Designing for Future

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect and/or represent the view of my employer (Info-Tech Research Group).We are living in an interconnected and complex world — that means the impact of distresses like environmental damage and financial crises is not localized, i.e. impact of our actions in one geographical point/region has the potential to damage the whole interconnected ecological system.
Selfish-Design
When we (humans) consider ourselves at the top of the food chain, then everything else becomes irrelevant — i.e. we ignore other species that co-inhibit this planet with us. Now suddenly the notion “Human-Centricity” in the context of design sounds ironic.
Footprint of our impact on the planet’s ecosystem has come to the point that the geologists have name for it — the Anthropocene — is customer-centricity can be partly to be blamed for it? What if “disposable” is convenient for customer but not for the ecosystem/environment!! — what if dumping the waste in water is cost-effective or is profitable — but not for the marine life!! (but in a closed system — all of this comes back to impact us; loss of species have ripple effect because of the interdependencies).
We are awe-struck with idea of colonizing other planets — and there is race among silicon billionaires for space travel — but few things come to mind:
a. Isn’t it based on the premise that the earth can not be saved — the doom is inevitable, so the only option to save the human species is to colonize, say Mars. … hum same mind-set different planet, I wonder what would we do to Mars !
b. How many of us can afford the space travel!! — and at what cost to the environment? Do we sacrifice the environment for the few or should we think all of us have equal right to it?
Designing for future — entails that we understand this beautiful yet complex ecosystem its intricate interdependencies and well-designed yet fragile balance, and our role in it.
Here I have collected some pieces that highlight various fragments of that mosaic — mosaic of ideas that help us appreciate the world we live in, so that it reflects in our design
Multispecies — residents of the earth
… because we depend on them as much as they depend on us
“The Western notion of “the human” as we know it is unraveling. From fields as diverse as developmental biology, epigenetics, environmental history, science and technology studies, and anthropology, we are learning new ways that the histories and trajectories of humans are bound up with those of other species. We once imagined discrete, autonomous individuals, each programmed with a unique genetic blueprint and interacting with the “natural environment.” Today, the boundaries between distinct realms of (human) culture and (non-human) nature are dissipating. “
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene
… because we are single handedly responsible for damaging the planet

“Rose [Deborah Bird Rose] has argued that white Australian settlers brought with them a particular, and peculiar, kind of time. They looked straight ahead to the future, a singular path of optimism and salvation informing their dreams and deeds. This future is a characteristic feature of commitments to modernity, that complex of symbolic and material projects for separating “nature” and “culture”. Moving toward this future requires ruthless ambition — and the willingness to participate in great projects of destruction while ignoring extinction as collateral damage.
What better figure for the promises of modernity? The less you know, the better you will sleep. Meanwhile, our safety net of multispecies interdependencies tears and breaks.
The storm of the Anthropocene sweeps us off the ladder into the waves of the more-than human sea, where biologist Andreas Hejnol shows us tunicates, sponges, and jellies. Terrible and wonderful, we hardly know how to give them names. Take them off the ladder of Progress, Hejnol tells us; let them show us their complex designs. Imagine swimming among them rather than locking them into rungs on a ladder that leads only to ourselves. How many evolutionary gifts do these creatures entangle us in?”
-Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt (Univ Of Minnesota Press; 3rd ed. edition (May 30 2017) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene — May 30 2017 by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Editor), Nils Bubandt (Editor), Elaine Gan (Editor), Heather Anne Swanson (Editor))
Global residents
… because our policies impact others — we need to keep cultural and political dynamics in mind.

Infrastructure is both the thing and the story. It is the transparent and the spectacular. It is seamless in its operation and can be disastrous in its failure… In 2012 and 2013, I conducted fieldwork in Macha [Zambia] as part of a collaborative research project that involved partnering with community members to design sustainable Internet and mobile phone systems scaled to rural socio-economic conditions and informed by local needs, interests, and desires. This aspiration to work closely with community members as part of the process of integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) in rural areas arises on the heels of other ICT for development (ICTD) projects that have failed because of limited engagement with people who would be using new technologies. Much ICTD work is underpinned by development ideology — a blind faith in the capacities of ICT to “modernize” and “enhance” the lives of anyone fortunate enough to come within their reach. This development ideology sets the tone for many ICTD projects seeking to address the needs of so-called “O3B” or “other 3 billion” — the mass of people still without Internet access who are alternately imagined as a technologically disenfranchised class or a giant untapped market. In the context of such logistics, many Africans feel their communities have either become test sites for Westerners doing feel-good ICT research or dumping ground for the West’s digital hand-me-downs — old computers and printers shipped to Africa, many of which are obsolete, broken, or incompatible with local electrical systems, and thus useless. In Macha an entire cargo container sent from Europe and filled with computer equipment sat unused for months. After the container became infested with termites, much of its contents were burned, causing exposure to toxic incineration of plastic and metal parts.
Lisa Parks (Water, Energy, Access: Materializing the Internet in Rural Zambia) Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures — May 14 2015 University of Illinois Press; 1st edition (May 14 2015) by Lisa Parks (Editor), Nicole Starosielski (Editor)
Society, cities, and citizens — dutified to actualising
… because the advent of “smart everything” will change our role as citizens.

The emergence of this [hacker] ethos can be linked to a broader change in the definition of citizenship that has been summarised as a shift from ‘dutified’ to ‘actualising’ citizenship (Bennett and Segerberg 2013; Gordon and Mihailidis 2016a). The former refers to the collective enlistment of citizens in organisations such as churches and unions; the latter can be understood as the organisation of citizens in collectives around issues they are intrinsically motivated for (Levine 2016).
Hacking can not only be understood as a particular ethos, but also as a particular set of practices, consisting of new forms of civic organisation and professional engagement. If indeed civic hackers mobilise around issues of communal concern, employing ecologies of digital artefacts, what then are the platforms and practices through which they do so, and how can they be designed? As Gordon and Mihailidis have argued, our interest there should not so much lie in the reified features of the (digital media) platforms themselves, but in the practices through which they are enacted. In their analysis of civic media, which they define as ‘the technologies, designs, and practices that produce and reproduce the sense of being in the world with others toward common good’ (Gordon and Mihailidis 2016b), they bring out the notion of ‘communities of practice’. These communities of practice cannot be reduced to individual actions that are undertaken but bring out the ‘participation in an activity system about which participants share understanding concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities’ (Lave and Wenger 1991 cited in Gordon and Mihailidis 2016b).
Martijn de Waal1 and Michiel de Lange (The Hacker, the City and Their Institutions: From Grassroots Urbanism to Systemic Change) The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City-Making in the Network Society — Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition (Dec 5 2018) by de Lange, Michiel (Editor), de Waal, Martijn (Editor)
Corporate ethos — The ‘Move Fast And Break Things’ Ethos
… because corporates are part of the fabric of the society, and they wield immense power to do good/evil.
“the move fast and break things ethos is extraordinarily profitable the celebration of that ethos is almost over right, but I don’t think that means the fights over how do we make sure that you move as slowly as you have to get it right because the consequences for the rest of us aren’t worth the you know the payout that you’re gonna get if you do break things like our medical infrastructure or our education system or my god our electoral processes our democracy right like these are not things were okay having broken and I think you know this sort of foolishness and hubris of that kind of culture is really showing through.”
Conclusion
Living in a world shaped by our actions, requires us to be aware of that impact our actions is not localized. We should avoid single minded worship of technology, that technology alone is the answer to everything.
We need multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration — to design policies, products, and services etc.