I am more than the sum of my parts: an e-waste design fiction

Abstract

Abstract-This paper is a direct response to recent calls for sustainable technology researchers to use design fiction in their work. It seeks to explore the question: can design fiction be a useful technique for provoking conversations about today's complex global e-waste ecosystem? To address that question, the paper begins by presenting an e-waste design fiction in the form of a letter from a fictionally self-aware personal laptop computer to its owner. The letter explores ethical, social, environmental and legal issues related to e-waste, and attempts to provoke readers to reconsider their relationships with electronics. Following the letter, there is a discussion about the research context for this work, initial reactions to it, and some insights that may be used to in future research. This paper's novelty stems from its use of a literary e-waste design fiction to provoke conversation, as well as its discussion about design fiction's appropriateness for e-waste research.

The Seven Year Glitch: Unpacking Beauty and Despair in Malfunction

“…Confounding the challenge, the rhetoric of our time -e.g., the post truth era, the climate emergency, and political and diplomatic turmoil-provide the backdrop for this paper's contribution. In turn, object speculation gives us a chance to tell stories on behalf of the silent, in this case, the technologies which surround and support our technocratic lives [3,21,23].…”

“…As human animals, we are familiar with failures of mind and flesh and the concept of death, but this changes in the advent of technocratic society [15], where parts of us live on inside the machine [5]. When our awareness is inseparable from the machines' the implications for both species, and their respective awarenesses, has profound but as-yet-unknown repercussions [19,23].…”