Copyright by Gordon Moakes 2019 The Report Committee for Gordon Moakes Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: No Future: Punk, Design and Resistance to Dystopian Technologies APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Kate Catterall, Supervisor Jiwon Park, Co-supervisor No Future: Punk, Design and Resistance to Dystopian Technologies by Gordon Moakes Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts The University of Texas at Austin May, 2019 Dedication For Scarlet and Nico, who inherit a future more uncertain—but perhaps more full of possibility—than I did. Acknowledgements I would firstly like to thank my supervisor Kate Catterall, whose generosity and encouraging spirit made my application to, and place within, the MFA program a possibility in the first place. Thank you to all the professors in the Design faculty who’ve offered insights, advice, pushback, provocation and encouragement: Jiwon Park, for her calm, affirmatory enthusiasm and ideas; Jim Walker, for his practical insights, gentle humor and invaluable coding assistance; and Carma Gorman, for her rigorous eye for detail. Thanks also to Alyson, Monica, Kate and Jon. My cohort have been able shipmates on my journey, always guiding, responding and suggesting—thank you Jacob Degeal, Bhargavi Jogkelar, Lauren Smedley and Mukhtara Yussuf: without you I’d be sunk. The MFA cohort of 2018 gave further support—in particular Ekin Levent and Juliana Castro-Varón. I’d like to thank a number of professors from the wider University of Texas community who’ve accommodated my scattered approach to my topic and given theoretical and historical framework for my ideas, including Craig Campbell, Kirkland Fulk, Snehal Shingavi, Neil Nehring, Lynne Wilkinson and Petre Petrov. I’ve also received some useful academic insights from further afield in the shape of Russ Bestley, Peter Hall and Sam Lavigne. To the UT design undergraduates: thank you for allowing me some input into your work, and giving me feedback and source material for mine. Lastly, but most importantly, I’d like to thank my ever-patient wife Carmelita for her unending support for my exploits in allowing me the space, time and the benefit of the doubt to pursue my studies, and my wonderfully creative and enquiring children Scarlet and Nico. I love you so very much. v Abstract No Future: Punk, Design and Resistance to Dystopian Technologies Gordon Moakes, MFA The University of Texas at Austin, 2019 Supervisor: Kate Catterall Co-supervisor: Jiwon Park Smartphones and other compact forms of technology have become commonplace in the human experience throughout the world: at the same time, we have come to take for granted the necessity to access such technologies almost exclusively through privately-owned and corporate platforms. In this, the heyday of technology capitalism, which sustains itself with pernicious forms of data annexation and behavior surveillance, the notion of ‘counterculture’ has become a nebulous—and contested—idea, both within the current multiplicities of online discourse and as a reflection of changing attitudes in the twenty-first century to pre-existing notions of ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ culture. Drawing on my experience as a musician in the 2000s and 2010s, and the ‘punk’ inspirations that led me to music in the first place, this thesis is an exploration of the possibilities for countercultural responses to hegemonic technologies, and an attempt to update punk in satirical and rhetorical forms to confront the design assumptions that entrench logics of capitalism and fallacious technological ‘progress’. vi Keywords: Punk, Technology, Future, Design, Counterculture, Critical Design, Data, Progress, Resistance, Surveillance Capitalism, Data Capitalism, Information Capitalism, Speculative Design. vii Table of Contents List of Figures (all photos by the author except where noted) ........................................... x INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGY, HEGEMONY, AND LOGICS OF RESPONSE ...................... 1 PROBLEM AREAS ................................................................................................................ 4 The Context: Weighing the Benefits of Technology in an Age of Monopoly Platforms ... 4 Becoming a Brand: Personal Agency and the Privatized Self ............................................ 6 The Neutrality Myth: Hidden Ideology and Non-Consensual Consent .............................. 8 ‘Surveillance Capitalism’: Trading Privacy for Access .................................................... 11 The Emperor’s New Clothes of Technocratic ‘Progress’ ................................................. 12 EXISTING RESPONSES/DISCOURSE .................................................................................. 17 Theoretical Overview ........................................................................................................ 17 The Current Field of Artists and Design Practitioners ...................................................... 20 MY METHODS/APPROACH ............................................................................................... 24 Intent Versus Form ........................................................................................................... 24 Design Forms: Themes and Intentions ............................................................................. 25 Creating a Manifesto ................................................................................................ 26 The Automation of Listening ................................................................................... 27 Design as Writing ............................................................................................................. 29 The Theory of ‘Unchange’ ...................................................................................... 29 Satire: Language as a Weapon ................................................................................. 30 Thesis Projects: Becoming the Product ............................................................................ 34 ‘Terms and Conditions’: Implicating the User ........................................................ 34 Explicit Complicity: ‘I Am The Product’ ................................................................ 38 viii ‘Panoptica’: The Business of Complicity ................................................................ 40 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 47 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 51 ix List of Figures (All photos by the author except where noted) Fig. 1: ‘Bleak Strategies’ deck .......................................................................................... 26 Fig. 2: ‘Rules of the Future’ .............................................................................................. 27 Fig. 3: ‘Stopify’ interface .................................................................................................. 28 Fig. 4: Selections from the ‘Slogans’ series ...................................................................... 30 Fig. 5: ‘Fortune 500 Cookies’ ........................................................................................... 31 Fig. 6: ‘A Guide to the Signs of Texas’ ............................................................................ 32 Fig. 7: Screenshots from ‘The War on Truth’ ................................................................... 33 Fig. 8: ‘Driving Terms’ ..................................................................................................... 35 Fig. 9: ‘Full Terms’ ........................................................................................................... 36 Fig. 10: ‘Real Terms’ ........................................................................................................ 37 Fig. 11: ‘I Am The Product’ web interface ....................................................................... 38 Fig. 12: ‘I Am The Product’ T-shirt (photo: Sandy Carson) ............................................ 39 Fig. 13: ‘Panoptica’ logo and tagline ................................................................................ 41 Fig. 14: ‘Panoptica’ reception desk and uniform .............................................................. 42 Fig. 15: The entire ‘Panoptica’ installation space (photo: Sandy Carson) ....................... 43 Fig. 16: ‘Panoptica’ customer kiosk ................................................................................. 44 Fig. 17: ‘Panoptica’ complicity assessment printout ........................................................ 45 x INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGY, HEGEMONY, AND LOGICS OF RESPONSE At a time in which it is now commonplace to carry around an extremely powerful pocket-sized computing device with us wherever we go, the word ‘technology’ is subject to many associations and definitions. For me, the term is shorthand not just for the technological artifacts and environments of our daily lives—the hand-held and household ‘smart’ devices and social media platforms they are reliant on—but also, just as importantly, for the corporations that produce and monetize them, and the values they represent. Such technologies aren’t merely tools of convenience and connection: they have become as integral to us