Design within and for “post-scarcity”: opening lecture for MOTYF 2021 workshop, April 2021.
Read the whole lecture here. Below is the abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic and accelerating climate change have laid bare the horrifying nature of global capitalism. We have no choice but to imagine different socio-political-technical configurations — a massively complex endeavour. Many theorists who imagine a post-scarcity future rely on a false idea about the power of automation, the prominence of which belies other economic shifts. If “abundance is not a technological threshold to be crossed,” however, but instead a “social relationship,” what does a post-scarcity society actually look like? This workshop — a theory-driven seminar-studio hybrid — asks what a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society might look like, and how design is done in such a society. It will critically engage with ideas about automation and ask what design means when basic human needs are met, economic growth is no longer an imperative, and necessary labor is shared and not relegated to certain classes of society.
The Covid-19 pandemic and accelerating climate change have laid bare the horrifying nature of global capitalism. We have no choice but to imagine different socio-political-technical configurations — a massively complex endeavour. Many theorists who imagine a post-scarcity future rely on a false idea about the power of automation, the prominence of which belies other economic shifts. If “abundance is not a technological threshold to be crossed,” however, but instead a “social relationship,” what does a post-scarcity society actually look like? This workshop — a theory-driven seminar-studio hybrid — asks what a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society might look like, and how design is done in such a society. It will critically engage with ideas about automation and ask what design means when basic human needs are met, economic growth is no longer an imperative, and necessary labor is shared and not relegated to certain classes of society.