A literature review of sorts… summarising the main points of theoretical research so far in three areas: networks; slowing; agency.
Snowden’s ‘Cynefin’ and the idea of ‘simple’ problems is based on the idea of functionality and prescribed social agreements, such that 1 is 1. However, in the ‘network’ that we now live in (using James Bridle’s description of ‘the network’), can a problem ever be simple? Especially on a temporal scale (i.e. ‘post design’), over time and especially if a service or product is widely used. It’s wider impacts in a behavioural, cultural, ecological, societal, even political sense must surely always be chaotic, or at least complex.
The understanding of networks has historically, in an academic sense, fallen short due to its wide interdisciplinary dispersal (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018). We can understand them in their material sense, the internet is made up of computers and data connections. But even in the material realm this description falls short, let alone when we try to understand the far-reaching tentacles of influence the internet has toward both human and non-human everyday life.
Designing with agency must include designing for adaptability, for example Ann Pendleton-Jullian’s raft versus canoe analogy. Does design that is research naturally have more agency (probes, toolkits)? Yet is it unfinished? What makes it finished? Possibly if a design considers itself as a work in process, or at least part of a process, then it might have more agency as it doesn’t claim to solve any problems. Pendleton-Jullian suggests there are only three ways to have agency in the ‘ecological framework’, through material, social and mental culture, imagination must be used in these areas with purpose. Slow variables will cause bigger shifts, quick fixes will only cause unforeseen issues long-term. We as designers much introduce small ‘tester’ changes or ‘probes’, which will have their own consequences but do not threaten to cause great damage. Intervention changes people’s imaginations, to intervene we must decentralise, hack or DIY (in this case DIY can also mean creating specialised areas, for example women’s health clinics in the US are the result of the acceptance in the 60s that modern medicine was not paying sufficient attention to women’s health needs).
What about non-human agency? By the standards of Latour’s Actor-Network Theory humans and their motivations may not be included at all, to live within Pendelton-Jullian’s ‘ecological framework’ this must be the case. Karan Barad suggests the idea of ‘intra-action’, rather than that agency is influence of one object onto another, it is “a cooperative force that brings entangled materialities into being through their relationship”. This relates back to the ideas of complexity or even chaos within the network, but the distinction is vital to understanding (post-)anthropocentric agency.
It seems to me that there are multiple cross-disciplinary movements that focus on ‘slow’. ‘Slow democracy’, ‘slow food’, ‘slow travel’, the slow movement has many branches, beginning in 1986 with the Carlo Pertrini’s protest of a McDonald’s in Rome. The movement has an understanding of the limits of human capability, such that knowledge cannot be perpetually absorbed. Does slowing give us the time to understand and ultimately not lose control? If democratic systems are under threat from social acceleration can slowing help keep the power in the public’s hands? On the other hand Chris Carlsson suggests to we must help each other ‘steal time’, someone working three jobs is unlikely to have the time to make ‘better’ decisions, we can help each other ‘steal time’ by creating new systems that are open and available for all to take advantage of.
So how do we learn to understand in the “new dark age”? We have to be able to think things and accept the impossibility of being able to fully understand (Bridle, 2018). Can we harness Stephen Duncombe’s idea of ‘the ethical spectacle’? Look to others that have intervened, artists, writers, poets, journalists, and more. Where does fiction play a part? We must prototype new worlds and discover how to give this imagination purpose. Do we want agency or autonomy? And finally, lay out how will this topic be tackled at a macro or micro level. It will be important to understand the theory in a wider sense but not be naïve enough to think of addressing the issue as a whole.