Surviving Fallout 4: A Design Fiction

ABSTRACT For many people in the so-called developed (industrial) world, it's hard to imagine a world of true scarcity within our present context of relative abundance. The fundamental assumptions of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism require continuous economic growth, and continuous resource consumption at the industrial scale. This same need to consume is mirrored in America's "consumer culture" at the household and individual scales. This behavior is unsustainable, but it is implicated within massive socio-political structures that rob individuals of any meaningful agency while eliding the real and impending consequences of human activity on our climate, food networks, and water supply (IPCC 2014). Looking into the potential future that arises from our continued inability to check our own expansion and consumption of resources, we can imagine a world with limited food supplies, unpredictable and extreme weather, mass extinctions, and the collapse of global infrastructures. In such a world, people might band together within factional and nomadic pseudo-tribal social structures, or take up arms to prey upon the unwary, all while eking out survival as parasites and scavengers, reappropriating the technological remnants of industrial society. Such is the case in the simulated postapocalyptic wasteland of Fallout 4 Engagement with game worlds can produce complex player engagements that often extend beyond the boundaries of the simulation. We see this in fan-production practices such as cosplay, fanfiction, role playing, and game-"modding" (Jenkins 2012). These worlds are compelling, so what can we do with them? Fallout 4 is set in an alternative-future version of Boston, Massachusetts in the years following 2077. The world is much akin to our own, save for a historical and technological development timeline that begins to diverge sometime around 1945

Self-Obviating Systems and their Application to Sustainability

Most research in computing and information science reinforces the premise that information and communications technology (ICT) can be productively applied even more broadly than it is at present. A recent thread of research in sustainable HCI, however, has focused on the possibility that there are many situations where less ICT, not more, may be desirable. We envision an adaptation of this premise, where the goal is not just to consciously omit or remove ICT systems, but rather to create systems explicitly designed to make themselves superfluous through their use. Such a system—one in which the successful operation of the system in the short term renders it superfluous in the long term—could be called a “self-obviating system”. We present a case study in the sustainable food domain for a context in which self-obviating systems could be useful, and a typology of self-obviating systems that could be relevant to other domains. Self-obviating systems could be an important part of a sustainable future, and could be applied more broadly in ICT design.ye

ICT4S 2029: What Will Be The Systems Supporting Sustainability in 15 Years

Research is often inspired by visions of the future. These visions can take on various narrative forms, and can fall anywhere along the spectrum from utopian to dystopian. Even though we recognize the importance of such visions to help us shape research questions and inspire rich design spaces to be explored, the opportunity to discuss them is rarely given in a research context. Imagine how civilization will have changed in 15 years. What is your vision for systems that will be supporting sustainability in that time Which transformational changes will have occurred in the mean time that allow for these systems Is ICT even the right tool or does it contradict sustainability by making our world ever more complex How can we make systems and our societies more sustainable and resilient by ICT4S This paper presents a compilation of fictional abstracts for inspiration and discussion, and provides means to stimulate discussion on future research and contributes to ICT4S community building