Introduction: Design Anthropological Futures

Abstract

The future is here. Or so it has often been proclaimed by futurologists, scientists and engineers, as the fruits of science labs and cutting-edge technological gadgets are showcased, promising to make our lives more productive and more enjoyable. The public facade of design shows grand visions of future possibilities, yet every imperfect Now is also the concrete instantiation of what was once a vision of a bright future. Envisioned futures, as Bell and Dourish (2007) remind us, tend to differ radically from how they eventually unfold in the situatedness of people's lives. The future is not an empty space awaiting projected visions from an incomplete present; neither is it a predefined destination that we can simply foresee and arrive at in due time (Yelavich and Adams 2014; Mazé, this volume). Rather than seeing the future as a separate space or time, design anthropologists in this book engage with the future as a multiplicity of ideas, critiques and potentialities that are embedded in the narratives, objects and practices of our daily lives. In this sense, multiple, often conflicting, futures are always already here as part of a continuously unfolding present and past.Design Anthropological Futures explores futures and future-making from a design anthropological perspective. Here futures are not understood as striking visions created and implemented by scientists or designers, but rather as collaborative explorations of situated possibilities, formations and actions at the intersection of design and everyday life. The term futures relates both to the theoretical and practical engagement of design anthropology with futures and future-making as a subject -futures in design anthropology -and to the exploration of possible future directions for the discipline itself through such engagements -futures of design anthropology. Through various design anthropological investigations at specific sites -from care homes to corporate organizations, eco-homes to museums, Rio de Janeiro to Italy -this book critically addresses a number of dominant perspectives on, and approaches to, futures, including implied assumptions of singularity, linearity, locality and novelty. In the following we briefly elaborate on these themes and propose alternative perspectives for a design anthropological approach to futures.First, 'The future' is often referred to in the singular, using the definite article to 9781474280624_txt_print.indd 1 20/05/2016 16:16imply that there is only one version. Assuming eventual singularity of 'the future', futurologists, for example, tend to look at patterns of historical continuation and change, seeking to determine the probability of distinct future events. Although the established likelihood of a particular future does not rule out the realization of alternatives, it does foreground and authorize one dominant version of the future over alternative, subaltern ones (Mazé, this volume; Drazin, this volume). This idea of a singular future has political implications. As pointed out by Watts, 'telling stories of the...

The thickening of futures

“…However, the future is not an empty space awaiting projected visions from an incomplete present or a predefined destination that we can simply foresee and arrive at. Rather, futures are always already here as part of a continuous unfolding of the past and the present (Kjaersgaard et al, 2016). Drawing from STS, it is argued that the presentness and transformation of the world are always in the making; the world is always open to being otherwise.…”

Futures in Things: Locating the Promise of Infrastructures in Public Libraries

“…There have also been approaches in design anthropology that are focused less on the distant nature of the future and more on the future that is "always already here, as a continuous unfolding of the past and present." (Kjaersgaard et al, 2016) Thus, from a methodological standpoint, there is a tension between the common framing of the future as distant and fictive, and the traditional focus on ethnography on the present and situated experience. Lindley et al propose anticipatory ethnography as one theoretical and practical approach to resolve this tension.…”

Speculating on the liberal arts: Exploring possible futures for humanities education

“…As John Seely Brown points out, “[o]nce I imagine something new, then answering how to get from here to there involves steps of creativity…I can be creative in solving today’s problems, but if I can’t imagine something new, then Im stuck in the current situation” (2014). Through imagining an alternative to an aspect of liberal arts education, I am encouraging “a renewed curiosity about ways of living as being contingent, constructed, and transformable” (Kjaersgaard et al, 2016: 13). Such transformations look to a series of possible futures and help guide aspects of society, however subtly, toward preferable futures.…”

“…The group proposed may appear to work against the pragmatic values placed on an accredited university education, but it is important to keep in mind that, as Ivan Illich wrote many years ago, “[m]ost learning is not the result of instruction…[but] rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting” (1970: 9). I work to “embrace open-ended speculation and concrete proposals for changes as modes of inquiry” (Kjaersgaard et al, 2016: 6) into educational alternatives in today’s world (see also Miller, 2015; Miller and Linder, 2015). Such speculative inquiry also points toward the distinction between possible, probable, and preferable futures.…”