Invitation to 17 July / Update from June
Come join Brian Sutherland July 17 for some summer-friendly speculative designs to fuel your imagination and lower carbon...
This is a two-part post — first, an excited invitation to the July 17 sessions, and second, notes from the dynamic June conversations.
Join us July 17 …
“Low Carbon Consumer Electronics” with Brian Sutherland
On 17 July, we are fortunate to have Brian Sutherland as a long-awaited guest presenter at both sessions.
In this session we’ll look at design-market logics which favour repeated consumption vs low carbon, degrowth strategies for repair, upcycling, and energy harvesting.
It was suggested that the computer of the 21st century (Weiser, 1991) would be a network of thousands of sensing computing devices, coordinating activity and providing care and support in the background of human societies. Sounds great, except this could be a significant consumption problem for societies looking at low carbon and degrowth strategies! So Brian is researching the history of electronics with a view to identifying open design, reuse, upcycling, and information device strategies — looking at the problem of energy experience design within low-carbon futures.
To see a sample of Brian’s work, CLICK HERE.
Join us July 17 to see some of Brian’s ideas and ask him questions!
Everyone welcome. No registration required. Come as you are, leave inspired.
Join Session #1 Zoom (ID: 896 9267 2098 Pwd: 812064)
(08:00AM New York / 13:00PM London / 14:00PM Oslo / 15:00PM Cairo / 19:00PM Jakarta / 20:00PM Shanghai)
Join Session #2 Zoom (ID: 861 0996 3801 Pwd: 473738
(17:30PM Vancouver / 20:30PM New York / July 18 ==> 08:30AM Hong Kong & Manila / 09:30AM Seoul / 10:30AM Melbourne)
Update — What happened in the June workshops?
In the June 12 Low-Carbon Conversations, we asked: Can we shift policies to reduce both human frustration and carbon emissions? Both sessions were filled with lively discussion focused on “Bureaucracy Busting and Carbon Reduction” where we examined scenarios fraught with frustrating bureaucratic policies and considered how we might intervene to reduce both carbon and human frustration.
Where did the scenarios come from? — Well, you, of course! Thanks so much to those who submitted a scenario. If you missed the sessions, find the scenarios HERE. As you’ll see, the scenarios came from academia and beyond — crossing disciplines, industries, and entering into the neighbourhoods where we live.
Source of images on slide above: The Noun Project — With thanks to the artists listed here whose work is shared under CC BY 3.0 license: Computer by unlimicon https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/computer/; trees by kenzi mebius https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/trees/; Stethoscope by Adrien Coquet https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/stethoscope/; Taxi by LUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/taxi/; centralization by dDara https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/centralization/; tiny homes by Ilusteo https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/tiny-homes/; Teapot by B Barrett https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/teapot/"; Chairs by WEBTECHOPS LLP from https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/chairs/; cycle by Mas Kurin https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/cycle/; lamp by Trendy https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/lamp/; Umbrella by Vera Lubimova https://thenounproject.com/browse/icons/term/umbrella/
Workshop participants discussed challenges in pushing back at the power structures embedded in normalized bureaucratic practices. Although we identified a variety of ways to push back, some strategies were perceived as too risky — career-limiting — and others seem unlikely to result in long-lasting policy shift, which is the ultimate goal.
One suggestion for intervening is through humour. Is satire capable of unpicking harmful bureaucratic practices? If so, where is it active? Where is it working?
Suggestions ranged from the subversive antics of The Yes Men duo (“Believe you’re going to change everything. Sort of.”) and satirical publications like The Beaverton, to the subversion of disobedient objects. — What if we added craftivism and laughtivism into our bureaucracy-shifting toolkits?
Could a member of the workforce become openly subversive?, participants asked. What would happen if we resurrected the figure of the court jester — working this time not for a monarch but for our institutions? One participant convinced their academic department to pay for training in comedic arts, honing their ability to critique absurdities in the institution where they work. To what extent might we find safety and solidarity in comedy? — In tickling the brains of both workers and administrators, can we unite people in shared understanding of bureaucratic ridiculousness?
This, of course, is only one of many conversational threads from the June 12 Low-Carbon Conversations. For those of you unable to attend, I’ve included some very brief notes below along with a list of resources and role models suggested by the participants.
Selected Quotes & Notes from Workshops:
Thought-provoking questions:
When are the rules/regulations of bureaucracy helpful — even within activist movements? How much bureaucracy is needed to hold some things together? Where are bureaucracies working (how and why)?
Decentralization vs centralization: how much centralization is the “right amount”?
At what point does a system become a ‘slow violence’ bureaucracy? (See the linked document for
At what level is agitation most effective? How do we make time for that labour?
The corporate capture of governance creates huge barriers — a matrix of contracts that prevents hiring/contracting who we might want. There’s a social justice dimension here.
“Where rules enter, common sense leaves.”
Is bureaucracy a form of ‘slow violence’? Thinking with Rob Nixon’s (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Daniel Pargman (participant in Session #1) sought an answer from AI. See what Oracle told Daniel HERE.
James C. Scott in his research on peasant resistance observed the following strategies:
sabotage, foot-dragging, evasion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, arson, dissimulation (hiding the truth), slander
Diversity is key. Shifting policy to invite/demand diversity requires clear language so that goals are implementable.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks help avoid bureaucratic harms.
Bureaucracy in academia:
Academics work through a system of collegial governance, which is like herding cats. — It’s not a very strategic environment.
Academia is like a small village: “you have to hold your tongue if you’re going to work with people for a long time.”
The cost of conflict in academia is high, and it’s not useful; conflict should be useful and move a situation toward resolution.
In academia, no time is made for implementation of initiatives like sustainability; these initiatives are not integrated into the everyday work of faculty and staff. Without the provision of time and funding, success of these initiatives — even when they will appear in a university’s reputational metrics — relies on unpaid labour.
Students are passionate about change. That passion should be harnessed: greater empowerment/involvement of students in upper-level decision-making could lead to innovation.
Complaining “up” doesn’t reach very far up institutional hierarchies. Perhaps that’s not where our hope and efforts should be directed: we should be focusing on what can happen on the ground, at the grassroots level.
Can satire unite instead of further polarizing people? How do we walk a line using satire so that we don’t upset people in a way that causes them to turn away? In a moment of cancel culture — in academia and beyond — will employees (faculty and staff), students, employers (administrators) feel safe laughing together at what might be considered “the wrong things”?
Where are places where we can come together to laugh? — Bombay has a ‘laughter club.’
The ability to mock serious situations requires huge creativity.
What if there were a humourist-in-residence at academic institutions?
Other Resources & Ideas referenced during the June 12th sessions:
Alvesson & Spicer (2016). The stupidity paradox: The power and pitfalls of functional stupidity at work. Profile Books.
Conquest, Robert. — Conquest’s laws of politics include:
“The behavior of an organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
Daly, Herman — His ideas around un-economic growth.
Lange & Santarius. (2020). Smart green world?: Making digitalization work for sustainability.
Authors’ definition of “Data Sufficiency”:
as much data as necessary, but as little data as possible
June 12 Participant suggested corollary: “Admin Sufficiency”:
As much admin as necessary, but as little admin as possible
As many rules as necessary, but as few rules as possible
O’Donnell, Darren — Situationist-style public engagement interventions — Social Acupuncture shifts mindsets while meeting people where they are. See also Haircuts by Children, an exercise in trust, engaging participants in thinking through power and assumed “normalcy” of societal roles. Could similar strategies be used to collide different actors trapped in/by bureaucracies?
Ontario’s Ministry of Red Tape Reduction. [Not kidding: the actual name of the body operating the Canadian province’s Regulatory Registry. — Wishful thinking, or does it live up to its name?]
The Parliament of Things and the Embassy of the North Sea offer opportunities for people to engage playfully in ways that visibilize and destabilize assumed human/non-human power structures.
Raghavan, B., & Pargman, D. (2016). Refactoring Society: Systems Complexity in an Age of Limits. LIMITS ‘16, June 08–10 2016, Irvine, CA, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2926676.2926677
Rogers, N., & Maloney, M. (2017). Law as if Earth Really Mattered. Routledge. — Rewriting (human) case law to consider nonhumans alongside the humans; forces readers to (re)consider relationships, actions, and impacts. Wild law version of the Feminist Judgment Project.
Sutherland, B. (2024). Carbon Emissions and Circularity in IT.
Wildner, Kathrin — Artful community engagement (as in the Park Fiction project). Listen to the PABR audio episodes HERE.
Please reach out if you have resources you’d like to share for bureaucracy-busting, brain-tickling, and justice-increasing...