May 4, 2021
What if technology helped us rebalance power and find meaning? Towards a regenerative theory of technology
Co-written by Boundless Roots members Abhayraj Naik, Louise Armstrong, Mary Stevens, Naresh Giangrande. Register to our upcoming event.
“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. […] In the traditions of ‘Western’ science and politics — the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other — the relation between organism and machine has been a border war.”
Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto, 1985
If we are all cyborgs now, what does this mean for our attempts to create radical changes in how we live, in harmony with the living world? For many of us it means something deeply confusing and often shameful: the Twitter feed we can’t stop scrolling even though we know it plays on our addictions and sucks our attention, the platforms we can’t break free from even though we know they are fuelling hate. And so we stay within our comfort zone — exploring tools for community organising (digital versions included), or embodied practice for nature connection — whilst Hathaway’s border war rages on.
The Boundless Roots inquiry process pushed a number of us to start to look this challenge in the face. It started with an absence — why weren’t we talking more about tech in our discussions? It has led us to a deeper consideration of how technology could be incorporated into new forms of living and working, rooted in healthy power. This blog explores this journey, and invites you to take part in the next stage of this conversation: how can we create and use regenerative technology to help us make and sustain a regenerative culture?
Tech is (currently) an engine of polarities — we need a new theory of technology
The polarities strand in the Boundless Roots inquiry explored how we work skillfully across difference. We know that the algorithms that fuel and power our technology and media are baking in and reinforcing our divides; their business models depend on it. Yet few of the solutions or practices explored in the inquiry addressed this.
There is an urgent need for a progressive theory of technology, one that actively engages with unhealthy power in the current system, and proposes viable alternatives. We cannot keep turning our backs. There is a movement in this direction — with writers like Carissa Véliz following in the footsteps of Shoshana Zubhoff — but there’s no equivalent (yet) of the ‘doughnut’ which has given many of us a new language (and confidence) to talk about economics. Meanwhile the tech is moving fast — faster than the governance can keep up.
Tech is a blindspot for change-makers seeking transformation
So why do change-makers often have a ‘blindspot’ around tech, shying away from deep engagement with the underlying power structures and their impacts? Maybe the power has become too remote for us to utilise the tools we usually rely on for influencing (organising, campaigning). Or maybe there’s another ‘border war’ at play: the polarity between the techno-optimists and the techno-skeptics in our own movements and we haven’t yet turned the lens on ourselves to figure out how to move forward together.
I think that the key polarity to be transcended in the context of technology would be that between: on the one hand, the techno-utopians (à la Elon Musk or those behind the Ecomodernist Manifesto) who believe that our planetary crises — including climate change — will be solved through technical, engineering, and technological solutions… and, on the other hand, the techno-skeptics (one could include here well-known critics of modern industrial civilisation like Gandhi, Ivan Illich, etc. to technophobic proponents of degrowth to many more mainstream environmentalist accounts that remain suspicious of fossil-fuel based technologies).
Abhayraj Naik, from the Boundless Roots report
Most environmentalists still find that Gandhi is a safer choice with their peers for a hero than Elon Musk — our cultural landscape shapes our response. And women in the movement may feel that neither ‘side’ has a lot to offer.
Time for a reset — technology as a force for transformation we’re seeking
And yet. In our lifetimes the technological transformation has shifted the systems in which we operate and find meaning and turned our lives upside down. It is a force deeply integrated and woven into our lives — and our most intimate relationships — and ultimately it is enabling and fuelling us to do the work we do. Even this blog emerges from a globe-spanning conversation across multiple time zones. What if we harnessed this power for the change we are seeking?
We are not simple optimists. But we believe that technology — including (especially) Artificial Intelligence — has the potential to support us to fulfil our individual and collective potential. We see it in projects like AntHillHack that builds community and approaches to place-making in India, or the Community Technology Collective in Detroit, creating self-managed wireless networks. The Mozilla Foundation has been keeping the early promise of the Internet — as a powerful tool for human connection and liberation — alive since its inception. #dontgobacktonormal is a movement of people in the UK who are committing to change every facet of their lives, including in their relationship to technology, leveraging examples of regenerative technology to encourage the transition to new platforms or services that move towards more sustainable ways of living in the wake of the pandemic. And small is not the only form of beautiful here: Microsoft’s iNaturalist app is an AI-based tool — and a community — enabling millions of people to identify and learn to cherish the biodiversity on their doorstep. There are many many more.
However, these examples remain relatively small-scale and the perspectives they offer are not yet structured into a coherent narrative about what is possible. We need a story — like the doughnut — we can all use to shape our thinking.
Towards regenerative technology
What would a new narrative, a new story of regenerative technology look like? For now there are more questions than answers.
…what if technology was energy generating rather than extractive?
…what if technology was enhancing uniquely human capabilities, enhancing agency?
… what if all hardware was circular (restorative not extractive)?
…what if we more intentionally started asking the question — what would regenerative technology look like?
So now what? Help us go deeper
We’re grateful to and inspired by the spaces and communities — from #dontgobacktonormal and heretique to the AI Now Institute and even the European Parliament — where we see these questions starting to be explored. And we welcome further exploration and dialogue about what this looks like and what the practical steps needed to get there are.
As a contribution to this, we’re offering a space on May 24th for anyone interested to come together and explore these ideas more. You can register here.
If you are curious, stuck, puzzled by this too, building something, wanting to create something more, asking the same questions, or just wanting to channel your cyborg nature in a positive direction — we’d love to see you there.
Read more about Boundless Roots journey here.
Interested to read more, here’s some of the articles we’ve been reading lately:
