Much of the ‘critical’ academic discourse on ethics and accessibility in relation to new technology does not eat its own dog food. It doesn't bother to take the time to carefully define, categorise and evaluate particular technologies, and it mostly fails to propose credible actions or mitigations.
Please mind the gap between higher education and the technology ecosystem
Higher ed has considerable power to positively influence the tech ecosystem, not by moaning about capitalism, or waiting to see what happens. We have to do it by quickly identifying and aggressively advancing innovative and progressive use cases. So when do we start?
FHEA FFS WTAF
AdvanceHE fellowships are everything that is wrong with HE: boring, retrogressive, pompous, opaque, unfair, inconsistent, gate-keepery, narcissistic, self-congratulatory (except in my sad-ass case), elitist, self-serving, and entirely dismissive of the student voice and real measures of impact and value.
Non-design futures
Our futures won’t be the techno-optimist or smarty-pants designery fantasies you hear about on LinkedIn. Our futures will be scrappy, social, collaborative, improvised, and imperfect. Bring skills and love.
On the Jaguar rebrand thing and futures non-thinking
The Jaguar campaign is a masterclass in futures non-thinking. Copy nothing. Think nothing. Do nothing. Demand nothing. Dream nothing.
Reimagining learning technology futures with speculative design
The purpose of these approaches is not to predict a single future, but to imagine, experience and feel multiple possible futures, and to discuss and debate what we want our futures to be like, and what we don’t want them to be.
What do techno-optimists and conspiracy theorists have in common? Quite a lot, it turns out.
Fervent, overly determined techno-optimism has much in common with the ideation of conspiracy theories relating to advanced technologies. In fact, advocates of techno-optimist futures, and the proponents of conspiracy theories such as the supposed causal relationship between 5G and COVID-19, share common cognitive, dispositional and contextual characteristics.
Historical thinking, futures thinking
When we study history, we come to understand that the structures of the contemporary world are not inevitable, they are a choice, and other choices were possible. Other choices are possible even now. More earthy choices. More natural choices. More imaginative choices. Choices more full of meaning. Choices which allow us greater agency. The study of history allows us to reclaim these choices for our future.
Beyond tech philes and phobes
Making AI regenerative is going to require that we are not prompt engineers but devious bricoleurs, in the sense intended by Claude Lévi-Strauss, working with our hands on this tool and recombining it with others to do things it was never intended for. For good. For fairness. For community. For real wealth. For the environment.
Degenerative AI
For AI to be regenerative, it must enable us to generate and preserve real wealth. It must promote and sustain community wellbeing, fairness, and sustainability, the fundamental values of the generative economy, and it must do so by design, through its normal functioning, and not as a regulatory compliance exercise or CSR/ESG afterthought.
Matthew Moran 