Futures Speculations on Time, Design and Thinking

Abstract

Currently both design thinking and critical social science experience an increased interest in speculating in alternative future scenarios. This interest is not least related to the challenges issues of global sustainability present for politics, ethics and design. This paper explores the potentials of speculative thinking in relation to design and social and cultural studies, arguing that both offer valuable insights for creating a speculative space for new emergent criticalities challenging current assumptions of the relations between power and design. It does so by tracing out discussions of ‘futurity’ and ‘futuring’ in design as well as social and cultural studies. Firstly, by discussing futurist and speculative approaches in design thinking; secondly by engaging with ideas of scenario thinking and utopianism in current social and cultural studies; and thirdly by showing how the articulation of speculative fictions may produce alternative ‘realities’ to be explored and imaginably inhabited as alternatives to the present and as propositions for projections of potential futures.