Deliberately Destructive Speculative Design

A number of recent Postdigital Science and Education articles have discussed the strengths and limitations of future-oriented and speculative methods in education (Cerratto Pargman et al. 2022; Houlden and Veletsianos 2022; Suoranta et al. 2022; Traxler et al. 2021). For example, Traxler et al. (2021) present an encompassing survey relating to the question of ‘what’s next?’ Using epistemological positions emerging from studies of mobilities, futures, and the postdigital, the authors perform a joint, but also contrasting, reading of what futures could hold. Their conclusion is manifold, but one of the insights that stand out is that futures, and privileged positions from where we may project such futures, need to be scrutinized in themselves. But how can the ‘not-yetness’ of digital systems be studied? This is what Cerratto Pargman et al. (2022) aim to shed light on in their innovative and thought-provoking article: ‘Automation is coming! Exploring future(s)oriented methods in education.’ They argue that the use of future(s)-oriented methods helps us to unpack dominant narratives and enact positive and desirable changes in the present. The article provides characterizations and classifications of futurefocused social science methods (such as, for example, speculative fiction and design fiction) and provides insights of their first-hand experiences of such methods. As such, they bestow a useful toolbox for further research. In their discerning and reflective paper, Suoranta et al. (2022) state that ‘[c]reative options in education require educators to be activists and active change agents. We can draw from the past and use new technologies to design learning activities that


Why Deliberate Destruction?
A number of recent Postdigital Science and Education articles have discussed the strengths and limitations of future-oriented and speculative methods in education (Cerratto Pargman et al. 2022;Houlden and Veletsianos 2022;Suoranta et al. 2022;Traxler et al. 2021). For example, Traxler et al. (2021) present an encompassing survey relating to the question of 'what's next?' Using epistemological positions emerging from studies of mobilities, futures, and the postdigital, the authors perform a joint, but also contrasting, reading of what futures could hold. Their conclusion is manifold, but one of the insights that stand out is that futures, and privileged positions from where we may project such futures, need to be scrutinized in themselves. But how can the 'not-yetness' of digital systems be studied? This is what Cerratto Pargman et al. (2022) aim to shed light on in their innovative and thought-provoking article: 'Automation is coming! Exploring future(s)oriented methods in education.' They argue that the use of future(s)-oriented methods helps us to unpack dominant narratives and enact positive and desirable changes in the present. The article provides characterizations and classifications of futurefocused social science methods (such as, for example, speculative fiction and design fiction) and provides insights of their first-hand experiences of such methods. As such, they bestow a useful toolbox for further research.
In their discerning and reflective paper, Suoranta et al. (2022) state that '[c]reative options in education require educators to be activists and active change agents. We can draw from the past and use new technologies to design learning activities that prepare students for digital futures.' We agree that activism and change are important, but also find it limiting for realizing (or preparing for) new digital futures only.
To further our argument, we may lean on Houlden and Veletsianos (2022), who not only highlight the importance of imaginaries of education which are built on hopefulness and positive futures, but also, perhaps more importantly, stress the need to oppose, dismantle, and terminate current systems: The stories that we ought to tell in education research need to do this impossible dreaming. They need to practice this hopeful work as a refusal of the disimagination machine of the academy, as a refusal to reinforce settler apocalypticism (and its cousins white supremacy, ableism and cis-hetero-patriarchy) in these times of demise and transformation. They need to become a part of enabling the end of such systems. (Houlden and Veletsianos 2022) We find all these papers inspiring, but we are also spurred to ask several (other) questions. Together with asking 'what educational futures and technologies can we imagine (to make things better)?', we also want to ask: What educational immediates 1 and current systems can we dismantle (to make things better)? This pair of rhetorical questions can be rephrased in other ways. For example, instead of asking, what 'solutions' (in the shape of digital educational technologies) can we invent, we want to ask what 'solutions' (e.g., in the shape of digital educational technologies) can we destroy?

Resistance Through Failure
In line with queer and environmental objections to how imaginaries of 'progress', 'efficiency', and 'success' are allowed to drive development (Crary 2022;Halberstam 2011), we should also at least consider non-digital futures as parts of the postdigital imaginary. Ahmed (2019) argues that for something (or someone) to be useful, that thing or person also has to be willing to be of use; otherwise, they are merely being used. As such, imaginaries of desirable futures position subjects as willing to enact that future and therefore also silently agreeing to not stand in the way of 'progress'. Capitalism strives to make markets out of things that were not markets before; it must expand or perish. The use of methods aimed at creating futures thereby risks submitting to exactly the same actors, systems, or ideologies that these methods were a reaction to in the beginning.
We have seen it before: imaginaries and enactments of digital media technologies, for example sharing and community technologies that developed into locked-in profitmaking platforms that co-opted the very concepts of community and sharing only to sell them back to us (Skågeby 2015). Therefore, imaginaries of desired futures must also examine the relationship between desirable and useful futures and, above all, how current orders can be reshaped, dismantled, extinguished, or redirected to create futures for common (rather than corporate) use and care. Halberstam (2011) argues further that queer failures have the ability to create an effective resistance to neoliberal capitalism precisely through their inherent quality of not being useful as a cog in an existing (counter-productive) machinery.
As such, we propose to extend the idea of Houlden and Veletsianos (2022) about 'enabling the end of systems' in speculative thinking and design. This idea also builds on other recent accounts, questioning the current extended agencies and usefulness of ubiquitous systems (at various levels) in actualizing certain (arbitrary or biased) measurements and representations of the world as 'reality'.
For example, in his 'antagonistic' take on refusing to submit to techno-capitalism, Mueller (2021) highlights the political importance of contextualizing and acknowledging anti-technological sentiments and practices. McQuillan (2022: 115) echoes our position when stating: 'Exploring the field of the virtual, the possible but not yet realized, must be done experimentally through the overturning of existing apparatuses, and the actualization of something authentically different'. Finally, Reich (2020) points to how the main benefit of EdTech is generally not found in its computational functionalities but in propelling questions about pedagogical and educational practices in themselves.
Reading Mueller (2021), McQuillan (2022, and Reich (2020), as well as having our own experiences in conducting speculative design workshops, we are worried that many speculative designs are either perpetuating thinking that retain values and practices already put in place by other systems or are co-opted as ideas for the colonization of new market segments. The idea of also incorporating deliberately destructive speculative design is therefore to probe for already implemented solutions that have been (experienced as) counter-productive in some sense! Instead of adhering to the idea that another digital solution should immediately take place, a recognition of the pedagogical and educational consequences should encourage a slower, more reflective approach. Maybe going back to a prior analog way of working would be better, or indeed a new analog practice. A 'postdigital' mindset should be open to imaginaries that include both the dismantling of current systems, as well as entirely non-digital solutions.
We understand that deliberately destructive speculative design still runs the risk of being capitalized for 'rationalizing' purposes, but we argue that it is also a frame of mind that can call to action and advance resistance.