, a future of human-machine coevolution can be imagined by speculating on digital uncertainty: the potential for unpredictability in computation, manifest in the autonomy of algorithmic agency. Human-machine interaction is then reframed in terms of human-nonhuman ecologies that are emergent, cohabiting and highly contingent. Speculation via design is proposed as a mode of strategic, metic intelligence, able to capture and to capitalise on this systemic unpredictability, enabling the proposition of what ‘may be’: future-crafting in action.

Invited Talk. Presented at the Symposium: Agents in the Anthropocene: Trans/disciplinary Practices in Art and Design Education Today.