Speculative design focuses on technology's long term impact

The argument

Amara’s Law states that people tend to overestimate a technology’s short term impact, yet greatly underestimate its long term impact. Problems can arise later on in a technology’s lifetime that could have been easily prevented if precautions were taken in the planning stages. Speculative design enables engineers to prepare for multiple possibilities, realistic or not. When Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby introduced the concept in 1996, they intended speculative design to be a progressive alternative to contemporary design. Functioning on an intellectual level and not concerned with the commercial market, speculative design places "new technological developments within imaginary but believable everyday situations” to address possible outcomes before they happen. Specific aspects of technology can be ensured to be safe before it is too late. The Tesla Auto-pilot fatality raised concern in the general public over technology’s long term effectiveness. According to an MIT study, people want self-driving cars to be programmed to minimize the death toll, something speculative design would guarantee. Companies have used the technique to investigate what the future could be like. Architectural firm BIG’s concept of designing a floating city addresses the influence rising sea levels could have on infrastructure, agriculture, and culture. Speculative design helps shape difficult, future social issues, to better prepare ourselves for possible futures, and to investigate what the desired future is.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Speculative design primarily focuses on the long term impact of technology, attempting to prevent undesirable possibilities. Critics regard the concept as a safeguard from a dystopic future, such fictions “are often catered to privileged audiences and could actually be the representation of lived realities in many parts of the world”. What speculative design fears most is a reality, and an alternative with an engaged and inclusive approach can guarantee an impact now.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Amara's Law describes a pattern in how people forecast. The premise treats it as establishing that later problems were preventable, which would have to be shown case by case rather than assumed. [Rejecting P2] Imagining believable scenarios can raise questions in advance; it does not "address" outcomes or ensure that anything is safe, and the argument slides between the two. [Rejecting P3] A floating-city concept and a survey of what people want from autonomous vehicles are a demonstration and a research finding, not evidence that the method returned value to a business. The counter-argument adds that such work tends to be produced for and consumed by narrow audiences, which limits what it can deliver in a commercial setting.