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The Matrix saga questions free will through foreknowledge, determinism, and unconscious decisions. If actions are predicted by the Oracle, causality, or brain activity, is choice an illusion? Without the ability to do otherwise, freedom seems impossible, raising doubts about whether human decisions are genuinely open or predetermined by external forces.

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The Matrix Saga: Does Neo Have Free Will? (Do We Have Free Will?)

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Early on in Reloaded, Neo meets The Oracle—a program from “the machine world” that knows the future. When she offers him a piece of candy, Neo asks, “Do you already know if I’ll take it?” To which she replies, “Wouldn’t be much of an oracle if I didn’t.” Neo rightly responds, “But if you already know, how can I make a choice?”

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J. Paul is a London-based designer and researcher who specializes in speculative design. He uses creative and imaginative approaches to explore how future technologies could shape our lives, helping people rethink current challenges and possibilities.

One area of focus in his work is future mobility. Through speculative design, J. Paul envisions how advances in technology and shifting societal needs might transform the way we move and connect in the future.

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J. Paul Neeley - School of Critical Design

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J. Paul is a London based designer and researcher with expertise in Speculative Design, Service Design, Design Research, and Strategy.

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The Matrix is a simulated reality created by intelligent machines to subdue and control humanity. It raises profound philosophical questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and morality. The trilogy explores themes such as the distinction between appearance and reality, the possibility of true knowledge, and the value of truth versus pleasure. It challenges viewers to consider the nature of their own existence and the ethical implications of their choices.

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Watching The Matrix Trilogy Philosophically

The Matrix films are arguably some of the most philosophical films to ever confront mainstream movie audiences. Unfortunately, if one does not have much philosophical background (and most people don't) it is easy to miss most of the philosophical content. Therefore, in order to help fans get the most of their film experience, I offer The Matrix 101 readers the following philosophical guide.

It's The Questions That Drive Us
In essence, philosophy is about asking the big questions of life. The Matrix Trilogy is philosophical precisely because both the characters and the plot are driven by the big questions from almost every area of philosophy. Below is a listing of some of the major branches of philosophical thought, and a brief survey of some of the questions that the films raise.

METAPHYSICS: THE STUDY/THEORY OF REALITY

What is Real? The main metaphysical theme, that appearances can be deceiving, is impossible to miss. It is the very premise of the whole matrix deception. Morpheus raises the big metaphysical questions when, in the construct program, he asks Neo: "What is real? How do you define real?" We've all heard these lines, but to watch the Matrix philosophically is to seriously ask the question yourself. How do you define real? Morpheus goes on to say, "If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." But the story shows us why this answer won't do. If we define reality in this way, then the Matrix would be "Real." But we want to say (as does Morpheus) that the Matrix is a deception - appearance only. Zion is what's real in the films, and our lives are what's real for us. So how should we define "real?" What is the difference between "appearance" and "reality"? These are the tough metaphysical questions that every armchair philosopher must tackle.

EPISTEMOLOGY: THE STUDY/THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Can we know what is Real? Morpheus tells Neo, "All I offer is the Truth." But can Morpheus really be sure that he's got it? Does he know with certainty that Zion is the real world and not simply another level of the Matrix? (Note his uncertainty at the end of Revolutions.) And can you be sure that you are not in a matrix yourself? Most people don't take this question very seriously. (It's crazy -- right?) But think about it. What are the tell-tale signs of a matrix? There are none. Thomas Anderson's world seemed just like our world, so can you really be so sure? For centuries skeptics have argued that one can never know for certain what the world is really like. Most of the time we have trouble taking such skeptics seriously, but the Matrix films show us why they may not be as crazy as they seem.

ETHICS: THE STUDY/THEORY OF MORALITY AND VALUE

What is Good? The Matrix urges us to consider a number of questions concerning value. Take, for instance, the choice between the red pill and blue. For Neo the choice is an easy one. To discover what the matrix is has been his life's goal - of course he'll choose the red pill. But Cypher shows us that the choice is really more complicated. It is easy to choose the red pill when you don't know what you are getting yourself into. But Cypher has seen the desert of the real. After eating the same "God damn goop everyday," he regrets the choice. Neo, on the other hand, gets to be Superman. Who wouldn't like that? The interesting thing to consider is what you would do in a situation more like Cypher's. Forget about the war with the machines for a moment and think about this: if our world was an illusion - a matrix of sorts - would you prefer to live in the "real world" if in many ways that world sucked. No more juicy steaks, dry martinis, nice clothes, movie theaters, sports, etc.? Ultimately, how you answer this question will come down to how much you value pleasure in comparison to truth. Is pleasure all that really matters (as philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill have argued), or is truth valuable for its own sake?

Is There Moral Truth? Another key moral question brought out in the trilogy pertains to the objectivity of value judgments. In Revolutions, at the end of their final burly brawl, Smith asks Neo:

Why Mr. Anderson? Why? ...Why keep fighting? Do you think you're fighting for something - for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace, could it be for love? Illusions Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence without meaning or purpose.

Here Smith attacks the values that humans hold dear, claiming that they are "illusions," "constructs" (artificial creations), no more real than the matrix itself. While Neo does not engage Smith in a philosophical debate about this (he fights simply because he chooses to), you might want to take this question on yourself. Is Smith right? Are these values, and the importance we attribute to them, just illusions that we create to justify our actions and our very existence?

If you agree with Smith then you are a moral non-objectivist. You believe that there is no such thing as "objective truth" pertaining to judgments of value, and right and wrong. If you disagree with Smith then you are probably a moral objectivist. You believe that some value judgments and/or judgments about right and wrong can be objectively true. That is, you probably think that certain moral claims like: It's wrong to use a matrix to deceive people against their will, are true in a way that is independent of what any individual or culture thinks about it. While in one sense this is your own moral opinion (and the opinion of your culture), it is not true because you (or we) believe it, rather, you believe it because it is true.

Does objective moral truth exist? This is one of the most important philosophical questions that a person can ask, and the great philosophers have taken both sides. Socrates, Plato, Immanuel Kant and others have argued that there is such truth, while Friedrich Nietzsche, A.J. Ayer, Agent Smith and others have denied it. Without a doubt the Wachowski brothers have contemplated this question, and are encouraging you to do the same.

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY/THEORY OF MIND

The Mind-Body Problem: One of the main questions about the mind that the trilogy raises is called "the mind-body problem." It involves the relationship between the mind and the brain. Is the mind simply the brain? Or, is it separate and distinct - an immortal soul temporarily connected to the brain? The whole "matrix scenario" of jacking into an illusory world by connecting a person's brain to a computer system seems to suppose mind-body materialism - the view that the mind just is the brain. To "think of Zion" or "see an Agent" is just to have your neurons firing in a particular pattern. But the Wachowskis are never ones to suggest an easy answer to philosophical questions. There are elements in the films that can be seen in terms of mind-body dualism which holds that the mind and brain are in some sense separate and distinct. For instance, when Neo finds himself at Mobil Ave. when he isn't even jacked in, seems to suggest that "he" is not just his brain. (Notice, however, that Maggie says his neural patterns look just like those of a person who is jacked in, as he lies comatose on the Hammer.)

It is interesting to consider what theory of the mind is really at work within the Matrix Trilogy, but the beauty of these films is that they make us question our own lives. Is your mind just your brain? Modern neuroscience says "yes," but most religions give an emphatic "no." Which position do you take, and what are your reasons?

Is There Free Will? Another significant issue in the philosophy of mind is the matter of free will. We find a number of different outlooks on this topic within the films:

Morpheus' Fatalism: Morpheus believes that some events in the world are "fated" - they are destined to occur. Although he maintains that "everything begins with choice," he simultaneously believes that certain events are inevitable - such as the fulfillment of the Oracle's prophecy.
The Merovingian's Causal Determinism: The Merovingian does not believe in free will in the traditional sense, nor the doctrine of fate. He rejects the idea that people make "choices" in the sense of having junctures in their lives at which they can pursue one course or another. For the Merovingian, causality rules. Everything that happens, including our (apparent) choices, are determined by prior causes. It is all just a matter of cause and effect.
Neo's Free Will: Neo, in contrast, believes in free will. He rejects fate, saying, "I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life." And he asserts his "free will" (or at least his belief in it) when he tells Agent Smith that he fights because he "chooses to" at the end of Revolutions, and when, in Reloaded, he tells the Architect that "the problem is choice."
Ghost's Compatibilism: While most people tend to think that either free will or causal determinism is true (but not both), Ghost offers a different perspective in the video clips from Enter the Matrix. He says: "You know me Niobe, it's not a choice, it's a way of life." Ghost seems to suggest that his character determines his action. Like the Merovingian, he believes that cannot do otherwise. But Ghost does not regard this as a restriction upon his freedom. Since he does what he most wants to do, he sees himself as free and causally determined at the same time.
While all four of these views are developed within the Matrix story, only one can be true within the Matrix universe. But which one? And what about our lives? Are some events fated to occur? And are we free, causally determined or both?

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY/THEORY OF RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS ISSUES

The Problem of Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge: Another philosophical puzzle related to free will pertains to the concept of divine foreknowledge. This theme arises within the trilogy with respect to the Oracle's unerring predictions. Although the Oracle is not God, she "sees without time" - a quality typically attributed to God. So the following question arises: If the Oracle (or God), knows what a person shall do, are they free to do otherwise? For example, if the Oracle knows that Neo will take the cookie at exactly 2:45pm (and she is never mistaken), then is it within Neo's power to refuse the cookie? On the face of it, it seems that he cannot. If the Oracle can't be mistaken, then Neo can't refuse. And, if this analysis is correct, then he seems to be "unfree" with respect to that choice. This problem becomes most acute in the case of God who is supposed to know everything. [The Wachowskis toyed with the idea of total foreknowledge themselves. In Enter the Matrix the Oracle told Niobe: "I know everything from the beginning of this path to the end." But, apparently the brothers changed their mind, and at the end of Revolutions she informs Seraph that she didn't know how things would ultimately turn out - but she "believed."] Complete foreknowledge would appear to wipe out free will altogether. Not only would Neo be unable to refuse the cookie, he would be unable to do anything differently in his entirely life from what the Oracle has foreseen.

Is there a way out of this paradox? Most religious people think so. The dominant view within Western theology is that God is indeed omniscient, and knows the future perfectly. Yet most people who believe this also believe that they have free will in the sense that they have real "options" in front of them. Can these two beliefs be reconciled? Can you find an answer to this age-old philosophical puzzle?

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES

The Social Construction of Race and Gender: What does it mean to be a man or a woman? What does it mean to be black or white or Asian or Latino, etc.? We all know that race and sex has different meanings in various cultures. For instance, to be black in America two hundred years ago meant (according to the dominant white culture) that you were "property" rather than a person, that you were "unfit" for education, etc. Similarly, to be a woman meant that you were unfit for political life - or to even vote, that you must be dainty and refined, etc. These cultural meanings that a society builds around the biological differences between people (race and sex) are called social constructions And without a doubt, some cultural constructions have been quite damaging. So when you watch the Matrix films, you might consider how race and gender are constructed within the films. As you do this, keep in mind that there are two cultures at work in the films - the culture of the Matrix (think of Neo's job at Metacortex, the Federal building, the Merovingian's restaurant, etc.) and the culture of Zion, which we see through the actions of the rebels in all three films, and in scenes depicting Zion itself in the later two films. If you compare and contrast these two realms you should see a marked difference in how race and gender are depicted. Also, think about the Wachowski's choices regarding the cast. Why are the Architect, the Agents, the police officers, the guards at the Federal building all white men? Why are those programs who help the rebels all people of color and/or women, e.g., Persephone, Oracle, Sati, Seraph, Ramakandra? Surely these are not mere coincidences. The Wachowski's have a distinct message concerning race and gender in these films, and you must dig beyond the surface to understand it.

It's The Questions That Brought You Here
And what are the answers to all these philosophical questions that drive us? By now you probably gather that I'm not going to answer them for you. But after all, how could I? Just as Morpheus explained to Neo that no one can tell him what the matrix is - "he must see it for himself" - similarly, no one can supply the philosophical answers for you. You've got to explore them for yourself. To quote the master: "I can only show you the door. You must walk through it."

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The MATRIX 101 - Understanding The Matrix Trilogy - Watching The Matrix Trilogy Philosophically by Matt Lawrence

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Watching The Matrix Trilogy Philosophically

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The Matrix franchise delves into themes such as the perils of technology, fate versus free will, and the power of human emotion. It examines how advanced AI can both imprison and assist humanity, questions the balance between destiny and choice, and highlights love and faith as central human motivators.

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The Biggest Themes In The Matrix Franchise Explained - Looper

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Beneath the veneer of leather and green code, “The Matrix” grapples with many deeper themes and ideas. Here are the biggest themes explored in the franchise.

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In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment to investigate how situational factors influence behavior. Twenty-four male college students were randomly assigned roles as guards or prisoners in a simulated prison environment. The study was terminated after six days due to the extreme and abusive behaviors exhibited, highlighting the powerful impact of situational dynamics on human actions.

Thanks to Matthew Frame for sharing this. It offers valuable insights and key nuggets for my essay.

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For example, prisoners and guards may have personalities that make conflict inevitable, with prisoners lacking respect for law and order and guards being domineering and aggressive.

Alternatively, prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons.

Zimbardo predicted the situation made people act the way they do rather than their disposition (personality).

To study people's roles in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison.

He advertised asking for volunteers to participate in a study of the psychological effects of prison life.

The 75 applicants who answered the ad were given diagnostic interviews and personality tests to eliminate candidates with psychological problems, medical disabilities, or a history of crime or drug abuse.

24 men judged to be the most physically & mentally stable, the most mature, & the least involved in antisocial behaviors were chosen to participate.

The participants did not know each other prior to the study and were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment. There were two reserves, and one dropped out, finally leaving ten prisoners and 11 guards.

Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and 'booked.'

Then they were blindfolded and driven to the psychology department of Stanford University, where Zimbardo had had the basement set out as a prison, with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells. Here the deindividuation process began.

When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, deloused, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away, and were given prison clothes and bedding. They were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only.

The use of ID numbers was a way to make prisoners feel anonymous. Each prisoner had to be called only by his ID number and could only refer to himself and the other prisoners by number.

Their clothes comprised a smock with their number written on it, but no underclothes. They also had a tight nylon cap to cover their hair, and a locked chain around one ankle.

All guards were dressed in identical uniforms of khaki, and they carried a whistle around their neck and a billy club borrowed from the police. Guards also wore special sunglasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.

Three guards worked shifts of eight hours each (the other guards remained on call). Guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners. No physical violence was permitted.

Zimbardo observed the behavior of the prisoners and guards (as a researcher), and also acted as a prison warden.

Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, with the guards adopting theirs quickly and easily.

Asserting Authority

Within hours of beginning the experiment, some guards began to harass prisoners. At 2:30 A.M. prisoners were awakened from sleep by blasting whistles for the first of many "counts."

The counts served as a way to familiarize the prisoners with their numbers. More importantly, they provided a regular occasion for the guards to exercise control over the prisoners.

The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior too. They talked about prison issues a great deal of the time. They 'told tales' on each other to the guards.

They started taking the prison rules very seriously, as though they were there for the prisoners' benefit and infringement would spell disaster for all of them. Some even began siding with the guards against prisoners who did not obey the rules.

Physical Punishment

The prisoners were taunted with insults and petty orders, they were given pointless and boring tasks to accomplish, and they were generally dehumanized.

Push-ups were a common form of physical punishment imposed by the guards. One of the guards stepped on the prisoners" backs while they did push-ups, or made other prisoners sit on the backs of fellow prisoners doing their push-ups.

Asserting Independence

Because the first day passed without incident, the guards were surprised and totally unprepared for the rebellion which broke out on the morning of the second day.

During the second day of the experiment, the prisoners removed their stocking caps, ripped off their numbers, and barricaded themselves inside the cells by putting their beds against the door.

The guards called in reinforcements. The three guards who were waiting on stand-by duty came in and the night shift guards voluntarily remained on duty.

Putting Down the Rebellion

The guards retaliated by using a fire extinguisher which shot a stream of skin-chilling carbon dioxide, and they forced the prisoners away from the doors. Next, the guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked and took the beds out.

The ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion were placed into solitary confinement. After this, the guards generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.

Special Privileges

One of the three cells was designated as a "privilege cell." The three prisoners least involved in the rebellion were given special privileges. The guards gave them back their uniforms and beds and allowed them to wash their hair and brush their
teeth.

Privileged prisoners also got to eat special food in the presence of the other prisoners who had temporarily lost the privilege of eating. The effect was to break the solidarity among prisoners.

Consequences of the Rebellion

Over the next few days, the relationships between the guards and the prisoners changed, with a change in one leading to a change in the other. Remember that the guards were firmly in control and the prisoners were totally dependent on them.

As the prisoners became more dependent, the guards became more derisive towards them. They held the prisoners in contempt and let the prisoners know it. As the guards' contempt for them grew, the prisoners became more submissive.

As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and assertive. They demanded ever greater obedience from the prisoners. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything, so tried to find ways to please the guards, such as telling tales on fellow prisoners.

Prisoner #8612

Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage.

After a meeting with the guards where they told him he was weak, but offered him "informant" status, #8612 returned to the other prisoners and said "You can"t leave. You can't quit."

Soon #8612 "began to act 'crazy,' to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control." It wasn't until this point that the psychologists realized they had to let him out.

A Visit from Parents

The next day, the guards held a visiting hour for parents and friends. They were worried that when the parents saw the state of the jail, they might insist on taking their sons home. Guards washed the prisoners, had them clean and polish their cells, fed them a big dinner and played music on the intercom.

After the visit, rumors spread of a mass escape plan. Afraid that they would lose the prisoners, the guards and experimenters tried to enlist help and facilities of the Palo Alto police department.

The guards again escalated the level of harassment, forcing them to do menial, repetitive work such as cleaning toilets with their bare hands.

Catholic Priest

Zimbardo invited a Catholic priest who had been a prison chaplain to evaluate how realistic our prison situation was. Half of the prisoners introduced themselves by their number rather than name.

The chaplain interviewed each prisoner individually. The priest told them the only way they would get out was with the help of a lawyer.

Prisoner #819

Eventually, while talking to the priest, #819 broke down and began to cry hysterically, just like two previously released prisoners had.

The psychologists removed the chain from his foot, the cap off his head, and told him to go and rest in a room that was adjacent to the prison yard. They told him they would get him some food and then take him to see a doctor.

While this was going on, one of the guards lined up the other prisoners and had them chant aloud:

"Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer."

The psychologists realized #819 could hear the chanting and went back into the room where they found him sobbing uncontrollably. The psychologists tried to get him to agree to leave the experiment, but he said he could not leave because the others had labeled him a bad prisoner.

Back to Reality

At that point, Zimbardo said, "Listen, you are not #819. You are [his name], and my name is Dr. Zimbardo. I am a psychologist, not a prison superintendent, and this is not a real prison. This is just an experiment, and those are students, not prisoners, just like you. Let's go."

He stopped crying suddenly, looked up and replied, "Okay, let's go," as if nothing had been wrong.

An End to the Experiment

Zimbardo (1973) had intended that the experiment should run for two weeks, but on the sixth day, it was terminated, due to the emotional breakdowns of prisoners, and excessive aggression of the guards.

Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw the prisoners being abused by the guards.

Filled with outrage, she said, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality.

Zimbardo (2008) later noted, "It wasn't until much later that I realized how far into my prison role I was at that point - that I was thinking like a prison superintendent rather than a research psychologist."

This led him to prioritize maintaining the experiment's structure over the well-being and ethics involved, thereby highlighting the blurring of roles and the profound impact of the situation on human behavior.

Here's a quote that illustrates how Philip Zimbardo, initially the principal investigator, became deeply immersed in his role as the "Stanford Prison Superintendent (April 19, 2011):

"By the third day, when the second prisoner broke down, I had already slipped into or been transformed into the role of "Stanford Prison Superintendent." And in that role, I was no longer the principal investigator, worried about ethics.

When a prisoner broke down, what was my job? It was to replace him with somebody on our standby list. And that's what I did. There was a weakness in the study in not separating those two roles. I should only have been the principal investigator, in charge of two graduate students and one undergraduate."

Conclusion

According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed how people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards.

Because the guards were placed in a position of authority, they began to act in ways they would not usually behave in their normal lives.

The "prison" environment was an important factor in creating the guards' brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study).

Therefore, the findings support the situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.

Zimbardo proposed that two processes can explain the prisoner's "final submission."

Deindividuation may explain the behavior of the participants; especially the guards. This is a state when you become so immersed in the norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal responsibility.

The guards may have been so sadistic because they did not feel what happened was down to them personally - it was a group norm. They also may have lost their sense of personal identity because of the uniform they wore.

Also, learned helplessness could explain the prisoner's submission to the guards. The prisoners learned that whatever they did had little effect on what happened to them. In the mock prison the unpredictable decisions of the guards led the prisoners to give up responding.

After the prison experiment was terminated, Zimbardo interviewed the participants. Here's an excerpt:

'Most of the participants said they had felt involved and committed. The research had felt "real" to them. One guard said, "I was surprised at myself.

I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle and I kept thinking I had to watch out for them in case they tried something."

Another guard said "Acting authoritatively can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure." And another: "... during the inspection I went to Cell Two to mess up a bed which a prisoner had just made and he grabbed me, screaming that he had just made it and that he was not going to let me mess it up.

He grabbed me by the throat and although he was laughing I was pretty scared. I lashed out with my stick and hit him on the chin although not very hard, and when I freed myself I became angry."'

Most of the guards found it difficult to believe that they had behaved in the brutal ways that they had. Many said they hadn't known this side of them existed or that they were capable of such things.

The prisoners, too, couldn't believe that they had responded in the submissive, cowering, dependent way they had. Several claimed to be assertive types normally.

When asked about the guards, they described the usual three stereotypes that can be found in any prison: some guards were good, some were tough but fair, and some were cruel.

A further explanation for the behavior of the participants can be described in terms of reinforcement. The escalation of aggression and abuse by the guards could be seen as being due to the positive reinforcement they received both from fellow guards and intrinsically in terms of how good it made them feel to have so much power.

Similarly, the prisoners could have learned through negative reinforcement that if they kept their heads down and did as they were told they could avoid further unpleasant experiences.

Critical Evaluation

The Stanford Prison Experiment is criticized for lacking ecological validity in its attempt to simulate a real prison environment. Specifically, the "prison" was merely a setup in the basement of Stanford University's psychology department.

The student "guards" lacked professional training, and the experiment's duration was much shorter than real prison sentences. Furthermore, the participants, who were college students, didn't reflect the diverse backgrounds typically found in actual prisons in terms of ethnicity, education, and socioeconomic status.

None had prior prison experience, and they were chosen due to their mental stability and low antisocial tendencies. Additionally, the mock prison lacked spaces for exercise or rehabilitative activities.

Demand characteristics could explain the findings of the study. Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting.

Because the guards and prisoners were playing a role, their behavior may not be influenced by the same factors which affect behavior in real life.

This means the study's findings cannot be reasonably generalized to real life, such as prison settings. I.e, the study has low ecological validity.

However, there is considerable evidence that the participants did react to the situation as though it was real. For example, 90% of the prisoners' private conversations, which were monitored by the researchers, were on the prison conditions, and only 10% of the time were their conversations about life outside of the prison.

The guards, too, rarely exchanged personal information during their relaxation breaks - they either talked about 'problem prisoners,' other prison topics, or did not talk at all. The guards were always on time and even worked overtime for no extra pay.

When the prisoners were introduced to a priest, they referred to themselves by their prison number, rather than their first name. Some even asked him to get a lawyer to help get them out.

Fourteen years after his experience as prisoner 8612 in the Stanford Prison Experiment, Douglas Korpi, now a prison psychologist, reflected on his time and stated (Musen and Zimbardo 1992):

"The Stanford Prison Experiment was a very benign prison situation and it promotes everything a normal prison promotes - the guard role promotes sadism, the prisoner role promotes confusion and shame".

The study may also lack population validity as the sample comprised US male students. The study's findings cannot be applied to female prisons or those from other countries. For example, America is an individualist culture (where people are generally less conforming) and the results may be different in collectivist cultures (such as Asian countries).

A strength of the study is that it has altered the way US prisons are run. For example, juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners (due to the risk of violence against them).

Another strength of the study is that the harmful treatment of participants led to the formal recognition of ethical guidelines by the American Psychological Association. Studies must now undergo an extensive review by an institutional review board (US) or ethics committee (UK) before they are implemented.

A review of research plans by a panel is required by most institutions such as universities, hospitals, and government agencies. These boards review whether the potential benefits of the research are justifiable in the light of the possible risk of physical or psychological harm.

These boards may request researchers make changes to the study's design or procedure, or in extreme cases deny approval of the study altogether.

Ethical Issues

The study has received many ethical criticisms, including lack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment (it was unpredictable).

Also, the prisoners did not consent to being "arrested" at home. The prisoners were not told partly because final approval from the police wasn't given until minutes before the participants decided to participate, and partly because the researchers wanted the arrests to come as a surprise.

However, this was a breach of the ethics of Zimbardo's own contract that all of the participants had signed.

Protection of Participants

Participants playing the role of prisoners were not protected from psychological harm, experiencing incidents of humiliation and distress. For example, one prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying, and anger.

Here's a quote from Philip G. Zimbardo, taken from an interview on the Stanford Prison Experiment's 40th anniversary (April 19, 2011):

"In the Stanford prison study, people were stressed, day and night, for 5 days, 24 hours a day. There's no question that it was a high level of stress because five of the boys had emotional breakdowns, the first within 36 hours. Other boys that didn't have emotional breakdowns were blindly obedient to corrupt authority by
the guards and did terrible things to each other. And so it is no question that that was unethical. You can't do research where you allow people to suffer at that level."

"After the first one broke down, we didn't believe it. We thought he was faking. There was actually a rumor he was faking to get out. He was going to bring his friends in to liberate the prison. And/or we believed our screening procedure was inadequate, [we believed] that he had some mental defect that we did not pick up. At that point, by the third day, when the second prisoner broke down, I had already slipped into or been transformed into the role of "Stanford Prison Superintendent." And in that role, I was no longer the principal investigator, worried about ethics."

However, in Zimbardo's defense, the emotional distress experienced by the prisoners could not have been predicted from the outset. Approval for the study was given by the Office of Naval Research, the Psychology Department, and the University Committee of Human Experimentation.

This Committee also did not anticipate the prisoners' extreme reactions that were to follow. Alternative methodologies were looked at that would cause less distress to the participants but at the same time give the desired information, but nothing suitable could be found.

Withdrawal

Although guards were explicitly instructed not to physically harm prisoners at the beginning of the Stanford Prison Experiment, they were allowed to induce feelings of boredom, frustration, arbitrariness, and powerlessness among the inmates.

This created a pervasive atmosphere where prisoners genuinely believed and even reinforced among each other, that they couldn't leave the experiment until their "sentence" was completed, mirroring the inescapability of a real prison.

Even though two participants (8612 and 819) were released early, the impact of the environment was so profound that prisoner 416, reflecting on the experience two months later, described it as a "prison run by psychologists rather than by the state."

Debrief

Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions were held, and all participants returned post-experimental questionnaires several weeks, then several months later, and then at yearly intervals. Zimbardo concluded there were no lasting negative effects.

Zimbardo also strongly argues that the benefits gained from our understanding of human behavior and how we can improve society should outbalance the distress caused by the study.

However, it has been suggested that the US Navy was not so much interested in making prisons more human and were, in fact, more interested in using the study to train people in the armed services to cope with the stresses of captivity.

Discussion Questions

1. What are the effects of living in an environment with no clocks, no view of the outside world, and minimal sensory stimulation?

2. Consider the psychological consequences of stripping, delousing, and shaving the heads of prisoners or members of the military. Whattransformations take place when people go through an experience like this?

3. The prisoners could have left at any time, and yet, they didn't. Why?

4. After the study, how do you think the prisoners and guards felt?

5. If you were the experimenter in charge, would you have done this study? Would you have terminated it earlier? Would you have conducted a follow-up study?

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Famous Study

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In Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, guards or prisoners. after a few days, the prisoners staged a failed revolt and were consequently punished and humiliated by the guards.

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Navigating Fate and Free Will examines how the film portrays the tension between destiny and autonomy. Key scenes, such as Neo's choice between the red and blue pills, his encounter with the Oracle, and Trinity's confrontation with her prophesied love, illustrate the complex interplay between predetermined paths and personal decisions. The narrative challenges viewers to consider whether choices are genuine or influenced by external forces, ultimately questioning the nature of free will within a seemingly predestined framework.

https://studymoose.com/the-matrix-fate-vs-free-will-essay

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The Matrix trilogy delves into the intricate relationship between body, brain, and mind, illustrating how perceived realities influence human experience. Philosophical influences, such as Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, Plato's allegory of the cave, and Descartes' meditations, are woven throughout, prompting viewers to question the nature of reality and perception. The films also explore the blurred line between humans and machines, as well as the tension between fate and free will.

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The Matrix revolutionized cinema with its innovative visual effects, notably bullet time, and its fusion of action and philosophical themes. It challenged conventional sci-fi narratives by featuring people of color in pivotal roles, such as Morpheus and the Oracle, and explored complex ideas like existentialism and free will. Its influence persists in modern filmmaking and pop culture.

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The Matrix and its pop culture impact, themes, and legacy

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The Matrix changed the game with innovative filming technology, action combined with philosophy, and people of color in pivotal roles.

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The simulation hypothesis suggests that what we experience as reality might actually be a computer-generated simulation. Philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that if future civilizations can create these simulations, it's likely we are living in one. This idea is connected to ancient philosophical concepts and raises questions about reality, consciousness, and ethics.

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The simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the proposal that all of reality, including the Earth and the rest of the universe, could in fact be an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation. Some versions rely on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would be able to convince its inhabitants that the simulation was "real". The simulation hypothesis bears a close resemblance to various other skeptical scenarios from throughout the history of philosophy. The hypothesis was popularized in its current form by Nick Bostrom. The suggestion that such a hypothesis is compatible with all of our perceptual experiences is thought to have significant epistemological consequences in the form of philosophical skepticism. Versions of the hypothesis have also been featured in science fiction, appearing as a central plot device in many stories and films.

There is a long philosophical and scientific history to the underlying thesis that reality is an illusion. This skeptical hypothesis can be traced back to antiquity; for example, to the " Butterfly Dream" of Zhuangzi, or the Indian philosophy of Maya, or in Ancient Greek philosophy Anaxarchus and Monimus likened existing things to a scene-painting and supposed them to resemble the impressions experienced in sleep or madness.

A version of the hypothesis was also theorised as a part of a philosophical argument by René Descartes.

Nick Bostrom's premise:

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.

Nick Bostrom's conclusion:

It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.

Therefore, if we don't think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.

-  Nick Bostrom, Are you living in a computer simulation?, 2003

The simulation argument

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called "the simulation argument". Despite the name, Bostrom's "simulation argument" does not directly argue that we live in a simulation; instead, Bostrom's trilemma argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions is almost certainly true:

1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or

2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or

3. "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one."

The trilemma points out that a technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power; if even a tiny percentage of them were to run "ancestor simulations" (that is, "high-fidelity" simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total number of simulated ancestors, or "Sims", in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors.

Bostrom goes on to use a type of anthropic reasoning to claim that, if the third proposition is the one of those three that is true, and almost all people with our kind of experiences live in simulations, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Bostrom claims his argument goes beyond the classical ancient " skeptical hypothesis", claiming that "...we have interesting empirical reasons to believe that a certain disjunctive claim about the world is true", the third of the three disjunctive propositions being that we are almost certainly living in a simulation. Thus, Bostrom, and writers in agreement with Bostrom such as David Chalmers, argue there might be empirical reasons for the "simulation hypothesis", and that therefore the simulation hypothesis is not a skeptical hypothesis but rather a " metaphysical hypothesis". Bostrom states he personally sees no strong argument as to which of the three trilemma propositions is the true one: "If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one's credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3)... I note that people who hear about the simulation argument often react by saying, 'Yes, I accept the argument, and it is obvious that it is possibility # n that obtains.' But different people pick a different n. Some think it obvious that (1) is true, others that (2) is true, yet others that (3) is true."

As a corollary to the trilemma, Bostrom states that "Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."

Criticism of Bostrom's anthropic reasoning

Bostrom argues that if "the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one", then it follows that we probably live in a simulation. Some philosophers disagree, proposing that perhaps "Sims" do not have conscious experiences the same way that unsimulated humans do, or that it can otherwise be self-evident to a human that they are a human rather than a Sim. Philosopher Barry Dainton modifies Bostrom's trilemma by substituting "neural ancestor simulations" (ranging from literal brains in a vat, to far-future humans with induced high-fidelity hallucinations that they are their own distant ancestors) for Bostrom's "ancestor simulations", on the grounds that every philosophical school of thought can agree that sufficiently high-tech neural ancestor simulation experiences would be indistinguishable from non-simulated experiences. Even if high-fidelity computer Sims are never conscious, Dainton's reasoning leads to the following conclusion: either the fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage and are able and willing to run large numbers of neural ancestor simulations is close to zero, or we are in some kind of (possibly neural) ancestor simulation.

Some scholars categorically reject-or are uninterested in-anthropic reasoning, dismissing it as "merely philosophical", unfalsifiable, or inherently unscientific.

Some critics propose that we could be in the first generation, and all the simulated people that will one day be created do not yet exist.

The cosmologist Sean M. Carroll argues that the simulation hypothesis leads to a contradiction: if we are typical, as it is assumed, and we are not capable of performing simulations, this contradicts the arguer's assumption that it is easy for us to foresee that other civilizations can most likely perform simulations.

Arguments, within the trilemma, against the simulation hypothesis

Some scholars accept the trilemma, and argue that the first or second of the propositions are true, and that the third proposition (the proposition that we live in a simulation) is false. Physicist Paul Davies deploys Bostrom's trilemma as part of one possible argument against a near-infinite multiverse. This argument runs as follows: if there were a near-infinite multiverse, there would be posthuman civilizations running ancestor simulations, and therefore we would come to the untenable and scientifically self-defeating conclusion that we live in a simulation; therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, existing multiverse theories are likely false. (Unlike Bostrom and Chalmers, Davies (among others) considers the simulation hypothesis to be self-defeating.)

Some point out that there is currently no proof of technology which would facilitate the existence of sufficiently high-fidelity ancestor simulation. Additionally, there is no proof that it is physically possible or feasible for a posthuman civilization to create such a simulation, and therefore for the present, the first proposition must be true. Additionally there are limits of computation.

Economist Robin Hanson argues a self-interested high-fidelity Sim should strive to be entertaining and praiseworthy in order to avoid being turned off or being shunted into a non-conscious low-fidelity part of the simulation. Hanson additionally speculates that someone who is aware that he might be a Sim might care less about others and live more for today: "your motivation to save for retirement, or to help the poor in Ethiopia, might be muted by realizing that in your simulation, you will never retire and there is no Ethiopia."

A method to test one type of simulation hypothesis was proposed in 2012 in a joint paper by physicists Silas R. Beane from the University of Bonn (now at the University of Washington, Seattle), and Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage from the University of Washington, Seattle. Under the assumption of finite computational resources, the simulation of the universe would be performed by dividing the continuum space-time into a discrete set of points. In analogy with the mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists run today to build up nuclei from the underlying theory of strong interactions (known as quantum chromodynamics), several observational consequences of a grid-like space-time have been studied in their work. Among proposed signatures is an anisotropy in the distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, that, if observed, would be consistent with the simulation hypothesis according to these physicists. In 2017, Campbell et al. proposed several experiments aimed at testing the simulation hypothesis in their paper "On Testing the Simulation Theory".

In 2019, philosopher Preston Greene suggested that it may be best not to find out if we're living in a simulation since, if it were found to be true, such knowing may end the simulation.

Besides attempting to assess whether the simulation hypothesis is true or false, philosophers have also used it to illustrate other philosophical problems, especially in metaphysics and epistemology. David Chalmers has argued that simulated beings might wonder whether their mental lives are governed by the physics of their environment, when in fact these mental lives are simulated separately (and are thus, in fact, not governed by the simulated physics). They might eventually find that their thoughts fail to be physically caused. Chalmers argues that this means that Cartesian dualism is not necessarily as problematic of a philosophical view as is commonly supposed, though he does not endorse it. Similar arguments can be made for philosophical views about personal identity that say that you could have been another human being than the one you are, as well as views about qualia that say that colors could have appeared differently than they do (the inverted spectrum scenario). In both cases, all this would require is hooking up the mental lives to the simulated physics in a different way.

The first to state the basic concept of reality as a simulation was Plato in 380BCE, in the famous Allegory of the Cave, describing people imprisoned since childhood (but not since birth) led to believe that artificial light-based representations of reality were truly real when, in fact, they were a fabricated illusion.[citation needed ]

Science fiction themes

Science fiction has highlighted themes such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and computer gaming for more than fifty years. Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye (alternative title: Counterfeit World) tells the story of a virtual city developed as a computer simulation for market research purposes, in which the simulated inhabitants possess consciousness; all but one of the inhabitants are unaware of the true nature of their world. The book was made into a German made-for-TV film called World on a Wire (1973) directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The movie The Thirteenth Floor (1999) was also loosely based on this book. " We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is a short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966, and was the basis for Total Recall (1990 film) and Total Recall (2012 film). In Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, a 1983 television movie, the main character pays to have his mind connected to a simulation.

The 1993 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode " Ship in a Bottle" explores the idea of people being unaware they are living in simulation, with Picard postulating at the end that perhaps they are also in a simulation playing out in a box on a table. This is also a possible use of dramatic irony, with both the actors and audience aware the television programme is indeed a simulation of sorts.

The same theme was repeated in the 1999 film , which depicted a world in which artificially intelligent robots enslaved humanity within a simulation set in the contemporary world. The 2012 play World of Wires was partially inspired by the Bostrom essay on the simulation hypothesis. In the episode " Extremis" (broadcast on 20 May 2017 on BBC One) of the science fiction series , aliens called "The Monks" plan an invasion of Earth by running and studying a holographic simulation of Earth with conscious inhabitants. When the virtual Doctor finds out about the simulation he sends an email about the simulation to his real self so that the real Doctor can save the world. In the first season of Rick and Morty, a science-fiction animated comedy, the episode " M. Night Shaym-Aliens!" (2014) aliens trap the lead role (Rick) in a simulated reality in order to trick him into revealing his formula for concentrated dark matter. The hypothesis also serves as the climax of s overarching plot, in which it was revealed that the game's setting itself was a simulation and that the player character is a member of a race made to explore it. In the game Xenoblade Chronicles, it is revealed that the whole world of the gods Bionis and Mechonis was a simulation run by Alvis, the administrative computer of a phase transition experiment facility (heavily implied to be "Ontos" in Xenoblade Chronicles 2) after Klaus destroyed the universe in a multiverse experiment.

1. ^ Grabianowski, Ed (7 May 2011). "You're living in a computer simulation, and math proves it". Gizmodo.

2. ^ Bostrom, Nick (2003). "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?". Philosophical Quarterly. 53 (211): 243-255. doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00309.

3. ^ The Simulation Argument Website FAQ

4. ^ The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High, Nick Bostrom, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 2003

5. Davis J. Chalmers ^ The Matrix as Metaphysics Dept of Philosophy, U. o Arizona; paper written for the philosophy section of website.

6. ^ Dainton, Barry (2012). "On singularities and simulations". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 19 (1): 42. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.374.7434.

7. ^ Carroll, Sean (22 August 2016). "Maybe We Do Not Live in a Simulation: The Resolution Conundrum". PreposterousUniverse.com.

8. ^ Beane, Silas; Zohreh Davoudi; Martin J. Savage (9 November 2012). "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation". arXiv:. Bibcode:2014EPJA...50..148B. doi:10.1140/epja/i2014-14148-0. Lay summary - The Physics arXiv Blog (October 10, 2012). ABSTRACT Observable consequences of the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid are explored. The simulation scenario is first motivated by extrapolating current trends in computational resource requirements for lattice QCD into the future. Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences. Among the observables that are considered are the muon g-2 and the current differences between determinations of alpha, but the most stringent bound on the inverse lattice spacing of the universe, b−1 > ~ 10^¹¹ GeV, is derived from the high-energy cut off of the cosmic ray spectrum. The numerical simulation scenario could reveal itself in the distributions of the highest energy cosmic rays exhibiting a degree of rotational symmetry breaking that reflects the structure of the underlying lattice.

9. ^ Moskowitz, Clara (7 April 2016). "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?". Scientific American.

10. ^ Campbell, Tom; Owhadi, Houman; Sauvageau, Joe; Watkinson, David (June 17, 2017). "On Testing the Simulation Theory". International Journal of Quantum Foundations. 3 (3): 78-99.

11. ^ Greene, Preston (10 August 2019). "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let's Not Find Out - Experimental findings will be either boring or extremely dangerous". The New York Times.

12. ^ Chalmers, David (January 1990). "How Cartesian Dualism Might Have Been True".

"Are We Living in a Simulation?" magazine, March 2013, pages 43-45. Interview with physicist Silas Beane of the University of Bonn discussing a proposed test for simulated reality evidence. Three pages, three photos, including one of Beane and a computer-generated scene from the film . Publisher: Immediate Media Company, Bristol, UK.

"Do We Live in the Matrix?" by Zeeya Merali, Discover, December 2013, pages 24-25. Subtitle: "Physicists have proposed tests to reveal whether we are part of a giant computer simulation."

Tom Campbell, Houman Owhadi, Joe Sauvageau, David Watkinson: On testing the simulation theory. arXiv:1703.00058.

Conitzer, Vincent. A Puzzle about Further Facts. Open access version of article in Erkenntnis.

Virk, Rizwan. The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game.

Lev, Gid'on. Life in the Matrix. Haaretz Magazine, April 25, 2019, page 6.

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The simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the proposal that all of reality, including the Earth and the rest of the universe, could in fact be an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation. Some versions rely on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would be able to convince its inhabitants that the simulation was "real".

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The Matrix was made by the Wachowski siblings, Lana and Lilly. They are known for their creative approach to filmmaking, mixing action with deep ideas about reality and technology. The film, released in 1999, became very popular for its unique special effects and thought-provoking story. It was followed by two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. The Wachowskis' work has had a big impact on modern science fiction movies.

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Christopher Nolan's films, like Inception and Interstellar, are similar to The Matrix because they also explore ideas about reality and perception. Inception questions what’s real by showing dreams within dreams, much like how The Matrix blurs the line between real and simulated worlds. Interstellar deals with time and space in ways that remind us of the alternate realities in The Matrix. Both directors use complex stories to explore deep questions about how we experience reality.

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Speculative Design explores future possibilities and societal impacts of emerging technology and shifting cultural and social trends, diverging from traditional design to provoke new thought, debate, directions, preferences, and strategy.

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Speculative Design explores future possibilities and societal impacts of emerging technology and shifting cultural and social trends, diverging from traditional design to provoke new thought, debate, directions, preferences, and strategy.

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Lizzie O'Shea discusses how big tech companies use social media algorithms and track our data, taking away our privacy and controlling our actions. She compares this to invisible handcuffs, limiting our freedom. O'Shea calls for stronger rules to protect people from digital surveillance and exploitation.

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Technology capitalism treats technology almost like a force of nature, without an agenda, inevitable and unstoppable. This framing binds us to the status quo.

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One of Paul Neely’s current work with his team  helped Moovel Labs (Mercedes-Benz AG) explore new mobility concepts, responding to emerging technologies and considering the implications of these possible futures.

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Tutorial on how to create a typewriter effect to achieve a similar result like that of the Matrix.

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Digital Typewriter Effect in After Effect | Tutorial

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Dunne & Raby, known for their work in speculative design, use design to explore future possibilities and provoke thought on the social, ethical, and cultural implications of emerging technologies. Their projects encourage us to question how technology shapes our lives, making them key figures in the speculative design field.

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Dunne & Raby use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies.

Anthony is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry and a Fellow of the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School in New York. Between 2005-2015 he was professor and head of the Design Interactions department/programme at the Royal College of Art in London. He studied Industrial Design at the RCA before working at Sony Design in Tokyo. On returning to London he completed a PhD in Computer Related Design at the RCA. He was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where he worked as a Senior Research Fellow leading EU and industry funded research projects. Between 1998-2004 he was a senior tutor in Design products where he led Platform 3. Anthony was awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2009

Fiona is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry and a Fellow of the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School in New York. She was Professor of Industrial Design (id2) at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna between 2011-2016 and was Reader in Design Interactions at the RCA between 2005-2015. She studied Architecture at the RCA before working for Kei'ichi Irie Architects in Tokyo. She also holds an MPhil in Computer Related Design from the RCA. She was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where she worked as a Senior Research Fellow leading externally funded research projects. She taught in the Architecture department for over 13 years leading ADS 4.

They are the authors of Hertzian Tales (CRD Research, 1999, MIT Press, 2005) and co-author, with Fiona Raby, of Design Noir (Birkhauser, 2001) and Speculative Everything (MIT Press, 2013, Japanese edition 2015, Chinese edition 2017). Projects include Technological Dream Series, No 1: Robots (2007), Designs For An Over Populated Planet: Foragers (2010), The United Micro Kingdoms (2013) and The School of Constructed Realities (2015).

Their work has been exhibited at MoMA, NYC, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and the Design Museum in London, and is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Frac Ile-de-France, Fnac and the MAK as well as several private collections.

In 2015 Dunne & Raby received the inaugural MIT Media Lab Award, in 2016 they were nominated for the Prince Philip Designers Prize, and in 2021 they were made Royal Designers for Industry (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).

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Dunne & Raby use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies. Anthony is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry and a Fellow of the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School in New York.

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Typewriter sound effects by TibaSFX was used for my design outcome.

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Matt Ward critiques the relationship between critical and speculative design, which explores future possibilities through design. Ward emphasises the need for design education to encourage both making and critical reflection, linking it to speculative design's role in envisioning alternate futures and challenging current norms.

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Critical about Critical and Speculative Design

Thoughts on critics of Critical and Speculative Design at the intersection of critical reflection and pedagogic practice by Matt Ward.

In order to write this essay, I spent time researching academics, experts and pundits who have written extensively about the evolution of "Critical and Speculative Design" (CSD). Although I've been immersed in the culture of experimental design education and discourse for twenty years, my (often repressed) scholarly self insisted that I refresh my knowledge with historic and contemporary voices in this, often fraught, sub-field of design.

Do we need more critiques of Critical and Speculative Design?

There has been a wide range of critiques about Critical Design over the last 10 years, so I found it difficult to understand what I had to contribute to the conversation, or more importantly what the SpeculativeEdu community needed beyond a series of links to other people's writing. I certainly didn't want to fall into the academic trap where I try to "out critique" the critics, who ultimately seem determined to prove that they are "more critical" than the critical designers. Their words fuel a sort of academic arms race, towards a fictional intellectual purity, or a utopian project that manages to sit outside of the structural problematics of contemporary capitalism, the historic abuses of colonialism and the embodied privileges of those who have time to write about such matters. I also wanted to avoid creating a defense of the "CSD canon", as many of the practitioners are my friends and frankly don't need me to defend them. Cries of white middle-class privilege would be heard as I tried to defend work and positions that are historically important. I'm deeply aware that we don't need yet another middle-aged western academic giving a "god like" overview of a discipline to claim his expertise or oversight. Most importantly, I didn't want to form false opposition to the common criticisms, as they have aided a culture of practice that is under constant reflection and evolution. So it is at the intersection of critical reflection and pedagogic practice that I wish to position this essay.

In order to do this effectively, I first need to contextualise the "common criticisms" within a culture of education. What I hope to evolve are "modes" or "categories" of questions that can be applied to projects whilst they're in progress - giving references and possible framing to enable educators (and practitioners) to push projects into new areas, opening up an awareness of the historic problematics, without closing down the educational freedom to explore at the boundaries of the imagination.

When formulating how best to question CSD projects, we need to approach with caution. Our current global conditions - climate crisis, global migration, resurgence of right wing populism, crumbling of democratic institutions, dramatic wealth inequality superpowered by "big tech", gender inequality, white supremacy, and a growing mental health crisis (especially in young people) - create an environment where it's difficult to feel that you have any agency. Caught in the headlights of a global death spiral, many students become overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the world, where "doing good" or designing anything to have a positive impact seems futile or impossible.

This essay aims to share the mistakes and learning of the last 20 years of Speculative Design education, without dismissing the battles won or unmining work that has wrestled design out of the hands of the realists and instrumentalists.

As educators and designers, we know that, whilst in the throes of making decisions about how to progress a project, it's easy for a critical voice to derail a creative trajectory. So a key challenge is to cultivate a critical design education; sharing and building a set of processes, practices and questions that allow for both production and reflection, analysis and making, critique and creation. This essay aims to share the mistakes and learning of the last 20 years of Speculative Design education, without dismissing the battles won or unmining work that has wrestled design out of the hands of the realists and instrumentalists. I am approaching the above with an educator's enthusiasm and a designer's optimism; framing historical work as "foundations of discursivity" (Foucault, 1984) to enable our collective understanding of the future of design, whilst building a set of questions to allow for a reflective, productive and more inclusive practice.

I have attempted to give a broad survey of the common critiques of CSD, the voices of dissent that have propagated since the popular emergence of the field in the early 2000s. However, the essay cannot give a full account of the multitude of critical voices. There have been countless papers written, PhD chapters crafted, conferences programmed, Medium articles penned and endless tweets tweeted that highlight the problems with CSD as an approach. These critiques are often directed to the more visible projects - those that the press deem newsworthy. However, there are a wide range of projects and practitioners (female, people of colour, non western) that don't get seen or held up to critique or adoration; this is partly due to the dynamics of a news cycle, but also because many of the projects discussed publicly are the results of an educational process. This means that only a few examples make it past the critical eyes of collective admiration to circulate in the realm of the real. Whilst examining and critiquing CSD work, we must always consider that many of the projects are the material evidence of a learning process - therefore inherently vulnerable and open to mistakes.

Some of the more scholarly, academic accounts provide excellent historical coverage of the emergence and divergence of CSD as a strange sub-discipline (Kerridge, 2015; Malpass, 2017). Others translate emerging non-design discourses in philosophy, race studies, postcolonial discourse, gender studies and STS (Prado de O. Martins, 2014; Ward & Wilkie, 2009; Michael, 2012; Winchester, 2018) to highlight key problems and opportunities in CSD, whilst others deconstruct the foundations of the approach, rendering it useless or defunct, "a simple way of designers internalizing the guilt they feel for a hopeless industry and then using the imagination to pay off a debt that is ultimately, unpayable" (Nocek, 2017). As with most discourses within the design academy, CSD attracts naysayers, trolls and gray vampires (Fisher, 2018), but like many designers, I find myself in a position of "utilisation"; interested in what we can do with these critiques; how modes of criticism can give life to a more nuanced, open and exploratory field.

A brief history of CSD

Although there are many examples of experimental modes of design and architectural practice that aim to resist their social, economic and cultural (hegemonic) conditions, the contemporary instantiation of CSD emerged in the 1990s at the Royal College of Art in London. The evolution of CSD as a "field", "sub-discipline", "school", "method" or "attitude" was a reaction to a set of particular disciplinary, educational and technological conditions. The main driving forces were: a shift away from an aging modernist educational culture; a growing acknowledgment and frustration with the cultural impact of mass consumption; a rapidly shifting technological culture, through the invention of microprocessors, personal computation and networked communication; and a growing disciplinary awareness of the impacts and responsibilities of the designer (Papanek, 1985).

After the full-scale capitalist embrace of the 1980s, many designers were searching for alternatives outside the "service relationship" to market capital. The dogma of disciplinary norms had become stultifying and a new generation of designers emerged. Seeing design beyond the "form follows function", "problem solving" doctrines (following in the rich tradition of Experimental Architecture of the 1970s), designers started to contextualise their practice as part of a richer cultural milieu. Educators, such as the influential Daniel Weil, promoted narrative trajectories as a means to explore the cultural and technological potentials of design, effectively blurring material and conceptual boundaries. Within design theory, the influence of Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World (1985) forced designers to start to question their role in conspicuous consumption and the impact consumerism has on the planet's ecosystem.

In 1990, the impact of the personal computer, the emergence of "interface design" and the role of CAD as a tool within design, led the RCA, under the leadership of Gillian Crampton Smith, to start Computer Related Design (CRD), as an offshoot of Industrial Design (Crampton Smith, 1997). CRD Research Studio later became the home to Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (Dunne + Raby), enabling them to evolve their practice as Critical Design following their experimental projects and Dunne's PhD, "Hertzian tales: an investigation into the critical and aesthetic potential of the electronic product as a post-optimal object" (Dunne, 1998). It was between CRD Research, Design Products (Platform 3 - with Durrell Bishop), Architecture (ADS 4 - with Gerrard O'Carroll) and later Design Interactions that CSD emerged.

As the work of Dunne and Raby was picked up by curators and journalists (mainly due to the nature of the questions they asked about the role of technology in the context of the techno-utopian fever of the early 21 st Century) their position became more established. When Dunne became Head of Programme and Professor of Interaction Design in 2005 and Raby became Reader in Design, the control of the curriculum enabled them to evolve and promote their unique position to a broader audience. The employment of Brendan Walker, Nina Pope, James Auger and later Noam Toran added to the team a breadth of practice that enabled the original instantiation of CSD. The newly named Design Interactions (DI) programme grew in reputation and their approach to design became more publicly visible.

This potted history not only acts to give context to the genesis of the field, but also highlights that CSD was marginal, both in terms of voice and position within the RCA and its location in a broader European design educational context. Contracts were precarious and fractional, and project funding was difficult to come by. Dunne and Raby occupied a position where, for years, they fought against dominant doctrines for a different role for design; a position where one could ask deeper questions about the impact and adoption of technology, in order to understand the broader consequences of design and technology on society.

A practice of power and privilege

One of the most common criticisms of CSD is that, as a practice, it comes from a position of white, northern European, culturally colonising, patriarchal privilege (Prado de O. Martins & Oliveira, 2014). This first came to prominent visibility in the comments section of Design & Violence, a MoMA online "curatorial experiment" by Paola Antonelli and Jamer Hunt. The conversation followed John Thackara's reflections and critique of Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta's Republic of Salivation project (Burton & Nitta, 2011); the ensuing debate highlighted tensions found within the field (Thackara, 2013).

In Thackara's post he takes issue, in a particularly condescending tone, with Burton and Nitta's lack of critique of the underlying "causes to this imminent threat". This is a repeated critique of CSD (see "All the critiques" section below): projects fail to challenge the broader reasons for the problems that we face; they look at "downstream" problems of capitalism without offering a position on structural inequalities and problematics. The comments that followed Thackara's post were a microcosm of the issues and tensions found in CSD. Burton and Nitta, and CSD practitioners as a whole, were accused of "noncommittal aesthetic play", of "trivialising" important issues, of being "profoundly stupid" and "narcissistic". Frustrations about perceived elitism and political naivety get mixed with defensiveness about a field trying to produce work outside established economic dynamics.

European art schools, and more broadly the "creative industries", have been places of white middle-class privilege since their founding. There are well documented problems of racial, gender and class inequities across both higher education and the design industry (Theuri, 2016; Burke & McManus, 2011). However, it's important to understand the shifting demographics with HE and the creative sectors, as the institutions of art, design, drama and music have undergone a radical liberation in the last half century. In the UK, shifting demographics and government policy have dramatically increased the percentage of the population that go to university. The students of today's university, in terms of socio-economic privilege, are unrecognisable to those 50 years ago. With this diversification (now threatened by the marketisation of HE), comes a demand to transform how and what is taught to designers, as well as long needed diversification of the faculty.

I would argue that CSD has been at the forefront (in design educational terms) of questioning dominant power dynamics, demanding that students unravel the roles and responsibilities of the profession. However, it still has a long way to go. Throughout the UK and the rest of Europe there has been a positive push to "decolonise our curriculums". The students who have pushed for this transformation are responding to decades of failure in our institutions to reflect the diversity of the student body. However, post-colonial discourses have been commonplace across many disciplines since the late 70s, and writers such as Edward Said and Homi K Bhabha have been part of art school critical studies programmes for over 20 years. Franz Fanon and Gayatri Spivak have seen more recent popularity, but mainstream design education and professional discourse has been slow to fully adopt these thinkers. More importantly, the institutional infrastructure of the academy and design industry have failed to change the conditions of employment, curricula design and recruitment to support and embody many of the ideas found within postcolonial, subaltern discourse.

The energy and power in this particular critique moves beyond the boundary of design. It is a global political drive that questions who has the right, role and agency to imagine a different future. For too long, the role of speculation (financial, political and cultural) was held (and continues to be held) by the powerful few, often with the gender, race and class privileges to match; decisions about how the future will look, how environments are designed, and how social decisions are made, have been taken by a small elite.

How do we shift the power relations of speculation? How can design education create a culture where subaltern voices have visibility and power? Is it possible for CSD to enable the democratisation of speculation?

The most urgent questions for the SpeculativeEdu community to ask are: How do we shift the power relations of speculation? How can design education create a culture where subaltern voices have visibility and power? Is it possible for CSD to enable the democratisation of speculation?

It is first important for students (and practitioners) to acknowledge their own privileged positions, whilst ensuring that they address the following questions in their work:

Participation and engagement - as with all forms of design, it's important to see the work as relational in nature. CSD is no different: every future speculation or world built to provoke comes from a relationship with a (projected or imagined) user group. By engaging people and asking for their insight and help to imagine their future selves, CSD can start to understand the diversity of hopes and fears that people have about our current condition.

Authorship and benefactors - once a relational dynamic has been established, through research or participation, it's important to ask: who benefits from the work? Engaging people in your speculation is important to ensure that you aren't blind to difference, but don't use people as a "resource" to enrich your project.

Inclusion and exclusion - be aware of who you include in your speculation. Whose lives are you imagining? Whose challenges are you representing? Who are you excluding? Make sure that you think of people beyond your own experience of the world, because they may have a different future.

Maintenance and social infrastructure - as you speculate on alternative futures, think of how and who maintains the worlds that you are building. Who is fixing the infrastructure when it fails? Who cleans the streets and workplaces when your gaze is elsewhere? All futures are maintained; those that sit at the periphery of design's privileged gaze are the ones we need to represent.

Feedback and reflection - once your project is "finished", show it to people and explain your ideas. Get feedback on the world / scenario you have created. Try to understand how it sits with their understanding of the world. This feedback should come from a diverse group of people inculcated in your future. Use the conversation to learn about the process and practice of the imagination.

Does it do what you claim?

Another area which causes concern within the design community is the extent to which CSD meets the claims made by some of the practitioners. There are a number of different competing issues found here; the first centres around the quality and range of the "debate" or "discussion".

Design for Debate

The original premise of CSD is that it acts as a provocation to enable a discussion or debate about the topics, technologies and futures that should be addressed through public interrogation. Here, designed objects act as the focus or manifestation of a scenario to enable a "public" to unpack the desirability of a world presented. Using design as a means to "spark debate" or create certain "adversarial" conditions (Disalvo, 2012), in order to learn about perceptions of certain futures, has been central to the practice since its inception. However, many critics have questioned how "the debate" is formulated, where it happens, what we learn from the substantive content, and who is included in the discussion.

Some critics believe that the debate is limited to members of the design community; speculative designers speaking to speculative designers in a self congratulatory echo chamber. Others believe that the designers neglect the location and mediation of the debate, leaving it to happen "elsewhere" (on blogs, in the news, through informal discussions) and therefore the claim to "create debate" is unsubstantiated.

If the premise that CSD creates debate is true, then there is concern about the designer's role. Are designers the best people to ask questions about our collective futures? Do designers take the role of moderator, chair, reporter or analyst? Should designers find, declare and argue for a particular outcome or future (following the criticisms of CSD not "taking a political position" - sitting on the technological fence)?

Over the evolution of CSD, the understanding and positioning of the debate has changed. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, projects would be displayed in a museum, gallery or sent off to press and a controversy would ensue. These controversies were often unintentional and somewhat damaging; either way, critical and speculative designers need to learn from the difficulties. Here are a few questions or ideas of how:

Design the debate - for students and practitioners not to fall into the common critiques of CSD, it's important to pay as much attention to the context, form and forum for the debate as it is the objects designed to enable the discussion. Plan where the debate or discussion will take place, learn from cultures and professions that manage, enable and promote discussion and debate, design the context of your work. Record and document the debate, integrate this into the presentation of the project.

Orchestrate the audience and "debate team" - in order to have a productive debate or discussion you need to bring together people with different opinions, experiences and knowledge. In the design of a project, pay attention to who has a voice in the critique of the world that you create. Not all debates need to take place in Parliament or the tabloids; they can be local, specific and targeted; engage the people inculcated in your future, open futures to voices normally underrepresented.

Track and understand the effects of the work - there is a need for designers, CSD and all other types, to understand the impact and unintended consequences of their work. As projects move into the world (outside of the "research domain" of a university context), there are many ways for practitioners (and commissioners) to try to understand the success and failings of the work. Unlike most design work, which commonly uses market and user metrics, the impact for CSD is harder to track. Did your work do what it intended to? One of the key difficulties is the temporal nature of how discursive work travels; a project made a decade ago may suddenly be referred to due to a technological advance.

Design the "media strategy" - some of the early examples of CSD (see Auger Loizeau's Audio Tooth Implant, 2001) had dramatic media "reach". The work travelled way beyond the confines of the design press straight into international publications. How designers prepare and manage the role of the media in their work is of key concern. Within the context of SpeculativeEdu, it's important for educators to understand how, in terms of tutorial support and curricula content, we can support students to learn about this complex world of press management and public relations.

Follow up - many speculative designers move from project to project. This is, to some extent, produced through the dynamics of the funding environment. But when a project aims to discuss a national / global level issue of extreme complexity, the debate needs time to evolve and there needs to be some form of "aftercare". This can be seen as analogous to how manufacturers have services to deal with damages, faults and repairs. What does this mean in terms of CSD?

All the Critiques

Another of the common critiques of CSD is that projects fail to address underlying structural problems. By accepting and projecting a future through objects and products, they deny the fundamental issues affecting our current condition, the need to reimagine an alternative to capitalism and rethink our relationship to material consumption due to its effect on the planet. These critiques often come from political and environmental scholars, design theorists who have dedicated their work to "re-directing" design's practice (Fry, 2007). These thinkers highlight our collective failure to address the climate crisis, placing the human race in a position of extinction with design playing a central role in this destruction.

Although many of these criticisms are valid - much of the work produced by CSD doesn't address many of the larger political, economic and environmental problems - it's difficult for this to be extended to all experimental practice. Does our environmental crisis mean that all work should be directed to address this? Self-confessed critical speculative designers (although there aren't many happy with that title) often work in response to a range of different conditions: funding calls, university or client briefs, curatorial themes, museum programmes, etc. The work is produced in a context that impacts on the scope and direction of the practice. Designers are rarely "lone scholars" with the academic freedom to select their own focus. Also, to give nuance to the work, designers need to frame futures within an experiential realm that is understandable and relatable to an audience; projects are often seen as the start of a larger discussion, without a conclusion or end point.

Underlying many of these critiques seems to be a problem with the use of the word "critical". To be "critical" seems to generate a sense of territorial embattlement; protests of "you're not really critical" or "CSD is not critical enough " seem to run through many of the denunciations. Critical Theory, with its history in the Frankfurt School, sets up an expectation of a meta-discursive critique of the system of capitalism. So when CSD fails to meet these expectations, the work is dismissed in its entirety. The Left has struggled to give space to a diversity of voices seeking a progressive political agenda; it often self sabotages and self cannibalises, without seeing the benefits of plurality. Seeing CSD as a practice that is seeking an alternative outside of consumer markets should be supported. Within the field of design there are numerous practices that dismiss any sense of responsibility or engagement in broader social, political, environmental and technological issues; these practices may be a better to place to direct our critical gaze.

Those who have assumed a CSD identity often defend themselves, saying that they can't address all the issues at once, but this is often dismissed as naive or willfully neglectful. CSD is an ongoing, diverse set of design practices that engage and question different technological futures, but it's also deeply contextualised in its own cultural condition.

Future fatigue (Loizeau & Ward, 2009)

By focussing on futures, the distant horizon, the long now, many believe that CSD neglects the near and direct urgency of now - a call to action to affect our collective present. By searching for an alternative, we fail to examine and address the inequalities of the here and now. Some see this as deferment in our responsibilities, but many critical speculative designers see their work as operating in the now - aiming to shift perceptions to make way for change.

However, I see this as part of a broader cultural narrative; borrowing from the work of Bifo Berardi, and later Mark Fisher, the strange fatigue felt in the narratives of CSD's futures are a result of what Berardi and Fisher call the slow cancellation of the future (Berardi & Fisher, 2013); a cultural moment where it's impossible to understand temporal difference through our cultural production, where we are "assailed on all sides by zombie forms" (Fisher, 2014). Maybe this slow cancellation is what makes CSD cause rupture and friction - the future it aims to project never feels fully new, more a cultural assemblage of our troubled pasts.

The context of production and consumption

CSD is often dismissed by members of the design community due to the context in which the work is produced and shown. Projects often get displayed in galleries or museums, and commonly come out of university research groups or degree programmes. In order to understand these criticisms, let's breakdown the underlying problems and issues.

Gallery and Museum context

Design as a discipline is inherently linked to notions of production, work is often judged by its visibility within a marketplace. Be it the "matter battle" (Boyer, 2011) or the culture of "shipping", the impact and success of design is often valued through its visible impact (through sales numbers, users reached) and its cultural visibility (awards, accolades, column inches, likes and tweets). Getting something produced and into the world-bought and used by normal people-is the prized goal.

Overcoming the barriers to market, navigating the "dark matter" (Hill, 2012) - the aesthetic compromises, the navigation of client dynamics, the complexities of production, the difficulty of distribution, the adherence to the rules and regulations of international markets, the corralling of supply chains, the relationships forged with manufacturers, the messages delivered by marketing teams, and the securing of financial capital - is all part of the complex game that designers have to play. When design escapes these issues, by isolating the work from the need to move from idea to (mass) production, it is seen as a lesser "product". Some believe it's in the complex material, economic and political process of production that the real design "art" is achieved.

I would describe this as the tyranny of the real, our disciplinary desire to attest to our effect on the world. However, in our contemporary times, it's easy to see how design can work on a symbolic, strategic and conceptual level; circulating in the world, reordering our understanding through its fictional, affective resonance.

But we also need to understand that CSD is actually similar to a lot of design practice ("fiction is design is fiction", Jones, 2015). How much design work never gets made? How many slide decks have been filled with ideas of products that never see the light of day? How many times does work get produced and disseminated (through the design press) and yet never makes it into production? The production zealots like to adhere to the demand of the "real", but this seems counterproductive if we wish design to be taken seriously as a practice that has the depth and intellectual weight to shift away from being a purely aesthetic / technical practice to have a more strategic / political role in the world.

The second issue that gets highlighted when discussing the gallery and museum context is that museums and galleries are seen as part of an elitist cultural system, a site of exclusivity. Work that aims to open up a conversation is disseminated in a context that lacks diversity. However, this is often due to designers trying to find spaces where objects are encountered not through the lens of consumption. Galleries and museums often give the freedom to explore ideas as a cultural practice, not a commercial one. More recently there has been a push for speculative practices to go into communities and engage with people outside of the gallery context. By focussing on the specific, embodied, local practices of people, SCD can locate their futures within the lives of those people they wish to reach.

If the design sector is going to evolve new forms of critical and discursive practices, practices that open up new questions about society, technology, politics and law (see Forensic Architecture) there is a need for a new type of institution; a place where an expanded, hybridising creative practice can evolve and engage with a range of audiences. Traditional models of galleries and museums fail to deliver the appropriate context for this type of work.

CSD in the age of post truth media production

One of the conditions that has dramatically changed since the inception of CSD is the means by which projects are disseminated. I would argue that the success of CSD is a result of the early instantiation of the internet and an emerging social media environment; the decentralised, non-hierarchical, non-traditional design media, in the form of niche, cult blogs (such as Régine Debatty's We Make Money Not Art) and online magazines (like Dezeen), searched, found or were willing to publish interesting and strange practice. In the early 2000s peripheral practices gained enormous traction, reaching audiences they never previously would have due to network-powered virality.

With virality comes serious network side-effects; filter bubbles and fake news. CSD, as a "research practice", bypassed the slow and boring academic design journals to find an audience way beyond the academy. As with much of design culture, pop aesthetics, powerful narratives, and shiny, alluring objects caught the imagination of people not normally interested design research. However, this "destabilised" how CSD projects were received and understood (Kerridge, 2015); work moved into the world, "made real" by the decontextualised misreporting of the technology press - resulting in some strange results (see Auger Loizeau's Time magazine "inventions of the year" front cover).

Context of production: learning, teaching and research

Within higher education, CSD is produced through two different modes, teaching and research, by either academics (tutors, lecturers, professors, researchers) or students (undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral).

As research, CSD is positioned as a practice-based research, a mode of inquiry designed to discover and imagine new insights and opportunities; which "implies a reflection of the contingencies of our world today, and of the practices for creating, imagining, and materializing new worlds" (Grand & Wiedmer, 2009). This impetus comes from the university as a site of knowledge production. However, practice-based research isn't a settled and fully established approach. It's discussed and debated endlessly amongst the design research community, with little evidence of progression (see Press, 1995). There isn't time, within the context of this essay, to explore the multiple readings and conflicting opinions, but it's important to highlight that there is tension. Due to this debate, experimental practice often fails to communicate with those outside of design and the academy the benefit and value of the work. This means that CSD is read through the lens of functionalism; a desire to know what it does in the world, how effective it is, where it achieves its goals. Although I believe it's essential to build a critical voice to unpick what is a "successful" CSD project, criticisms often come from all angles, attacking work for failing to do something it was never intended to do.

In order to support students undertaking work that falls under the banner of CSD, it's helpful to ask them to frame their work in terms of their intention. Declaring what they wish to achieve, for whom, and why, helps bring into focus the role they wish the work to play in the world. This also means that work can be distributed to the appropriate channels and engage with the audience that is most relevant to the ideas. The problem comes with how to measure impact. If CSD is aligned more closely to something akin to literary fiction, then work needs to be done to build a critical language of analysis.

CSD provides a space for young designers to deconstruct the different mechanisms that exist within design practice, whilst using a brief as a diagnostic tool to understand their learning experience.

As a pedagogic practice (Ward, 2013) CSD acts as an approach to furnish students with a set of skills and experiences, allowing them to understand the role, power and process of design. This moves CSD away from being a "style" or "method" of design, towards a pedagogical technique to teach design. CSD provides a space for young designers to deconstruct the different mechanisms that exist within design practice, whilst using a brief as a diagnostic tool to understand their learning experience. So for the tutors within the SpeculativeEdu community, it's important to understand how the educational "briefs" structure and align to learning expectations within the curricula.

Context of production: commercial, corporate and strategic function

Over the last 10 years CSD has seen the practice and approach adopted throughout the commercial (often through the term "Design Fiction") and public sectors (often within a policy making process). The approach is often reformulated as either foresight (a process where scanning horizons and trends delivers understandings for potential dangers and market opportunities), strategic development (integrated into an organisation's product development process with the aim of delivering new product ideas) or marketing & communication (with the aim to convey a vision for a company, an aesthetic of future readiness).

The adoption of the approach has had deep effects on the CSD community. Practitioners see the integration of Speculative Design practices into the commercial domain as an opportunity to continue their work outside of the confines of higher education. The competitiveness of the HE job sector and increasingly difficult conditions make this attractive. Beyond this, it also offers an opportunity to move speculation into action, demonstrating how CSD can drive change. However, this has also garnered a lot of criticism. Instrumentalising a critical practice, subsuming it into the capitalist machine, confirms to those critics that felt that CSD failed to offer alternatives, that it was purely a tool for the neoliberal colonisation of the future.

"Hard times are coming": methods and aesthetics

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom-poets, visionaries-realists of a larger reality." (Le Guin, 2016)

The fictional worlds built by CSD often appear dystopian in nature. This aesthetic or narrative device is commonly criticised as it catastrophizes the future, scientific development or technological progress. Those invested in the development of new technology, or linked to scientific discovery, will tend to dismiss the work as "fear mongering", "conspiracy theorising" or "unrealistic", whilst a more general audience can grow fearful and paranoid, numbing us to an inevitable extinction. The gravity well of dystopian narratives attracts speculative designers for a series of interconnected reasons.

Many CSD projects use narrative tropes as a means to articulate and communicate a story or scenario. For the stories to be effective - engaging to an audience - the designer needs to employ "narrative devices" or plot structures to ensure that the scenario isn't bland or boring. This means that, more often than not, the designer looks to create "antagonistic forces" (Booker, 2004) for their protagonists to overcome. Overcoming evil forces gives space for the audience to empathise with the protagonist, placing themselves into a future context, thus (the theory goes) enabling a more involved discussion. However, most fiction (either literary, science or cinematic) isn't explicitly producing work to engage an audience in debate (although this is often a cultural side effect). Authors write work to entertain and resonate with people's lives and imagination, they don't need to concern themselves with the substantive content of an ethical debate around the use of technology or the formulation of a "social critique" (Dunne & Raby, 2013). This means there is often a mismatch between the narrative devices employed within CSD and the type of discussion that follows. The need for tension sometimes over-dramatises the banality of existence.

CSD, from the beginning (brilliantly demonstrated by Dunne and Raby's A/B list), positions itself in opposition to affirmative practices. This approach, resulting in dark and dystopian futures, challenges the techno-utopian positivist narratives of Silicon Valley. CSD looks to create counterpoints in order to question the trajectories that are presented as "necessary and inevitable" (Fisher, 2009). However, as with many cultural forms, they change over time. In 2019, during these perilous times, dark and dystopian environmental and political narratives are our reality. Cinema and science fiction is struggling to keep up with the strangeness and apocalyptic visions of our projected now. Black Mirror (Brooker, 2011-) perfectly captures many of the anxieties we have about the ramifications and future of technology. CSD can't compete with the budgets and production values of Hollywood studios, so it's essential for CSD to evolve outside of the dystopian cinematic aesthetic. In an age where it's harder to imagine a future outside of capitalism (Fisher, 2009) or create a form to question the impact of technology as effectively as mainstream cinema, what is the role of CSD?

The original intentions behind CSD are still important for any designer to learn. As we engage in teaching design, speculative or otherwise, developing ways and means to think through and work with the dark ramifications of our actions is essential. With every prediction - in user behaviour, social organisation, technological advancement, material invention, economic trends - comes a series of unintended consequences. CSD is a way to give form to those consequences.

CSD often takes scientific predictions and "weak signals" to extrapolate imaginative possibilities. These material extrapolations make visible the alternatives open to us, giving people a chance to discuss issues that affect us all. What is often lacking are the political infrastructures to enable these discussions to travel to the right places - where the action is. Isabelle Stengers describes Science Fiction (SF) as the "art of consequences" (Stengers, 2014). The connection between SF and CSD (or Design Fiction) is well documented (Sterling, 2009). Be it as an extension to SF or a different type of social fiction, CSD enables a way to capture the social imagination through the material articulation of possible consequences; a "thought experiment" (Dunne & Raby, 2013; Stengers, 2015) made concrete, enabling a collective interrogation. Our challenge, within experimental design education, is to create the conditions to enable these alternatives to thrive.

Ursula Le Guin called for "realists of a larger reality"; creative people experimenting with alternative representations of lived experience, unorthodox social formulations to enable hope in dark times. These new realists need an infrastructure of support, an "ecology of trust", where "fiction ... activates thinking" (ibid.) without fear of attack and accusations of naivety, blind privilege or lack of care of marginal people. These support and maintenance infrastructures, creating an ecology of trust, are the most difficult thing to achieve in contemporary higher education - where metrics, conservative methodologies and precarity result in academics behaving in ways to proliferate bad-faith critique, without offering actionable alternatives. Our challenge as a community is to create an "ecology of practices" (Stengers, 2015) where trust is fostered, enabling a sense of collective ownership over the future.

"Perhaps, as designers, unreality is the only thing we have left - a tool for loosening the grip of the reality we find ourselves within, to help think beyond known frameworks, and to shift our thinking. In this way, design might begin to contribute to a proliferation of multiple alternative worlds existing in our collective imagination, enlarging it to provide a richer conceptual space of imagining for everyone." (Fiona Raby, 2018)

References

Abdulla, D., Ansari, A., Canlı, E., Keshavarz, M., Kiem, M., Prado de O. Martins, L., J.S. Vieira de Oliveira, P. and Schultz, T. (2018) What Is at Stake with Decolonizing Design? A Roundtable. Design & Culture, Routledge.

Alberro, H. (2019) Utopia isn't just idealistic fantasy - it inspires people to change the world. The Conversation [last accessed: 01/07/2019]

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Critical about Critical and Speculative Design - SpeculativeEdu

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SpeculativeEdu is an educational, project funded by ERASMUS+, the European Union programme for education, training, youth, and sport, with the aim of strengthening speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in the field of speculative design.

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My tutor assisted me in creating a strong and effective outline for the essay.

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A sketch of the main characters and other characters from The Matrix movie, capturing their iconic looks and unique personalities.

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A sketch of the various props to be used in the design outcome.

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Matrix characters in action

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Final updated sketch of various scenes in the Matrix

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In 1995, the Serpentine Gallery in London presented a unique and thought-provoking exhibition titled “The Maybe.” This collaboration between actress Tilda Swinton and artist Cornelia Parker captured public attention in a quiet but powerful way.

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When visiting MoMa, one might chance upon Tilda Swinton asleep in a glass vitrine. In the past few weeks she has slept in the museum’s main lobby, Rodin’s monumental Balzác watching over her, in the half-light of Douglas Gordon’s video installation

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Haley Nahman talks about a kind of art that tries very hard to make people feel good—like it’s made just to be uplifting or emotional. She wonders if this type of art is really helpful, or if it just comforts people without making them think too deeply. It might feel nice, but it doesn’t challenge us or show us something new.

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It can happen any time, a devastating flash in the mundane unfolding of my day.

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Portraits taken during the MoMA's exhibit of performance artist "Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present". Abramović sits at a table in silence, and museum guests can sit across from her and stare.

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Photographs by Marco Anelli. From the book: PORTRAITS IN THE PRESENCE OF MARINA ABRAMOVIC (Marco Anelli © 2010) http://www.marcoanelli.com/portraitsbook_e.html Portraits taken during the MoMA's...

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The same theme of control in the Matrix Trilogy is vividly explored in the TV series Severance. In Severance, employees of Lumonn Industries undergo a medical procedure

that divides their consciousness into two distinct identities: their “innie,” who only exists at work, and their “outie,” who remains oblivious to their professional life.

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Severance is a Marxist show, and it’s about us

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“You leave the office — click! Flip the switch in your brain, already a different thought. The work doesn’t exist”. Does that sound like a…

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Tilda Swinton and Cornelia Parker’s The Maybe, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995

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Tilda Swinton and Cornelia Parker’s The Maybe, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995