Politics of Imaginaries


2023

This project began with The Politics of Imaginaries, a workshop held at the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2023) with organizers Gabrielle Benabdallah (University of Washington), Michael W. Beach (University of Washington), Daniela Rosner (University of Washington), Kavita S Philip (University of British Columbia), Garnet Hertz (Emily Carr University of Art + Design), and Lucy Suchman (University of Lancaster). This workshop explored how humanistic inquiry can inform HCI by examining the political and epistemic dimensions of technological imaginaries. Participants engaged in discussions and hands-on activities to probe the ways in which technology reifies cultural values, governance structures, and systemic inequities. A key theme that emerged was the limits of computability–the recognition that computational systems tend to abstract and flatten the complexities of human and material worlds, to both productive and sometime deleterious effects.





Building on these discussions, we created The Limits of Computability, a zine that reflects on the boundaries of computational representation. Thanks to the workshop participants’ contributions, the zine highlights various digital technologies, from algorithmic management systems, and classification schemes, to generative AI tools and databases. Each entry focuses on the aspects of reality that resist abstraction despite the structuring effects of these systems. Rather than calling for more ‘capable’ systems, the zine argues for a critical and imaginative approach to computability, one that acknowledges what exceeds computation and fosters more sustainable, respectful relationships with digital technologies.

Zine available upon request until stocks run out.


Gabrielle Benabdallah, Michael W. Beach, Nathanael Elias Mengist, Daniela Rosner, Kavita S Philip, and Lucy Suchman. 2023. The Politics of Imaginaries: Probing Humanistic Inquiry in HCI. In Companion Publication of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '23 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 131–134. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563703.3591457


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