New design congress

An independent research group confronting the gap between what is said to be happening and what is actually happening in digitised societies.

About

From the About page:

All infrastructures are expressions of power. Digitisation's utopian promises of resilience and equality have not materialised. Today's connected world exacerbates intolerable social, economic, political and ecological issues without accountability. Our digitised societies are brittle and face an uncertain present. Interventions in the name of innovation, ethics or justice have failed.

This is not the future we will accept.
Another world is possible.

New Design Congress is a direct challenge to the digital incumbent.

We combine civic-academic research with criticism informed by our digital security practice, using a unique methodology for ambitious, provocative work that achieves real-world outcomes. From livestreams and software, to policy and papers, our work meets people where they are. We rigorously self-examine for feasibility and accountability. We resist the limitations inherent to speculative design, design justice, ethics consulting, and other professional or techno-solutionism.

Established in 2018, we work with our members and collaborators — including internet subcultures, at-risk communities, universities, companies, non-profits, artists, environmentalists, and policymakers — to reset the core principles of digital societies: identity, connectivity, ownership, and scale.

Our central theory of change - alternative forking - takes problems of the present, finds underexplored historical and contemporary alternatives, and explores their potential as material challenges to the status quo.

Together, we platform underrepresented critical ideas, develop prototypes and products, find the future in unexpected places, and publish open research to forge applicable and practical alternatives through optimistic and realistic jolts to the wider world.