Contexts: Research Articles About the Systemic Design Association Contra-Innovation: Expanding the innovation imperative in the context of futuring, defuturing and fictioning

Abstract

This paper critically reflects on the problematic relationship between design innovation and design defuturing. Design innovation is broadly understood as a field of knowledge, a mode of organising research around design and a form of design practice linked to dominant and colonising fictions of technology and progress. Design defuturing foregrounds the complex dialectical relation between creation and destruction, emphasising that every form of design futuring also acts to erase other futures. Design innovation has been one of the primary ways “defuturing” agendas gained operative (political) power historically and in the present. So situated, design innovation is structurally elemental to, and circumscribed by, its subordination to the economy and culture of “acceleration.” Several critiques of innovation that emerge from within the systemic thinking discourse do well in engaging the questions of knowledge and learning. However, these systemic readings remain relatively underdeveloped in terms of their politics, failing to consider the ontological propensity of what gets brought into being as it either futures or defutures. By looking at three broader fictions of innovation of the U.S., China, and Cuba in relation to the question of defuturing, we question the fictions that connect design innovation to reductionist accounts of progress. We also propose a framework in which “fictioning” (second-order) can enable a way of speculating upon “contra-innovation,” i.e., innovation to counter innovation that defutures. So positioned, contra-innovation undercuts the notion of innovation posited with an affirmative value and exposes it as a contested domain of action.

Exploring Defuturing to Design Artificial-Intelligence Artifacts: A Systemic-Design Approach to Tackle Litigiousness in the Brazilian Judiciary

“…It proposes a holistic view of innovation, which must be looked at in its complexity, contemplating not only what it creates, but also what it destroys. Innovation, thus, is not only a process of creation, but also one of destruction (Perera and Fry 2022).…”

“…Moreover, in doing so, we must be aware of the narratives-and fictions built upon them-that condition our current perspective. Against this backdrop, Perera and Fry (2022) propose a Second-order Design Futuring (SoDF), to explore different narratives and the consequences of design (Perera and Fry 2022).…”

“…As a previous step to any design, SoDF enables contra-innovation (Perera and Fry 2022). Contra-innovation is not an alternative innovation, capable of countering an initial project, but rather the exploration of different narratives and consequences of design, of different futures that a design might erase.…”

“…Hence, in order to escape the innovation trap, the design of AI artifacts-even those under development or implemented-should follow a systemic approach to consider defuturing. In this respect, Perera and Fry's SoDF (Perera and Fry 2022) provides a useful framework to contest innovation, mull over its consequences and consider what is being defutured. Within this perspective, exploring defuturing should become a mandatory step previous to any design process involving AI artifacts.…”

“…Defuturing design philosophy (Fry 2020) discusses design innovation as an agent of both creation and destruction, bringing about risks of loss of agency and alienation. It highlights the narratives underpinning fictions of progress and a celebration of the new (Perera and Fry 2022), which impel innovation resulting from path dependencies (Loorbach 2022) that work to perpetuate existing systems and values. As such, these design processes lack critical reflections on whether innovations might be unsustainable or erase other futures (defuture).…”