Day 11: Futures and Fictions
We’re starting a more creative part of the immersion, where we’ll use our imagination as a tool to get us closer to more collectivist, equitable and sustainable secondhand economies. Watch this video on Fictions and Futures that introduces you to different schools of thought and examples of imaginative practices.
Then read the “conundrums” of secondhand below. Instead of answering as you, create a character that reflects through these questions and share them in the group channel.
Then read the “conundrums” of secondhand below. Instead of answering as you, create a character that reflects through these questions and share them in the group channel.
Conundrums
How can we build more communal secondhand economies?
Given our embeddedness in individualistic and competitive cultures in capitalist spaces, especially as resellers within digital platforms, how can we create communal practices? Who is this ‘we’ to start with? This conundrum speaks to addressing the (im)possibilities of communality in a diverse group.
How can we unravel the ethical threads in secondhand economies?
Thrifting and secondhand, as it currently stands, is an extension of consumerism rather than a curb to it. Changing this requires more transformative, imaginative and structural views of the global and colonial imbrications of secondhand economies for fashion, furniture, consumer products, etc. What is the role of workers of secondhand economies in reshaping this landscape?
How can we queer/resist the role of computing technologies in secondhand?
Increasingly relying on machine learning powered automation has deleterious effects for the environment, relies on invisibilized labor (of annotators in the global south mostly) and could entrench precarity in many occupations. Could these tehcnologies be used for more life-sustaining futures where well-being for earthlings is prioritized?
Given our embeddedness in individualistic and competitive cultures in capitalist spaces, especially as resellers within digital platforms, how can we create communal practices? Who is this ‘we’ to start with? This conundrum speaks to addressing the (im)possibilities of communality in a diverse group.
How can we unravel the ethical threads in secondhand economies?
Thrifting and secondhand, as it currently stands, is an extension of consumerism rather than a curb to it. Changing this requires more transformative, imaginative and structural views of the global and colonial imbrications of secondhand economies for fashion, furniture, consumer products, etc. What is the role of workers of secondhand economies in reshaping this landscape?
How can we queer/resist the role of computing technologies in secondhand?
Increasingly relying on machine learning powered automation has deleterious effects for the environment, relies on invisibilized labor (of annotators in the global south mostly) and could entrench precarity in many occupations. Could these tehcnologies be used for more life-sustaining futures where well-being for earthlings is prioritized?