Human-Computer Insurrection Notes on an Anarchist HCI Os Keyes∗ Josephine Hoy∗ Margaret Drouhard∗ University of Washington University of Washington University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA Seattle, WA, USA Seattle, WA, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT 2019), May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. ACM, New York, NY, The HCIcommunity has worked to expand and improve our USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300569 consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased 1 INTRODUCTION engagement, HCI continues to lack an explicitly articulated "You are ultimately—consciously or uncon- politic, which we argue re-inscribes and amplifies systemic sciously—salesmen for a delusive ballet in oppression. In this paper, we set out an explicit political vi- the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity sion of an HCI grounded in emancipatory autonomy—an an- and free enterprise among people who haven’t archist HCI, aimed at dismantling all oppressive systems by the possibility of profiting from these." [74] mandating suspicion of and a reckoning with imbalanced The last few decades have seen HCI take a turn to exam- distributions of power. We outline some of the principles ine the societal implications of our work: who is included and accountability mechanisms that constitute an anarchist [10, 68, 71, 79], what values it promotes or embodies [56, 57, HCI. We offer a potential framework for radically reorient- 129], and how we respond (or do not) to social shifts [93]. ing the field towards creating prefigurative counterpower—systems While this is politically-motivated work, HCI has tended to and spaces that exemplify the world we wish to see, as we avoid making our politics explicit [15, 89]. The result has go about building the revolution in increment. not been the absence of a politic, but an "implicit neoliber- CCS CONCEPTS alism" [41, 47]. In this paper, we offer an explicitly political HCI—an an- • Human-centered computing → HCI design and eval- archist HCI—that reorients the field around the central prin- uation methods; HCI theory, concepts and models; • ciples of autonomy and the justification or elimination of Social and professional topics → Political speech; Cul- power, with the aim of eliminating oppression. We explore tural characteristics; Race and ethnicity; Gender; the consequences that such a reorientation would have for KEYWORDS our field’s norms in relation to the wider systems of the world and the communities in which we engage. Finally, we anarchism; anti-capitalism; autonomy; power; intersection- present some mechanisms to move the field forward and ality; oppression; social change; prefigurative politics; de- hold ourselves and each other accountable for the impacts sign; theory of our work. arXiv:1908.06167v1 [cs.CY] 10 Aug 2019 ACM Reference Format: Os Keyes, Josephine Hoy, and Margaret Drouhard. 2019. Human- 2 CRITICAL WORK IN HCI Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI. In CHI Con- "A critical technical practice will, at least ference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI for the foreseeable future, require a split iden- ∗All authors contributed equally to this work and consider it a collective tity – one foot planted in the craft work of creation. Intellectual property is theft. design and the other foot planted in the re- Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for flexive work of critique. Successfully span- personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are ning these borderlands...will require [work not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies to] support the exploration of alternative work bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third- practices that will inevitably seem strange party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact to insiders and outsiders alike. This strange- the owner/author(s). ness will not always be comfortable, but it CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK will be productive nonetheless, both in the © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05. esoteric terms of the technical field itself and https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300569 in the esoteric terms by which we ultimately evaluate a technical field’s contribution to of design models (hackathons, IDEO, etc.) may limit consid- society." [2] eration around design culture by enforcing the idea of the design process as the “producer of certain kinds of design- As part of the "third wave" of HCI, our field is engaged ers: creative, self-sufficient individuals” [120]. Not only do in an ongoing "turn to the social", described by Rogers as these conceptions of design challenge popular narratives of an increasing consideration of the social implications of our the types of artifacts design should produce; they also call work [118]. The depth of our engagement with this has been into question the way the methods and pedagogy of design limited by our position: HCI straddles both the academy have been bounded. Irani’s work on IDEO’s "design think- (which frequently shies away from explicitly political po- ing" model notes how it "articulates a racialized understand- sitions [23]) and industry (often driven by principles and ing of labor, judgment, and the subject and attempts to main- practices that contraindicate positive social change [135]). tainwhiteness attheapexof globalhierarchiesof labor"[77]. One potential path through these problems is a critical ap- Luiza Prado de O. Martins presents a related critique, femi- proach to HCI: using theories that feature social, ethical and nist speculative design, calling out the risk inherent in claim- cultural considerations, along with mechanisms to critique ing an “apolitical” position, namely, contributing to the sta- interaction designs and expose their consequences [118]. Bardzell tus quo of hierarchies and oppressions, and she cites the and Bardzell present such an approach in an overview of particular classism, elitism, and racism that have been prop- humanistic HCI, which they define as "any HCI research or agated through speculative and critical design (SCD). As an practice that deploys humanistic epistemologies...and method- alternative, Prado proposes approaching SCD from an in- ologies (e.g., critical analysis of designs, processes, and im- tersectional feminist lens in order to explicitly critique and plementations; historical genealogies; conceptual analysis; challenge oppressive power structures [100]. emancipatory criticism) in service of HCI processes, theo- There are myriad other movements: queer HCI [92], post- ries, methods, agenda setting, and practices" [16]. Referenc- capitalist HCI [47], and anti-oppressive design [136], each ing Marxist, feminist, postcolonial and psychoanalytic meth- providing their own critiques of HCI’s dominant "technochau- ods of analysis, the Bardzells include within humanistic HCI vinism" [29] and neoliberal ideology. This critical scholar- an "emancipatory HCI", one which is "oriented toward ex- ship has sometimes resulted in practical applications and posing and eradicating one or more forms of bondage and tools, including Dimond’s work on "Hollaback!" (and "fem- oppression, including structural racism, poverty, sexual re- inist HCI for real") [39, 40], Alsheikh et al.’s exploration of pression, colonialism, and other forces/effects of the hege- postcolonial technology contexts [9], and Fox and Le Dan- monic status quo" [15]. This work draws from components tec’s “Community Historians” project [51]. of Shaowen Bardzell’s earlier work on feminist HCI, in par- Along with many activists on the ground, these researchers ticular her original conceptualisations of "pluralism, partici- and others have applied their respective critical lenses to pation, advocacy, ecology, embodiment, and self-disclosure" [17]. nurture, support, and hold themselves accountable to the Another approach, postcolonial HCI, is exemplified by the communities in which they live and work. Nevertheless, as works of Lilly Irani [78]. Postcolonial HCI considers and de- with most HCI scholarship, the politics in almost all of these constructs how colonialism’s cultural legacy appears and critical works are implicit rather than directly explicated. persists in computing after the termination of colonialism’s Allowing our political stances to remain unspoken has formal structures [111]. In contrast to HCI’s traditional fo- constrained our ability to question and challenge the conse- cus on "ubiquitous" methods, theories and technologies [7, quences of the work we put into the world. Further, this si- 42], postcolonial HCI includes critiques of the way actions lence creates stumbling blocks for critique and accountabil- taken to help the "developing" world often follow the path of ity mechanisms. We argue it is imperative that members of capital and private interests. Additionally, it explicitly and the HCI community articulate the respective political foun- actively concerns itself with power relations [78]. In con- dations of their work, explicitly addressing (a) what state of trast to capitalism and ubiquity, postcolonial HCI researchers the world is necessary for the work to realize its intended propose approaches based on social justice [139], the cen- effect, and (b) what worlds are advanced by its execution. tring of indigenous knowledge and users [8], and the devel- We believe such articulations would