Anne Galloway’s excellent interview (🎙) by Andy Polaine. I’m running out of time writing this issue but it’s got Le Guin, Haraway, speculative design, IoT, ethnography, anthropology, Merino sheep breeding, and of course, Galloway herself. So, you know, have a listen.
We’re in the world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try and stand outside things and run them that way, it just doesn’t work. It goes against life. There is a way, but you have to follow it, the world is, no matter how we think it ought to be, you have to be with it, you have to let it be. […]
Now, when you speculate using these technologies, what you’re doing is actually reinforcing the idea that these technologies are coming, you play right into the same technological determinism that you’re trying to critique. […]
On the most fantastic end, we have a genetically engineered half-sheepdog, half sheep, that becomes a pet that is networked, and sensor technologies keep the nation informed and allow people to maintain a sense of nationality and connection. […]
There are many cultures and religions around the world that don’t believe in happiness, they believe in contentedness. That goes back to that being in the world, instead of thinking that you have to rise above it somehow. […]
This idea that you’re supposed to love capitalist labour is beyond my comprehension, because, for me, this system is so flawed that I owe no loyalty to anyone. […]
I started my lab precisely because I thought that human-centred design is important, it does good work, I’m glad it exists. I need to look at something beyond that, that reintegrates us with the world and doesn’t make us special at all. That’s humbling and people don’t enjoy being humbled.