Technology and Social Futures

Abstract

Technology has been woven into disability, and the lives of people with disabilities, in intimate, public, and far-reaching respects. Yet the ways of imagining, framing, shaping, and assembling technology and society remain far too restricted, exclusionary, and oppressive. Yet, despite “design thinking”, “universal” and “inclusive” design, “digital disruption”, “innnovation”, “hack-a-thons”, and other approaches, there is a long way to go, before we have fair, democratic, enabling, and transformative technology. Hence this manifesto for technology, to underpin cultural futures as if disability, in all its diversity and implications matter. Railing against technology as some kind of ‘manifest destiny’ for disability, I instead articulate potential ways that critical disability studies, crossed with science and technology studies, and cultural and media studies, can help us reimagine, remake, and productively confront technology.