research-article

Open access

Post-growth Human–Computer Interaction

Authors:

Vishal Sharma,

Neha Kumar,

Bonnie NardiAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Volume 31, Issue 1

Article No.: 9, Pages 1 - 37

https://doi.org/10.1145/3624981

Published: 29 November 2023 Publication History

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Abstract

Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers have increasingly been questioning computing’s engagement with unsustainable and unjust economic growth, pushing for identifying alternatives. Incorporating degrowth, post-development, and steady-state approaches, post-growth philosophy offers an alternative not rooted in growth but in improving quality of life. It recommends an equitable reduction in resource use through sensible distributive practices where fulfillment is based on values including solidarity, cooperation, care, social justice, and localized development. In this paper, we describe opportunities for HCI to take a post-growth orientation in research, design, and practice to reimagine the design of sociotechnical systems toward advancing sustainable, just, and humane futures. We aim for the critiques, concerns, and recommendations offered by post-growth to be integrated into transformative HCI practices for technology-mediated change.

1 Introduction

The field of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) is increasingly focusing on designing technologies to address sustainability [166, 242, 288, 296]. The aim is to reduce overproduction and overconsumption of resources and move beyond the dominant economy¹ that seeks incessant economic growth [36, 193, 214, 243]. At the same time, the advancement of HCI itself relies significantly on continued economic growth [36, 214]—to scale technology, reach new users and geographies, and fit more processing power into smaller hardware. Almost all improvements in user interactions consume additional energy and resources. For example, on-demand streaming platforms (e.g., YouTube, Netflix) may consume up to 200 terawatt-hours annually—more power than some nations consume in a year [61]. A single tweet, about 200 bytes of data, generates greenhouse gases, compounded up to 10 metric tons annually [100]. Training a single Natural Language Processing model may emit 626,155 pounds of carbon dioxide, equivalent to what five cars produce during their useful life [289]. This orientation to growth is rarely critically examined in HCI [183]. Even the larger computing discipline itself is premised on continued growth. Foundational ideas, such as Moore’s Law of doubling the number of transistors in integrated circuits every two years, Kryder’s Law of doubling drive density every thirteen months, and Nielsen’s Law of doubling internet bandwidth every twenty-one months, endorse growth [214].

HCI researchers have begun to critique the field’s focus on unbridled growth from a sustainability perspective [36, 213, 214, 261]. Borning et al. [36] note that “[the] IT industry has linked itself strongly to this ethos [of growth], with some particular manifestations being the constant need for novelty, the accompanying throw-away culture around consumer electronics, and the glorification of disruption for its own sake. Yet growth that requires evermore material resources cannot continue forever in a finite world.” Knowles et al. [166] suggest designing “technologies relying less on instrumental purposes of efficiency connected with corporate profit ...(motivated by research paradigms grounded in the belief of infinite economic growth) and relying more on volitional and value-laden aspects underlying people’s use of technologies.” Building on these critiques, we propose a shift to beyond-growth politics in and through HCI to address contributions to economic growth responsible for exacerbating the polycrisis of climate change, pandemics, economic inequalities, social inequities, geopolitical instabilities, environmental devastation, and many other painful realities we confront today [235, 243, 244, 312].

We draw from emergent critiques of capitalism in diverse disciplines to consider post-growth philosophy as an alternative for enabling the advancement of HCI outside the economic growth paradigm [89, 107, 118]. Post-growth entails theorization and application of ideas from degrowth and post-development [107] to achieve a global steady-state economy. Degrowth considers the economic overkill in the Global North a damaging trend that must be stopped [129, 154, 184]. Post-development proposes alternatives to development in the Global South not rooted in centralized, industrial growth, but localized development leveraging local resources and knowledge [88, 246, 313]. A steady-state economy seeks equilibrium between population growth and production by maintaining a constant rate of material throughput [64]. Post-growth seeks to transform production and consumption so they are ecologically sustainable long-term, support social justice and self-determination to strive for a good life for all, and redesign institutions to become independent from continuous capitalist expansion [254]. It suggests renouncing gross domestic product (GDP) as it only measures the value of final goods and services or the rate at which nature and human activities are transformed into monetary outcomes: “[the] metric is not intended to measure what is important for people, but rather what is important for capitalism ...[i.e.,] not to meet human needs, or achieve social progress, but rather to maximize and accumulate capital” [131]. Post-growth advocates assessment of health, biodiversity, social progress, spiritual progress, and well-being of all humans and non-humans using measures such as the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index [152]. Leveraging post-growth, our paper seeks to cultivate a critical consciousness about the economy’s increasing impingements on HCI, or, as Freire [99] advised, “to perceive the social, political and economic forces that influence human lives” and our work in HCI.

We begin by laying out the consequences of economic growth to shed light on the problems of the current economy and make a case for seeking alternatives. We discuss sustainability issues of the economy, followed by problematizing HCI’s engagement with economic growth. Next, we introduce post-growth philosophy, briefly describing its emergence, definition, core ideas, and stances on technology. We then present what post-growth could mean for HCI, discussing HCI ideas and systems aligned with post-growth. This discussion showcases HCI’s growing engagement with post-growth philosophy, though linkages are implicit. Bringing post-growth thinking to the larger HCI community will require identifying and questioning assumptions of economic growth that have become the default. We offer suggestions for HCI professionals to challenge growth and orient their work to post-growth: develop economic literacy, mediate policy-making, evaluate the political economy, normalize redesign and undesign, nurture solidarities, recognize limits, and cultivate critical pedagogy. Members of the HCI community can draw on these suggestions or critique them. We view post-growth as essential to broadening the sustainable development agenda within HCI [87, 119]. We conclude this paper by proposing Post-growth HCI, inviting members of the community to study, design, and develop technologies liberated from the growth paradigm. Post-growth thinking could bring us to consider how we think of and understand research and design practices, as well as their implications for society, the economy, and the environment. Such reflections would be a step toward raising critical consciousness about the political economy. We aim to work together to build a sustainable, just, and humane post-growth society mediated by the technologies we design.

2 Economic Growth and HCI

To understand the problems of the growth economy, we briefly discuss sustainability-related consequences of economic growth. We focus on economic and environmental sustainability considering HCI’s increasing attention to designing technologies addressing these issues [68, 76, 168, 175]. Then, we map the landscape of Sustainable HCI (SHCI), a sub-field that emerged to support sustainability in and through HCI.

2.1 Impacts of Economic Growth

Since the close of the Second World War in 1945, the philosophy of growth has dominated virtually all economies and most economic discourse [232, 233]. Economists typically assume growth to be good; sooner or later, they say, economic growth will benefit all of humanity [291]. However, in reality, growth has led to economic inequality and environmental devastation.

2.1.1 Economic Inequality.

Over the years, economic growth has resulted in a decline in overall poverty [27, 232, 233, 303]; however, at the same time, it has caused massive economic inequality. Development scholars have pointed out that, starting in the mid-1980s, the gap between the rich and the poor has dramatically increased worldwide [312]. In the 1980s, the richest 10% of the global population earned seven times more than the poorest 10% [41]. From 1999 to 2008, the richest 40% of the global population received 95% of the new income generated by economic growth [311, 317]. In 2012, the richest 10% earned 10 times more than the poorest 10% [41]. In 2020, the richest 0.5% owned more wealth than 90% (nearly 6.9 billion) of the global population [219]. Hickel [129], an economic anthropologist, reported, “The richest 1% alone capture $19 trillion in income every year, which represents nearly a quarter of global GDP.” As the rich become richer, gross economic distortions leave many in poverty, a worsening trend.

Neoliberal economics promises that wealth “trickles down,” “self-interest benefits everyone,” “[a] supreme efficiency in the market [benefits all],” and “rich people create jobs for everyone” [179]. But instead of trickling down, wealth increasingly flows away from the poor towards those who are already wealthy [77, 107]. Chen and Ravallion [53], a statistician and economist, noted that in 2005, 46% of the global population (around 3 billion people) lived below $2.50 a day, while 13% of the global population (around 900 million people) lived below the international poverty line² of $1 per day. In India or Bharat,³ for example, even with high rates of economic growth, 80% of the population lives on ₹ 20 a day ($0.27) [96] while 90% earns less than ₹ 25,000 ($320) per month [156]. The Indian Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister reported that from 2017 to 2020, the income of the top 1% increased by 15%, but for the bottom 10% of the population, it declined by 1% [156]. The report concluded that this income gap is a “failure of the trickle-down approach to economic growth” [156]. Even in the Global North, where per capita income has increased from $3 a day in 1800 to $100 in the early 2000s, many still live in poverty [234]. For example, in the UK, 4.3 million children are impoverished [131]; the economy is organized around capital interests instead of the interests of the people.

2.1.2 Environmental Devastation.

We are all familiar with the litany of environmental crises, but we do not always recognize them as outcomes of economic growth. Climate scientists have warned us of this for years, pointing to growth as a root cause of environmental devastation [14, 243, 245]. In 1990, as a part of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2,500 climate scientists from around the world projected a temperature rise of about 3° C if growth rates continued [277]. In 2019, in an initiative led by Ripple et al. [243], 11,000 climate scientists from 153 countries warned that we are faced with a climate emergency. They suggested reducing economic activities, including global GDP, energy consumption, and carbon emissions, among 28 other indicators [243]. Since then, 2,800 more scientists and 1,990 jurisdictions globally have joined the initiative [245].

In 2021, Ripple et al. [245] observed that 18 economic activities were at a record high. They argued, “Policies to alleviate the climate crisis ...should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth [through economic growth]” [245]. Barnard and fellow climate scientists, economists, governance and policy specialists [22] from the US, South Africa, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the UK wrote a letter stressing that “[the economy] is replete with deep structural flaws that must be fixed if we are to effectively address the catastrophic effects of climate change, extinction, poverty, and other converging crises.” They emphasized, “we should transform our global economy by 2030 ...to use resources much more efficiently [and] to require less of them” [22]. According to the IPCC 2022 report, we must abandon the “global high-carbon, consumption and GDP growth oriented economy” to transition to a “low-carbon energy services, well-being, and equity-oriented economy” [60].

Many scholars, including anthropologists [128], sociologists [205], and geographers [209], as well as activists [165] have long argued that the economy causes massive environmental problems. Hickel [128] observed that in the last 60 years, economic growth has destroyed over half of the planet’s tropical forests, degraded 40% of its agricultural lands, and depleted 85% of global fish stocks. Every year, economic activities cause the extinction of 140,000 species of flora and fauna. Hickel [128] noted: “This rate of extinction is one hundred to one thousand times faster than before the Industrial Revolution–so fast that scientists have classed this as the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s history, with the last one having occurred sixty-six million years ago.” Mies [205], a German sociologist, emphasized that if growth continues, we will need two more planets, one to dump our waste and the other to extract raw materials.

Seeing how capitalism drives us towards extinction, it is crucial that we continue questioning the root cause of economic inequality and environmental devastation: economic growth [179].

2.2 Economic Growth in and through HCI

To address some of the concerns around sustainability discussed above, the sub-field of SHCI emerged in 2007 with Blevis [33] and Mankoff et al. [196] recommending making sustainability a central focus of HCI. Early SHCI work looked at altering users’ behavior via eco-feedback systems [101, 288] or computer games [182, 241]. Critics challenged this focus, arguing that “persuasive” interventions overestimate an individual’s capacity for action [44] and that merely changing users’ practices is not enough when a more systemic change is needed [151]. Ganglbauer et al. [105] observed that “even the best designed and most well intended PT [persuasive technology] application to foster sustainable behaviours cannot persuade users to engage in the desired behaviours if the circumstances are not allowing or supporting them.” Individuals may be aware of environmental problems, but they may have few options (such as public transportation), not recognize sustainability as a priority [194], or become desensitized when faced with the enormity of the problems [218].

Acknowledging sustainability as a “bigger than self” issue [40], SHCI researchers advocated moving beyond persuasion. Dourish [79] asserted that “framing sustainability solely in terms of personal moral choice in a marketplace of consumption options may obscure the broader political and regulatory questions that attend significant change.” Hazas et al. [122] said, “[HCI] must begin to consider limits to growth and more regularly attempt more radical, more impactful changes ...instead of putting the majority of its efforts into low(er) impact persuasion.” SHCI work began addressing broad-scale policy reform [166] and business practices [141]. Knowles et al. [167] suggested that solutions “proposed by sustainable HCI can only succeed if they are coupled with political action toward affecting the supply of fossil fuels [including ...] a combination of legislation of caps and taxes, and/or offering [fossil fuel] companies (additional) subsidies to keep their assets in the ground.” Some advocated incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives to do better SHCI [276] and collaborating across disciplines [52, 192] to establish a coherent understanding of sustainability, including devising metrics for evaluation [40]. Others suggest orienting the field towards climate change as it provides a “big tent” under which the community could coalesce with a shared purpose [166].

These recommendations failed to address the root cause of sustainability issues, i.e., economic growth, as noted by many HCI researchers [36, 166, 214, 261]. Pargman and Eriksson [223] argued that SHCI has misunderstood “the real problem ...[and is] inadvertently pushing with all [its] might in the wrong direction.” To orient SHCI, researchers have discussed three key ways our economy promotes technology overproduction and overconsumption: the rebound effect, planned obsolescence, and labor marginalization/user exploitation.

2.2.1 Rebound Effect.

Technological advancements may increase the efficiency of resource use, but increased efficiency can, paradoxically, lead to an increase in resource consumption. This effect is known as the “rebound effect” [255], “Jevons paradox” [11], or “Khazzoom-Brookes postulate” [283]. For example, LEDs for outdoor lighting decrease energy consumption and increase cost savings per unit, but they may also have the effect of increasing overall use as LEDs are now placed in areas that were formerly unlit or were lit for shorter periods [178]. Grafton et al. [113] observed that irrigation technologies increase water efficiency but can also increase overall groundwater use. With increased water availability, farmers shift to more water-intensive crops.

Energy-efficient vehicles minimize driving costs which may encourage drivers to make longer or more frequent journeys. The increased efficiency of accessing data from the cloud can result in users storing more data and consuming more storage [7]. Smaller devices may require smaller batteries, but the devices are never turned off, consuming more energy [112]. Precision agriculture uses satellite systems to apply pesticides, water, and fertilizer in the right quantity at the right time to increase yields. However, it may free up resources and land then used for ecologically unsustainable agricultural practices, polluting natural resources, generating greenhouse gases, and impacting biodiversity [15, 19, 227].

With increased efficiency, technologies become more affordable and consumption often increases as more people can buy more devices [39]. As microprocessors become more efficient, they require less material to manufacture and less energy to operate [135]. Their prices drop, which increases consumption. Many users can now afford computers with quadruple-core processors, even when all they do is write emails and browse the internet [134]. Such over-equipped machines remain in a “busy waiting” state, constantly checking for a condition to be satisfied to proceed with the execution, consuming energy unnecessarily [135].

2.2.2 Planned Obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is the practice of intentionally manufacturing a product to have a short life [193, 207, 278]. As items wear out, users are forced to purchase replacements. The economy encourages planned obsolescence in computing, labeling it a “naturally occurring phenomenon” [284]. Frequent software upgrades, for example, deliberately cause older models of devices to run slowly, making the devices inconvenient and even unusable. Apple and Samsung release software upgrades that impact the working of older models of their products [174]. Hardware for learning management systems, such as Canvas and Piazza, becomes obsolete within four years, making students buy a new device to run up-to-date systems [203].

Technologies are designed to prevent users from performing simple repairs, forcing them to move to new devices or rely on companies for repairs. Users cannot replace iPhone batteries because of a non-removable back cover. Apple voids the warranty when users open the cover. Users are left with no choice other than to send the device to a remote manufacturing facility. To avoid this time-consuming effort, users often buy new devices.

Perceived obsolescence, a type of planned obsolescence, is the practice of updating the styling of products to decrease the perceived desirability of older models [169]. Updated styling with flashy new features causes users to feel their device has become obsolete, persuading them to move to more recent models. For example, through intensive advertising, smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung influence users to buy new products to become part of a trend [169].

2.2.3 Labor Marginalization/User Exploitation.

The economy has transformed the workers–machine relationship, systematically moving a majority of workers into marginal roles [86]. It exploits workers through automation by rendering their labor poorly compensated or not compensated at all [104, 114]. The worker and their work disappear from view; computation remains the visible output. Machines stand tall while workers step to the side, becoming “an appendage of the machines” [202]. Workers often perform repetitive tasks such as labeling thousands of hours of training data or reviewing harmful content but receive little credit or compensation [114]. This arrangement goes against the promise that technology will set us free from repetitive work. In reality, we have ended up endlessly performing many such tasks.

Not all work can be completely automated [186]. Workers often operate on the margins of machines, doing work that machines are not yet capable of performing. MTurk workers perform large volumes of microtasks that cannot be automated, for which they are paid minimally [30]. More than 500,000 workers have registered on MTurk, and around 250,810 workers have completed at least one task; over 226,500 workers are in the US [143, 248]. The average labor cost on MTurk is between $2–$3.13 per hour, far less than the (abysmally low) federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in the US [75, 121, 145]. With MTurk, firms save money by managing workers through cost-saving automated processes requiring little supervision. Such firms, largely based in the Global North, outsource work to the Global South’s workers because of lower labor costs. For example, ChatGPT paid less than $2 per hour to Kenyan workers to train the chatbot [230]. French AI companies paid between $0.41–$1.7 per hour to workers in Madagascar [186]. Workers even supply their own computers and do not use office facilities. Without the contractual obligations of formal employment, such as health insurance, retirement benefits, sick leave, and vacation pay, companies save even more.

The economy extracts value even from unpaid users by making them produce and consume resources simultaneously on social networking platforms and elsewhere [103]. Google’s AI systems are fine-tuned through the exploitation of masses of unpaid labor [86]. To access a website, we verify our human identity to reCAPTCHA by selecting multiple boxes that train Google’s image recognition algorithms—for free. Social media users, through online interactions such as tagging, sharing, liking, and commenting, provide the sites with a digital gold mine of personal data that is of immense value to insurance companies, healthcare providers, retail companies, and manufacturers [86]. This labor is naturalized as a part of what it means to be a “user” of a digital platform [180]. Data are shared without users’ knowledge, let alone consent or control. Intelligent assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, use real-time data for training, with users having little to no information about the data gathering or what happens to the data [316]. Even tech-savvy users are not totally aware of the full scope of data gathering and use. They do not know which data are gathered and how they are gathered, where and how long they are held, and with whom data are shared [46]. The economy uses digital technologies to exploit us in ways largely unknown to most and only vaguely understood by some, even the technologically sophisticated.

3 Post-growth Philosophy

Given the massive impacts of economic growth, where do we start to address it? How can we frame a conscious, compassionate, and appropriate response to the consequences of economic growth? How do we transition to a more sustainable, just, and humane society? What would such a society look like? HCI researchers Pargman and Eriksson [223] comment that “While we obviously need to transition to a sustainable society, we don’t really know what that means and we have a hard time imagining what that implies.”

To answer such questions, we discuss post-growth as an alternative economy, drawing on scholarship from anthropology, ecological economics, sociology, and sustainability science, among others. We describe post-growth’s historical, cultural, and political emergence to ensure that our appropriation of post-growth enriches HCI [265]. We present some of post-growth’s core ideas for building a more sustainable, just, and humane society and technology’s role in it.

3.1 Post-growth History and Definition

Post-growth philosophy proposes building a society with an equitable global steady-state economy. This goal requires a profound transformation of institutions and practices in the Global North through degrowth and in the Global South through post-development [47, 63, 90].

After the economic crisis of 1929, Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul released a manifesto criticizing “gigantism,” i.e., capital accumulation, big cities, and big industries [300]. They suggested prioritizing quality of life and solidarity instead of productivity and individualism. In 1972, Meadows et al. [204] published The Limits to Growth, presenting results from a series of computer simulations analyzing the long-term sustainability of the economy. They argued that if current growth rates were to continue, we would face a global economic collapse before 2100. The authors proposed an economy of “global equilibrium” where industrial capital and population would remain constant.

In 1973, as a follow-up to The Limits to Growth, André Gorz [109] asked, “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” Gorz [110] advocated reducing economic activities to mitigate capitalism’s impacts, saying, “Even at zero growth, the continued consumption of scarce resources will inevitably result in exhausting them completely.” He recommended consuming less to conserve reserves for future generations.

Herman Daly [65] proposed a steady-state economy which seeks equilibrium between population growth and production by maintaining a constant rate of material throughput [64]. A steady-state economy aims to achieve “constant stocks of people, [wealth], and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput” [65]. Constant does not imply never changing. Stability would be established over a period of time. The average amount of money earned from one generation to the next would remain constant. For example, though life expectancy might increase, lower birth rates would maintain a stable population size. There would be less material throughput and fewer products. Pollution outflows would be within planetary boundaries. Resource extraction would be less than regeneration. Daly [65] emphasized that growth should be considered a temporary state until stability is achieved, after which further growth is undesirable.

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen [106] challenged Daly’s ideas about the economy. Invoking the fourth law of thermodynamics, he asserted that “[c]omplete recycling is impossible”; inevitable wear and tear can lead to a declining state, and thus, degrowth or downscaling of economic activities is the only viable alternative. Georgescu-Roegen suggested that “the rich North will need to de-grow in order for some more economic (vs. uneconomic) growth in the poor South” [160].

Degrowth advocates a total rejection of economic growth in the Global North as the basis for human welfare and social progress [129, 184]. It proposes a purposeful, progressive, democratic, and equitable downscaling of production and consumption of goods and services [154]. Hickel [130] says that degrowth “seeks to scale down ecologically destructive and socially less necessary production while expanding socially important sectors like healthcare, education, care, and conviviality.” Reduction requires a shift from producing more to redistributing what we have in new, fair, and democratic ways. Redistribution would occur between the rich and the poor and present and future generations [152]. Degrowth promotes going beyond the capital market as society’s fundamental organizing principle by minimizing resource consumption [130], purposefully slowing down to minimize harm to humans and earth systems [228], supporting human relations over market transactions [256], and placing the market under democratic control [150].

Although the North must downscale its economic activities, the South can continue growth [90, 107]. Ecological economists have raised concerns about this recommendation, arguing that degrowth ignores flows of money and resources between the North and South which produce a “North in the South,” i.e., an affluent class in the countries of the Global South, and a “South in the North,” i.e., a growing marginalized class in the countries of the Global North [89, 107, 118]. They suggested disclaiming a growth ideology as a means of development in the South, proposing post-development instead, i.e., localization of production using local resources and local, indigenous knowledge. The South need not go through energy-intensive capitalist growth-based development before turning to policies and investments for sustainability; it can plan to transition to a more sustainable, just, and humane society now [240].

Post-development rejects economic growth masked as “development” where the actual intent has always been to exploit the world’s resources [88]. Since the colonial era, the North has largely used development efforts to accumulate resources for its capital gains [88]. At the beginning of the 18th century, pre-colonial South Asia contributed 25% to the global GDP. After the British left, its GDP dropped to 3–4.2% of the global GDP [211]. Britain drained a total of $45 trillion from the subcontinent, 17 times more than the UK’s current GDP [51]. Now, imperialist societies such as the US and the UK offer “financial aid,” “investments,” “scientific techniques,” and “industrial knowledge” to “underdeveloped” and “developing” countries [90, 173, 173]. However, these investments benefit the Global North substantially more than the South. In 2012, the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics reported an inflow of $1.3 trillion to the Global South and an outflow of $3.3 trillion to the North (see [125, 126]).

Post-development critiques the development model as Eurocentric with its values of centralization, individualism, and domination. Centralized development concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a few powerful elites who exploit people and degrade the environment for their own gain [89, 107, 118]. Pre-colonial South Asia produced and consumed resources locally. Around 90% of the resources were utilized to build local infrastructure; the rest went to a central authority [3]. Britain altered the distribution, leaving 10% of the resources for local use and 90% to build and run its empire [3]. Post-development philosophy advocates decentralized, localized production, distribution, and consumption [50, 62, 274]. As societies produce their own goods and services, they become less dependent on capitalist industries. Services and goods that cannot be produced locally can be traded over longer distances [272].

Collectively, steady-state economy, degrowth, and post-development can support a post-growth society via radical shifts from growth to redistribution, production to reproduction and care, acquisition to sharing and community, and industrial development to development appropriate to local circumstances and contexts [153]. Values cannot be reduced to material accumulation; they must include solidarity, sufficiency, leisure, conviviality, sharing, and autonomy [90, 254].

It is important to note that post-growth does not propose a “return to a primitive past” or “forced deprivation” [264]. It concerns making more informed decisions, a planned and intentional move away from economic growth, and a progressive reorientation to more sustainable, empowering, and pleasurable living. These values are not part of neoliberal market philosophy, nor have they been realized under neoliberalism. Post-growth involves de-commodifying essential goods and services, curbing wealth, and squelching overconsumption in order to increase equality between and within societies. It seeks to expand public services and democratize and localize development with collective forms of meaningful social relationships, shared values, and goals in place of material consumption, market transactions, and exchange values [129].

3.2 Some Post-growth Ideas

As the post-growth movement is still evolving (see [69, 70]), it is challenging to put post-growth in a nutshell [200]. However, ideas of taking care of resources and providing care for others, including the planet, are deemed crucial to the movement [59, 102]. We discuss six core ideas.

The first core idea is to define minimum and maximum standards of consumption that could align human well-being within planetary limits [127]. Minimum standards would allow everyone to live a good life, meeting basic needs, while maximum standards would limit overconsumption, especially in high-consumption cultures and institutions. The standards can be operationalized via a universal basic income and universal maximum wealth [64, 127]. Universal basic income would cover basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing, possibly in the form of a monthly stipend financed through taxation. Transitioning to a basic income could include a negative tax that would provide tax credits while more heavily taxing the wealthy. Universal maximum wealth would redistribute wealth accumulated by the rich to the poor, imposing increased wealth, inheritance, and property taxes. A wealth tax would set an absolute cap on wealth accumulation. An inheritance tax would set an upper limit on inherited assets. Property taxes would limit property owned, and some tax would be paid at the time of purchase. These standards could address economic insecurity and unemployment while supporting a decent living standard for all. Standards of consumption would not be defined by those in power but in a democratic process of collective negotiation [74].

The second core idea is commons-based ownership, i.e., collective creation, management, and sharing of resources. The purpose is to limit individual ownership to curb unnecessary consumption [35, 93, 171]. Commons-based ownership can be achieved through “public objects” and “object commons” [149]. Public objects are artifacts owned by public authorities, such as street benches, street lights, and roads. Object commons are artifacts owned privately but shared within a community, just as people share possessions among family members. A municipality could set up public objects and transfer their ownership to a local group, making them object commons [20]. Instead of buying and owning assets, individuals would gain temporary access when needed. A great many possessions can be shared. Essential resources of health, education, and energy could be governed and shared as a commons. This arrangement is not deemed socialism because the government is not the owner. Property is allocated and apportioned through democratic and distributive processes to the people. Such ownership is based on agreed-upon norms, sanctions, boundaries, and rules through regular communication, negotiation, and experimentation. A commons could be “significantly more equal, transparent, democratic, and sustainable than [institutions] driven by the logic of the market” [264].

The third core idea is to grant legal rights to natural resources to transform them from objects of exploitation, manipulation, ownership, and disposal to subjects having integrity, identity, and intelligence. The goal is to limit their exploitation [72], affording them the agency to protect themselves. For example, a forest could own its resources, with a say in cutting down old-growth trees crucial for carbon sequestering. Several countries, including Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, and the US (see [4]), have granted legal rights to some natural resources. In 2008, Ecuador added a “Rights of Nature” article to its constitution, saying: “Nature has the right to restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.” [293]. In 2010, Bolivia passed the Mother Earth Law, giving nature the “right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered” (see [49]). In 2017, an Indian court considered rivers “legal and living entities having the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities” [252].

The fourth core idea is to reduce involvement in the capitalist market. Markets are “a social structure for the exchange of rights in which offers are evaluated and priced, and compete with one another” [17]. They are vital to society as a place of meeting, of culture, of exchange, of serving people and shaped by their needs [272]. However, capitalism replaces these embedded markets by the market. Post-growth scholar Vandana Shiva [272] argued that “[r]eal people, exchanging what they create and what they need, are replaced by the abstract and invisible hand of the market.” The decontextualized, disembodied market, shaped by capital, substitutes people’s needs with profit, consumerism, and greed. It does not work for many essential human needs. For example, education and healthcare are not good fits; they should be handled as basic rights. Less intense market activity, with less intensive requirements for labor, could free up time to spend on care, maintenance, and self-development activities, such as volunteer work, hobbies, and political participation. These activities are grossly undervalued in the market economy [16, 155].

Reducing the emphasis on the market could be facilitated by reducing work hours [184], e.g., a four-day work week [155]. Working, for example, 20% less could reduce commuting which could reduce carbon emissions [257, 279]. Reduced work hours would increase well-being, freeing up time to spend on more essential creative activities, sports, rest, and fostering social ties [155, 301]. Kallis et al. [155] noted that “There is no guarantee, of course, that people will devote their non-work time to such activities, but it is reasonable to argue that on aggregate, following a reduction in working hours, each of these components [of leisure, care, and maintenance activities] will stand a higher chance of receiving more personal time.” Paid work could be made a smaller part of life. Essential life activities can be relocated to the places where life actually happens and thrives.

The fifth core idea is voluntary simplicity, i.e., minimizing consumption consciously via frugality, a sense of social responsibility, and urgency towards the environment. Voluntary simplicity forms the intention of realizing one’s spiritual evolution and a desire to return to more human-scale working and living conditions [92, 263]. It incorporates “singleness of purpose, sincerity, and honesty within, as well as avoidance of interior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. Voluntary simplicity means ordering and guiding our energy and desires, a partial restraint in some directions to secure a greater abundance of life in other directions” [115]. The goal is to live with an inner tranquility devoid of anxiety and endless striving. Voluntary simplicity advocates going beyond material possessions to fulfill higher needs of self-esteem, authenticity, connectedness, and competence. A life of voluntary simplicity is lived intentionally by being conscious of the impact one’s lifestyle has on others and the environment.

The sixth core idea is to learn from the traditional wisdom developed in many cultures in the Global Souths⁴ where, despite colonial exploitation, slaughter, and pillage, communities have preserved such wisdom [63]. For example, Native American cultures and cultures in India have considered and experienced life as a continuum between past, present, and future generations, as well as human and non-human species. These cultures hold the seventh-generation principle which states that the impact on the seventh generation should be considered before acting [272]. Many cultures have lived sustainably for millennia; they still do if not disrupted by the market economy, for example, indigenous cultures of the Himalayas and the Amazon [272].

Many post-growth ideas are derived from the philosophies from the Souths rooted in non-capitalist realities [107, 118]. For example, voluntary simplicity is informed by three principles of Indian philosophy: “ahimsa,” “dharma,” and “sarve bhavantu sukhinah” [115]. Ahimsa is the ethical principle of nonviolence, to not harm any life forms. Dharma is the virtue of righteousness, compassion, gratitude, and patience. Sarve bhavantu sukhinah is the injunction to let all people be happy, at peace, and content, as the individual’s welfare depends on the welfare of all. Deeply impressed by such ideas, Richard Gregg, an American social theorist, traveled to India to study with Gandhi at his Sabarmati Ashram. Gregg’s experiences translated to the idea of voluntary simplicity. Thinking of nature and its elements as subjects comes from the Souths. For example, in India, the Dongria Kondh community confronted the government and companies conducting mining activities in the Niyamgiri hills [306]. The community referred to these hills as “God and mother” [306]. To them, the hills are not natural capital but living entities, and they refused to convert their God and mother into a bauxite mine. Nature and its elements are key actors in the cultures of the Souths, and have agency just like humans.

In many ways, philosophies from the Souths, such as sumak kawsay or buen vivir from Latin America and Ubuntu from Africa, and their collective wisdom, could lead us to transition to a post-growth society. Buen vivir supports community-centered and ecologically-sensitive living, maintaining that an individual person’s well-being can only be achieved through community well-being and coexistence with the environment and cosmos [314]. Ubuntu encourages interconnectedness, maintaining that a person’s sense of self is in relation to others, i.e., a human being is part of a communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world [314]. Nelson Mandela [285] defined ubuntu as “The profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world, it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others.” Rooted in the historical understanding of such cultures and their wisdom, we can learn ways of being and knowing beyond capitalist, market-driven logic.

3.3 Post-growth Stances on Technology

Scholars whose work has informed the development of post-growth philosophy may seem divided in attitudes toward technology; however, fundamentally, they all question how technology is imagined, for what purposes, and the conditions under which it is deployed [131].

Some support technology as an agent to a post-capitalist society [161]. Gorz [111] noted the benefits of open-source software, arguing that such tools support self-production instead of being controlled by “private or state-supported powers, which deny human beings their ability to collectively decide their ways of living, producing, and consuming” (see also [161]). Illich [142] developed the concept of “convivial tools” that nurture values of solidarity, mutual support, and friendship. He contrasted such tools with those controlled by non-democratic commercial techno-structures. He argued for the democratization of technology, that everyone, irrespective of identity or technical abilities, should be able to use technology. A bicycle, for example, is considered a convivial tool because of the ease of understanding, repairing, and modifying it [12].

Technological democratization could be supported by establishing institutions such as fab labs or makerspaces [37, 171]. A makerspace can offer a setting for people to meet, socialize, and co-create, supporting cooperation, sharing, and care instead of competition [215]. It can provide easy access to digital and non-digital technologies such as hardware, software, digital fabrication, art studios, and traditional crafts. For example, Bike Kitchens are non-commercial shared do-it-yourself makerspaces for repairing bikes. Local community members can recycle their bikes, making the parts available for others. They can help and learn from each other, building a culture of sharing knowledge, space, and tools with less dependence on capitalism. Makerspaces operate in the “liminal zone between the monetized and non-monetized economies” [150], supporting non-capitalist relations. They support localization of production and consumption, sharing of resources, and cultivation of non-capitalist exchange [37].

Makerspaces can be linked through digital commons of design and knowledge, avoiding the commodification of technologies. For example, Kostakis et al. [171] discussed Open Bionics, a prosthetic hand created using off-the-shelf materials available at a hardware store, supplemented with an online repository of designs with comprehensive tutorials to guide the manufacturing. Open Bionics collaborates with a global network of makerspaces to help users build, repair, and replace a prosthetic hand. Localizing the production, repair, and replacement of the hands to local makerspaces minimizes transportation costs, thereby lowering the environmental impact. The necessary infrastructure to build a hand is shared locally [170, 172]. Open Bionics demonstrates the design of “intermediate” or “appropriate” technologies suited to post-growth. They can be developed using local materials, are easily adaptable and repairable without requiring expert assistance, and are appropriate to the local context of use [258, 315].

Others have noted that technology cannot be the only means to post-growth; socioeconomic transformation is absolutely necessary [161, 184]. Hickel [131] emphasized that the debate is “not primarily about technology, but about science, justice, and the structure of the economic system.” Scholars have critiqued the idea that “solutions” to all problems, such as hunger, poverty, ecosystem destruction, and climate change, can be found in advanced technology. Complex social problems cannot be fixed through technological breakthroughs [45, 210]. Proposed technological saviors for sustainability include “technologies for green growth” [256], “eco-innovation” [220], and “techno-science for sustainable growth” [287]. According to these approaches, technological improvements will decouple economic growth from environmental destruction so we can have sustainable growth. If we equip people with the right technology to provide the right information about their energy consumption, their unsustainable behavior can be altered. However, absolute decoupling is not possible as these approaches take sustainability concerns as subordinate to economic growth [116, 132]. Decoupling would be possible only if growth rates approach zero, a distant prospect considering the current reality and increasing focus on unlimited growth [132]. Empirical evidence to support the possibility of decoupling does not exist [132].

4 Post-growth and HCI

What is post-growth’s relevance to HCI? How does post-growth translate into practical reimaginings of HCI? Pargman and fellow HCI researchers [222] ask “what computing systems need to be designed and developed for use in [post-growth] futures, or, to support that transition?”

We review the emergence of post-growth sensibilities in HCI, though linkages are often implicit. We present examples of technologies that can support building a post-growth society [199]. These examples demonstrate “sober,” “reflective,” and “cautious” applications of post-growth to technology design and use [264].

4.1 Post-growth in HCI

Many SHCI researchers have critiqued HCI’s engagement with growth. Hazas and Nathan [123] discussed the waste that computing generates, observing that “[T]he perpetual versioning of [computing] systems demands our participation in consumerism and generates an inconceivable amount of toxic wastes.” Tomlinson [295] asserted, “By aligning and integrating well within that [growth] paradigm, HCI is also, in part, responsible for it ...HCI is guilty by association, even if it is just following orders from captains of industry to make products and services that will sell well.” Pargman [221] pointed out that “computing research typically assumes futures that are little else but extrapolations from the recent past, and where the direction ever and always can be summarised by terms such as ‘more,’ ‘better,’ and ‘faster’.” Nardi et al. [214] noted that “[T]he implicit organizing framework for a great deal of computing work puts a focus on increasing the proximate financial values of companies [...and designing products] that are typically embedded in a rapid churn of objects and services that foster runaway consumption.” Blevis et al. [34] argued that “To serve its own interests, our economic system produces incessant moments of disorder and disruption rather than graceful performative luxury, and tells us this is a good thing.” Sharma et al. [269] added that this notion of disruption has become a norm in HCI, encouraging users to discard what they have and replace it with something new. Scuri et al. [261] suggested HCI to “identify the chains of the capitalist economy and break free of them – ensuring that HCI research contributes to the design/creation of a new form of economic system that spurs the regeneration of our economies, societies/communities and indeed the biosphere that manages our climate.”

The emergence of post-growth sensibilities can be seen in the larger HCI community with the recent emphasis on nurturing values of care [158, 298], solidarity [177, 249], plurality [21, 310], and justice [24, 78]. For example, Karusala et al. [158] suggested designing technologies to support an ecology of care, including the caregivers and receivers, that is often ignored because it cannot be monetized in our current economy. Karusala et al. [157] called upon the HCI community to pay attention to the connection between care and the economy. They asked what is counted as care work and how does care work change across contexts with different cultural meanings, power dynamics, and political economy.

HCI researchers have investigated values of reciprocity [268], decoloniality [185, 229], autonomy [48], and post-work [43]. For example, Sharma et al. [267, 268] emphasized designing digital labor platforms to support values of mutual aid and reciprocity which are central to economic work but are often made invisible by neoliberal market mechanisms. They studied the digital work novelists perform to produce and sell books online, noting how the work depends on cooperation and coordination rather than competition. Novelists helped each other with digital advertisement and sales, collectively making sense of often invisible and precarious online algorithms. They provided emotional support, knowing that they would receive help in return when needed [267, 268]. Sharma et al. [267] argue that “this cooperation challenges neoliberal discourses of individual success via a competition.” They note that Akama et al. [9] emphasize “de-coupl[ing] design from its modern, industrialized roots so that it can be re-situated and re-conceptualized as a method, approach, mindset, and ontology, centrally grounded in respectful, reciprocal relationships.”

HCI researchers have questioned HCI’s neoliberal ideology. Keyes, Hoy, and Drouhard [162] argued that HCI has often avoided making its politics explicit, resulting in an “implicit neoliberalism.” Capitalism undermines autonomy; it breeds inequality maintained through commodification and the exchange of goods. The absence of autonomy compromises human dignity and the dignity of other life forms. It thus becomes imperative for HCI to articulate its politics, explicitly stating the world it aims to build and what values and institutions will be advanced by achieving the state [162]. To explicate the politics, Keyes, Hoy, and Drouhard [162] employed the lens of anarchism that “reorients the field around the central principles of autonomy and the justification or elimination of power, with the aim of eliminating oppression.” They argued for holding HCI responsible for the impacts of its work.

Some have recommended HCI help prepare for a future of scarcity [52, 296]. Tomlinson et al. [296] developed “Collapse Informatics” to prepare for future scarcity by building durable sociotechnical systems now when we still have some resources available. Collapse Informatics promotes decentralization, envisioning that considering growing scarcity, the current centralized services will eventually break. It proposes building peer-to-peer networks that are more flexible and resilient [66]. “Salvage computing” calls for halting the production of new devices, and reusing and repairing devices to get the most out of what has already been produced [73]. We can use devices that have been discarded “with an eye to transforming what is exhausted and wasted into renewed resources” [308]. Building on the idea, Raghavan and Hasan [239] suggested a “salvage internet” constructed with discarded devices, locally sourced materials, and local building and repair expertise. “Computing Within Limits” (LIMITS) aims to reshape the computing research agenda to take account of growing ecological, material, energetic, and societal limits, designing generative forms of computing that fit within planetary limits [66]. “Frugal Computing” advocates treating computing resources as finite, to be used only when absolutely necessary [238]. It asks for extending the useful life of computing devices while decreasing their energy consumption.

4.2 Post-growth through HCI

HCI researchers have designed technologies considering post-growth’s idea of minimum and maximum standards of consumption. Abbing [6] developed solar.lowtechmagazine.com, an off-grid solar-powered website. Since the Fall of 2018, the site has been operating as an experiment and design provocation to question the need for and sustainability of economic growth in technology design. Based on “principles derived from degrowth ...for guiding the design of web environments that want to limit energy footprint,” the site shuts down during rainy or cloudy weather and provides a weather forecast at the server’s location to prepare users for the shutdown [6]. Its intermittent availability seeks to raise users’ awareness of the finiteness of resources. Brain et al. [38] designed a global network of solar-powered servers that directs traffic to the server receiving the most sunlight for scheduling, load balancing, and managing flexibilization of demand. Qadir et al. [237] created an “approximate internet” which provides a good-enough networking service considering ecological limits. When parameters such as performance, cost efficiency, energy, and coverage are in conflict, the approximate internet uses context-appropriate trade-offs by selectively optimizing certain parameters based on local requirements. It provides service intermittently, incorporating ideas from delay-tolerant networking to reduce energy consumption. Resource pooling shifts the load among networked resources to act in unison while increasing efficiency, robustness, and reliability, as the resources together can handle the load better.

Franquesa and Navarro [97] created eReuse.org, an online platform for commons-based ownership of computing devices. Anyone can access devices as long as they contribute to expanding the commons. Each user shares at least one device for others to use, making it into an object commons. Public and private organizations donate devices, and ownership of public objects is granted to the community. eReuse’s algorithm determines when a device transitions into waste based on low use-value.⁵ To generate a use value, the algorithm determines the characteristics of a device, such as a processor, memory, aesthetics, functionality, and value during the first purchase. As members use devices, they can perform repairs, make improvements, and do maintenance that increases use-value. Over time, when use-value declines, the device usually leaves the commons to be recycled or discarded. Devices that cannot be repaired because they are damaged or hard to repair are sent to service-learning centers for students to study by dismantling them. eReuse demonstrates that use-value does not necessarily have to decline over time. It can stay constant or even increase, at least up to a point.

Researchers have analyzed the localized development of internet infrastructures. Raghavan and Hasan [239] described protocols, devices, manufacturing facilities, software, and hardware to create local and decentralized internet infrastructure with no dependencies on corporations. They observed that a decentralized internet could be made with locally available salvage hardware. This possibility could leverage local expertise in refurbishing and the vibrant repair culture in many places, including the Global South [144]. Dye et al. [82] studied “StreetNet” in Cuba, a grassroots information infrastructure that local residents developed in response to government internet access restrictions. StreetNet operated outside the government and without the help of commercial service providers. It was composed of core, individual, and local network nodes. Nine core nodes were linked through fixed wireless links. Each core node was connected to multiple individual nodes via WiFi. Individual nodes were located in houses whose residents voluntarily managed local switches. Each individual node was connected to around 200 users with Ethernet cables. StreetNet connected up to 50,000 computers. Community members maintained the digital and physical infrastructure, providing interpersonal support and sharing technical knowledge.

Using blockchain technology, researchers in Berlin envisioned terra0, “an evolving prototype built on the Ethereum network” to grant the legal right to property to a forest [139, 262]. Terra0 aims to create technologically-augmented ecosystems as agents in their own right [262]. The process starts with the project initiators purchasing a forest. They take an inventory of trees using satellite pictures. Data, such as the size of the trees, are used to calculate trends in the behavior of the forest, e.g., the health and growth of the trees. Then, the initiators create a smart contract with details about the ownership and economic models over the blockchain. The ownership model consists of details about who owns the forest. The economic model includes information about who should receive a license for harvesting the trees. This check on licenses could limit the exploitation of the forest; licensees are allowed to harvest only older trees susceptible to illness. The forest remains healthy after the removal of the older trees. The forest’s growth rate remains steady, and the production rate of the forest remains constant without decreasing the tree population. Under the smart contract, project initiators eventually sign over ownership to the forest itself in exchange for debentures, i.e., long-term bonds or unsecured loans issued without a pledge of assets or collateral. Though the forest owns itself now, it is indebted to the project initiators. The forest sells resources based on the information in the database and the economic model to pay initiators back. Once the debt is paid, the forest becomes its sole owner. It can now buy more forests to expand itself.

Some may question the sustainability of blockchain technology, pointing out its intensive energy [67] and hardware [181] requirements. However, protocols that use much less energy exist. For example, the “Proof of Stake” protocol uses less than 1% of the energy needed for Bitcoin’s Proof of Work. “Delegated Proof of Stake” uses even less energy [138, 139], so it appears possible to create less resource-intensive blockchains.

The cases demonstrate a radical reimagining of digital technologies to support a post-growth society. We can build digital technologies considering minimum and maximum standards of consumption, as Abbing [6] and Qadir et al. [237] did. We can support a localized, decentralized development of technologies, as Raghavan and Hasan [239] did. Before building a working prototype, we can envision systems similar to terra0 [139, 262]. To support such efforts, orienting the HCI community, its work and practices, towards post-growth thinking will be useful.

5 Orienting HCI to Post-growth

Embracing and formalizing post-growth thinking in HCI would require problematizing incessant economic growth. We discuss recommendations that build upon existing arguments within HCI to question the inevitability, neutrality, and desirability of growth. These recommendations are to develop economic literacy, mediate policy-making, evaluate the political economy, normalize redesign and undesign, nurture solidarities, recognize limits, and cultivate critical pedagogy. The recommendations are intended to help readers to look at their work and to look again to identify often hidden assumptions of growth and to deepen inquiry into non-capitalist ways of sensing, knowing, being, and doing in HCI.

5.1 Develop Economic Literacy

Orienting to post-growth philosophy will require HCI professionals to develop basic economic literacy. HCI has consistently drawn knowledge and approaches from other disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, sociology, engineering, mathematics, information science, philosophy, and the humanities. Learning from these disciplines has allowed HCI to better understand humans, computers, and their interactions. Similarly, HCI can draw from the discipline of economics to understand the political economy of computing. To work towards addressing sustainability issues, the community can and should study core concepts from microeconomics (e.g., profit, income distribution) and macroeconomics (e.g., inflation, gross domestic product, economic output). The fields of ecological economics and biophysical economics are well-developed and especially pertinent to studying issues of sustainability.

Most importantly, human society and its components, such as the government and the economy, exist within and are bounded by the natural world. The economy should serve society through social institutions, laws, and moral concepts, and it should respect all communities of life. Post-growth scholar Rajeswari S. Raina [240] argued that “Since the economy is a sub-set of the social systems that have been shaped over millennia through interactions with nature, maintaining healthy and sustainable interactions between the economy, society, and nature is crucial in a post-growth world.” However, the current market economy, with its profit orientation, often takes precedence, even in HCI [84, 162, 214]. As HCI professionals, we can learn about economic theories, such as ecological economics, for which the economy serves human communities and all communities of life rather than theorizing how to make one social class increasingly wealthy and powerful. Post-Keynesian theory and Marxist theory consider the economy outside the dictates of capital markets and place labor and the needs of workers at their core. We are, of course, not economists, but gaining economic literacy will help us assess the impacts of market-driven growth on technology design and use.

Some might raise concerns about engaging with yet another discipline and its theories. Bremer et al. [40] lamented that there is “more and more knowledge and expertise to juggle,” advising that “we must be careful not to spread ourselves too thin.” We hear them, yet we argue that our expertise as a community materially depends on engaging with and bringing diverse forms of knowledge together. Since its earliest days, HCI’s well-developed interdisciplinarity has helped us evolve as a field and design better, more meaningful technology. To avoid spreading ourselves too thin, HCI can create more spaces to establish and nurture active collaborations with diverse disciplines, including economics, encouraging cross-pollination of ideas. We can even collaborate across HCI, design, post-growth, and other related communities to collectively address the interactions of technology and economy, building on each other’s knowledge.

5.2 Mediate Policy-making

Post-growth proponents emphasize that policy transformation towards sustainable living is absolutely necessary [161, 184]. Such policy changes could be technologically, socially, and culturally mediated. As HCI designers, we can design tools that push for policy changes supporting post-growth [31]. For example, Canadian researchers developed map-based visualizations of urban city data that revealed the impacts of short-term rental listings on gentrification and rental gaps [57]. The maps were instrumental in promoting rental regulations and policy changes throughout Canada [260, 271]. We can deploy predictive mapping techniques with exhaustive satellite-derived indices to visualize and communicate issues of sustainability, such as droughts [290], floods [259], loss of biodiversity [302], and afforestation [292]. These techniques can be scaled up to larger areas, overcoming barriers of traditional analysis. For example, satellite remote sensing could provide consistent information about the Earth’s surface through its repetitive and synoptic coverage at different spatial scales. Geographic Information Systems could combine diverse layers of information with geographical location to create meaningful, clear, and interactive maps.

As HCI professionals, we ourselves can participate in policy-making at different scales: local levels, e.g., municipal corporations and village councils; organizational levels, e.g., universities, corporations, and non-profit organizations; global levels where international organizations, such as the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) or its Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI), operate. Silberman [275] argued that “It is not necessary, for example, to work for the UNFCCC Secretariat to ‘have an impact.’ You can find out what policies your university, employer, or local government has already adopted or is considering in relation to climate change or other environmental problems and engage in those policy processes on your authority as a student, employee, or citizen.” We can begin learning how policies are designed, altered, and implemented at the scale closest to us, in institutions that may be within our reach and engage to have an impact.

Mankoff [195] has asked the HCI community: “At what scale must [an HCI] project be deployed to have impact?” She questioned whether to focus on individual persons and communities at the local scale, governments and social movements at the national scale, or countries and multinational organizations at the global scale. Post-growth is concerned with engaging with policies across scales for sustainable impacts [71, 154]. At the local scale, post-growth encourages small-scale economies of self-sufficiency; at the national scale, it encourages granting human rights to natural resources; at the global scale, it encourages the redistribution of resources and wealth. How to navigate scale and coordinate efforts across scales are huge questions HCI must address collectively.

5.3 Evaluate the Political Economy

As we engage with policy-making, we should become aware that our technology designs may support unjust politics [267]. Khera [163] studied the Aadhaar system in India that employs biometric-based authentication to verify the identities of low-income households, enabling them to access welfare benefits, including subsidized food. While implemented to thwart unauthorized claims, the system resulted in quantity fraud, where low-income people received fewer food grains than their entitled share [163]. Instead, local elites from dominant classes and castes availed themselves of the advantage [10, 253]. The Aadhaar system shifted the ability of community members from low-income households to demand accountability from local institutions; they had to engage with technology operators who were solely accountable to local bureaucrats [80] who favored elites [305]. Understanding politics mediated through technologies becomes crucial to ensure that the technologies we design do not end up supporting unjust politics.

Technologies may amplify real world inequities [299]. In 2018, during the debate on decriminalizing abortion in Argentina, Microsoft and the Argentinian province of Salta devised an algorithm that predicted teenage pregnancy based on age, ethnicity, country of origin, and disability, proudly claiming that “With technology you can foresee five or six years in advance, with first name, last name, and address, which girl–future teenager–is 86 percent predestined to have an adolescent pregnancy” [91]. The algorithm was trained on the data collected from 12,000 girls from socioeconomically marginalized communities, including migrants and indigenous communities [91]. It only considered socioeconomic variables, blaming individuals and perpetuating offline inequities when infrastructural support for pregnancy planning for such communities was lacking. Feminist scholars argued that “The idea that algorithms can predict teenage pregnancy before it happens is the perfect excuse for anti-women and anti-sexual and reproductive rights activists to declare abortion laws unnecessary” [91]. Sharma et al. [267] reported algorithmically mediated racism that novelists of color faced online. These novelists had to manage and hide their racial identities and pretend to be white, as white-sounding names sell more books. Readers were mostly white and wanted their writers to be like them. Sharma et al. [267] asked “What do we do if, despite our best intentions, the systems we deploy continue to marginalize people ...or even exacerbate discrimination?” Can we design technologies foregrounding and disrupting such unjust power dynamics and consequent inequities instead of mediating ongoing, offline, unjust practices?

Politics, culture, and economy cannot be separated. The economy shapes culture and politics, and cultural values and power relations shape the way we produce and exchange goods and services [42, 272]. A synergistic understanding of these interactions can be woven into technology design and analysis. Ekbia and Nardi [84] argue that “We in HCI face the reality of the larger economic system and its impact on our daily life and work, but we do not incorporate these understandings into our research and practice to the extent that we perhaps should.” Just as HCI has broadened its purview to examine the cultural and social implications of technology design, e.g., [21, 28, 94, 98, 270], it can be much more intentional about evaluating the economic implications of technology design.

We can regard design within the frame of socioeconomic systems, legal and regulatory frameworks, and government agendas and policies. Comber and Rossitto [56] studied a five-year legal dispute between Stockholm Municipality and the gig economy platform Tiptapp. The platform assisted people living in urban areas with deliveries, moves, shopping, and recycling. It introduced third-party workers to collect, transport, and dispose of waste. The municipality criticized this app, arguing that workers lacked permits to conduct professional waste management and that transferring the waste was not allowed. The municipality posited that Tiptapp was a “waste broker,” and the app must register as a waste management company [56]. Tiptapp replied that their services were only partly related to waste. It said, “local groups on Facebook that coordinate households to carpool to recycling centers ...[should] also be considered a waste broker” [56]. The case foregrounded questions about the political economy of waste management: what can be defined as waste, who can manage it, how to dispose of it, and the role of technology. It emphasizes the need to understand the local socioeconomic system, including laws and regulations, that impact the use of technologies we design.

Ekbia and Nardi [85] recommended that HCI ask critical questions about the economic values that underlie technology designs and, in particular, who benefits from them. We can start by asking broad questions: How does our work contribute to an economy that serves people and other communities of life rather than one that we are expected to serve? Are design motivations and assumptions based on considering technology a solution to complex social issues? Does the work prioritize human and ecological welfare as well as value-laden aspects underlying people’s use of technologies over instrumental purposes of efficiency connected with corporate profit? We can then ask more specific questions: Do designs promote rebound effects or planned obsolescence? Do they reinforce traditional hierarchies and power dynamics? Do they help workers address their marginalization? How are the resources, including metals and minerals, used in technology design gathered and transported? Can we design technologies supporting the longevity and collective use of devices? Can we consider local manufacturing [144, 239] as underlying values of our technology design framework to consciously produce more durable goods with repair [137, 147] and reuse [146] options?

5.4 Normalize Redesign and Undesign

Our technology design may have unintended consequences [25, 226]. Veeraraghavan [305] studied a Management Information System (MIS) to digitalize an Indian government policy to support rural farmers’ participation in natural resource management. The goals were to achieve secure employment and climate change resilience. The system was developed to enable “upper-level bureaucrats” to supervise the activities of “lower-level bureaucrats” to prevent corruption. The implementation of an MIS led to some degree of improved transparency as upper-level bureaucrats could micromanage, uncover instances of fraud, avoid local political influences, and assist workers in claiming unpaid wages and other entitlements [206]. However, lower-level bureaucrats found new, innovative ways to exploit the system for corrupt practices [304]. For example, the digital muster roll, a document that assigns work days and records days worked, was used by upper-level bureaucrats to know who showed up to work on a specific date [304]. However, the system gave more agency to the lower-level bureaucrats who maintained the document. They assigned work to those they liked, telling others that “the computer has not assigned them work” [304]. Instead of curbing corruption, the system led to its increase, providing novel ways to game the system. As we design technologies, “we should engage in a critical, reflective dialog about how and why these things are built” [25]. We can ask “does a technological intervention result in more trouble or harm than the situation it’s meant to address?” [25]. We can “value the implication not to design” when we know our design may result in causing more trouble than the situation it’s meant to address [25].

We cannot, of course, at the design stage, know all the implications of a design. We cannot predict if it will cause more trouble or introduce new, unexpected troubles until it is deployed and used for some time [266]. But as HCI designers, we can be more open to redesigning technologies as we learn more about the consequences. Veeraraghavan [305] suggested “patching” as the process of iteratively redesigning interventions when new information concerning an intervention emerges. A series of incremental “patches” can be applied to address context-specific consequences to counter the disruptive practices that a deeply flawed market capitalism promotes to “fail fast, fail often” [144] and “move fast and break things” [81]. Patching is an effort to continuously adapt and reassess interventions to enhance democratic, transparent, and accessible practices. Problems can be “re-solved over and over again” [247] as we keep re-learning the implications of our technologies. Redesigning better technologies is also HCI.

We can consider undesigning existing technologies [231]. Pierce [231] suggested three ways to undesign. We can prevent the use of technology in a particular way, just as we have designed persuasive systems to restrict overconsumption of technology [294]. We can limit technology use in specific situations, as we have designed parental controls to prevent young children from viewing certain programs [217, 307]. We can identify and eliminate technologies that “are destructive no matter who owns them” [264]. For example, we can eliminate technologies that are fundamentally at odds with post-growth’s suggestion to downscale. Such technologies include non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency, large language models, immersive virtual environments, on-demand streaming platforms, and others with higher resource and energy consumption. Pierce [231] argues that “the intentional destruction or removal of something may also be considered a possible or even necessary component of design.” We can be technology undesigners and investigate ways to prevent, limit, or erase a technology.

5.5 Nurture Solidarities

Many good ideas reside in many parts of the world. Post-growth philosophy suggests understanding sustainable living in cultures and societies in the Global Souths whose ontologies and epistemologies are not rooted in capitalist logic but in lived experience and care for the environment, including all life forms [63, 90, 115]. For example, in the 1970s, a small group of women came out in Uttar Pradesh, India, and started hugging the trees against the logging companies destroying the forests. The act spread as the Chipko Movement across many parts of the country [148, 273]. Chipko means to hug or embrace in Hindi. The moment demanded declaring Himalayan forests as areas protected from commercial exploitation [273]. The government had to agree and ban logging.

In the Souths, sustainability is often constructed of localized ethics, a sense of belonging to a group, and a desire for non-material rewards [242]. Rifat et al. [242] studied sustainable values and practices of people in Bangladesh, noting that sustainability was rooted in religious and spiritual practices. For example, people chose sustainable lifestyles, avoiding overconsumption of clothing, housing, transportation, and other resources, motivated by a “spiritual belief that good deeds [such as conserving resources and sharing them with others] will be rewarded and bad ones will be punished in this world and hereafter” [242]. However, the modernist principle in HCI often links sustainability to calculable market-driven models and cost-benefit analysis [58, 242]. As we design technologies supporting sustainable living, we could consider the deeply ingrained values of sustainability woven into the customs and communal existence of those living in the Souths.

Sustainability and justice transcend borders. Embracing post-growth requires us to form a truly international community of scholars, advocates, activists, and practitioners working together in an integrated way to address global issues [180]. To build solidarity across geopolitical borders, we can conduct conferences in regions of the Souths, increasing wider participation and more diverse paper submissions [190]. We can create opportunities for scholars from the Souths to participate in global HCI circles by providing support for work to be submitted, presented, and disseminated in languages other than English. Bar and Toyama [18] noted that accepting scholarly work only in English has impeded many Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin American scholars from presenting their work at international conferences and publishing in academic journals. HCI can allow submissions in languages other than English to encourage wider participation. We could allow submissions in languages such as Spanish used by relatively large numbers of HCI scholars. They could volunteer or be paid to translate the work.

We can learn from systems such as uiGarden [136], a bilingual website started in 2005 to support interaction between HCI professionals in China and other countries. The site included articles on HCI theories and concepts, such as lessons on user-centered techniques and methodologies, reviews of books and software, and interviews with experts [188]. It provided forums in Chinese and English for discussion and translated them into the other language. uiGarden had an editorial staff working with volunteers to translate and publish articles in both languages. Chinese HCI professionals could read English HCI articles translated into Chinese, and HCI professionals outside China could read articles translated into English [187, 208]. Moraveji and Liu [208] emphasized that the site aimed to “bring the newest Western research and development to China” and “become a bridge [for] the Western [HCI] community [to understand] Eastern culture.” In 2007, the site got over 24,000 page views, with 60% of the viewers from China and 40% from the rest of the world [187]. Language is one barrier we can begin to break down to continue to create an international community [8].

The HCI community and audience are predominantly located in the Global North. The community has inevitably inherited many of its ideas from the North. In 2021, Linxen et al. [190] conducted a content analysis of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) proceedings from 2016–2020, asking if the HCI community is truly international. They reported that around 73% of CHI papers had study participants situated in the Global North. Out of 195 countries represented in the study, 102 countries in parts of Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Asia did not have any study participants. This work demonstrates that at the time the authors wrote the paper, CHI had yet to study users from over half of the world’s countries, including, for example, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Libya, Madagascar, Paraguay, Guyana, and Myanmar. At the same time, the authors noted that CHI’s study participant pool is becoming more diverse. The percentage of participants from the Souths almost doubled from 16% to 30% from 2016–2020.

Solidarity is contagious. Efforts to build international solidarity in HCI are growing. Researchers from the Global Souths are organizing into groups to have their voices heard. South Asian and Latin American researchers are forming regional communities to study HCI [13, 177]. These regions are well represented in HCI Across Borders events, seeking to “bring together researchers working in and across under-represented contexts around the world ...to foster community across geographies, backgrounds, methodologies, and other borders” [176]. Scholars in the Global North can connect more actively with those from the Souths through such events.

It is time for HCI to devote resources toward establishing a genuinely global HCI community. How can we, as HCI professionals, address global and local issues simultaneously in making a global community? If global and local issues conflict, which one should we prioritize? How might we work individually and collectively to support shared values while nurturing local values that operate within the specificity of particular communities?

Efforts toward solidarity can, and should, extend to the more-than-human lives on Earth. Post-growth suggests transforming nature and its resources from objects to subjects that could limit their own exploitation [72]. The HCI community has started discussing posthumanist approaches [281, 282] that decenter human beings as the focal point of design to consider non-human actors such as animals, trees, and more [282]. The idea is to acknowledge that our experiences and existence are entangled with those of other species, that we are co-inhabitants, and that design should consider this entanglement. HCI work on posthumanism has focused on topics such as designing for co-habitations between humans and non-humans [280]; collaborative survival [191]; supporting symbiotic encounters in agriculture [192]; raising tangible awareness of climate change [32]; and involving non-humans in participatory design [54]. Can we include the ecological environment of our design and the often invisible more-than-human entities present during the design process as participants?

5.6 Recognize Limits

Post-growth philosophy proposes reducing resource consumption; we live on a finite planet with finite resources [106, 127, 129]. We can raise our awareness of the resources consumed by the technologies we design. We can ask fundamental questions such as how many resources are needed for a design and if a design is the most sustainable, efficient approach. We can calculate and attempt to minimize the embodied energy, i.e., the sum of all energy required, to design a product or service. As HCI designers, we find ourselves designing technologies to support endless engagement with technology, pushing users to crave unnecessary gadgetry to make them think they need more, newer forms, and incessant change in their technologies. We can assess digital technologies alongside critiques of growth and can develop critical consciousness to question how, in contemporary societies, over consumption of resources and technologies is normalized.

We can move beyond designing technologies for individual consumption to communal ways of sharing technologies, just as Franquesa and Navarro [97] did by creating eReuse.org to support the sharing of digital devices. We can question how to judiciously limit the use of resources and how to design technologies that allow upcycling⁶ [120, 309] or repair [146, 147]. eReuse.org allowed members to perform repairs, make improvements, and do maintenance, actions that increased use-value of the devices. Can our technology design motivate maintenance and repair until the use-value declines and the device has to be recycled or discarded? We can learn from salvage computing which advocates reusing and repairing devices instead of producing new devices [73]. Can we build digital technologies similar to the way Raghavan and Hasan [239] developed a salvage internet?

Some members of the HCI community have considered ecological limits and their relevance to technology design, use, and evaluation [214, 225, 275, 296]. Since 2015, the LIMITS Community has been conducting “research on the impact of present or future ecological, material, energetic, and/or societal limits on computing and computing research to respond to such limits” [1]. In 2023, the community expanded its focus to climate justice, saying “[a]s an interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and scholars, we seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general, and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular” [2]. Some themes in LIMITS include analyzing unnecessary computing, designing material-constrained computing devices, performing life-cycle analysis of computing systems with limits in mind, and designing computing systems to support diverse human and non-human lifeforms (see [23, 73, 203, 250]). Other work concerns supporting sustainable food tracking [212], increasing people’s engagement with their local environment [117], architectural design for refugees living in settlements [251], supporting environmental justice activism [236], and maintaining polyculture gardens [216]. The cross-pollination of ideas between LIMITS and HCI could be strengthened. We can create avenues for the two communities to share ideas, critique practices, and collaborate.

Digital technologies are often designed to achieve scale to increase profit and economic growth [261]. This focus on achieving scale, Larsen-Ledet et al. [183] argue, “makes technology design inattentive towards locally relevant ecological relations and eco-social goals ...[shaping] design strategies that are not helpful ...[but] consider growing and expanding to be the only processes that matter, leav[ing] little room for more sustainable lives and alternative and fairer economies.” This focus is rooted in capitalist assumptions of unbridled growth. Instead, we could focus on decentralizing technology development by situating it in local contexts supported by local knowledge and skills. For example, Kostakis et al. [171] present the case of Open Bionics, a prosthetic hand created using off-the-shelf materials available at hardware stores, supplemented with an online repository of designs with tutorials to guide manufacture. This work demonstrates the design of a technology that can be developed using local materials, is easily adaptable and repairable without requiring expert assistance, and is appropriate to the local context of use. Localizing technology development could reduce ecological footprints because the supply chain would be shorter; manufacturing costs would be reduced with locally sourced or recycled materials. This is not to say that everything can be produced locally, but certain technologies can, and perhaps should be.

Sustainability can be considered alongside usability and efficiency when designing digital products and services. A user-friendly system is often a sustainable one. For example, easy-to-find online content uses substantially fewer resources as users spend less time searching [100]. We can look for designing alternatives to technologies that claim carbon-neutrality and being “green.” For example, cloud computing is put forward as a sustainable substitute for resource-intensive traditional computing, though the actual cost of a cloud is colossal. A cloud data center with its high-core-count CPUs can consume 30 billion watts of electricity per year, equivalent to the electricity produced by 30 nuclear power plants in a year [108, 140]. This expenditure is much more than that of traditional computing. Consumption is growing with the increasing number of data centers [159]. Cloud computing services can be made more sustainable by moving storage and processing to centers with cleaner energy grids running on, for example, hydroelectric power. Applications sitting idly in the background use network connections, RAM, and processing power which require energy. Can we minimize energy consumption by killing applications that idle for a considerable amount of time?

5.7 Cultivate Critical Pedagogy

As HCI educators, we are part of the process of HCI’s future-making. This future-making could “be carried out towards the design of technologies that will be appropriate for a future with a scarcity of resources” [286]. Quoting Meadows et al. [204], Tomlinson and fellow HCI researchers [297] emphasize that the future of resource scarcity is fast approaching: “For two-thirds of the world’s population, the crisis of scarce resources, inadequate housing, deplorable conditions of health, and starvation are already at hand.” The HCI community, most importantly, includes HCI students who are future HCI professionals. The next generations of HCI professionals may require skills and knowledge to addresss sustainability problems as a part of their work and life.

To attend to current curricular gaps [198], we can teach students design that does not require immense resources and insistence on innovation at a massive environmental cost. We have many excellent examples, such as the design of a low-tech off-grid solar-powered website [6] or an approximate internet which provides a good-enough networking service based on ecological limits [237]. We can teach how to ask better questions to challenge growth-oriented ideology. Pargman and Eriksson [223] note that asking better questions requires “embrac[ing] and navigat[ing] the uncertainty of living in a complex world, instead of searching for fixed, algorithmic or formulaic answers and increased control.” Can we prepare future HCI professionals to embrace this uncertainty without being overwhelmed by it? Can we make them realize that sustainability issues are not someone else’s problem but a current reality happening to all of us and around all of us? Can we help students understand that the problems will only increase? Can we convey that not everything can be solved by designing a technology? Can we make students aware of the limits of a technosolutionlist ideology?

Sustainability is not a technical issue but a political one requiring policy changes [79, 167]. While technology can certainly help, it is not the only or most important means of effecting change. As HCI educators, we can encourage students to reflect and become more conscious that “not all problems are necessarily best solved by the application of ICT/computing power or ‘high-tech’ solutions” [224]. The most effective application of technical skills is not always building new technologies. Instead, students need to be critical about what technologies to build or not build, how to use them or not use them, and when to undesign or dismantle existing technologies. We can teach HCI students how to contribute their knowledge and skills to others working on real-world sustainability problems as Steve Easterbrook [83] did, offering his expertise to climate scientists to create computational models. We can educate students about evaluating designs considering ecological limits, mainstreaming these concerns rather than including them only as a specialization, elective, or capstone project.

Mann et al. [197] discussed three approaches to making sustainability-related topics a part of computing education. In a centralized approach, sustainability topics are the center of courses. In a distributed approach, sustainability topics are made part of the whole curriculum across several courses. In a blended approach, sustainability topics are part of some dedicated courses, while other courses also include them. A centralized approach might be easiest to implement, though the authors argued that distributed and blended approaches can have the highest impact [197].

Learning is not, of course, confined to classrooms. We can conduct seminars to disseminate post-growth thinking, explaining it as a viable alternative to the politics of growth. We can hold workshops to collectively discuss, critique, and design meaningful ways to move towards post-growth in HCI. For example, we could add post-growth ideas to ethics seminars (and classes), acknowledging that ecological limits and conserving resources are ethical concepts that could guide us to live cooperative, moral, and responsible lives [26].

6 Conclusion and an Invitation

HCI can no longer afford to ignore global crises in the making—rising temperatures, heatwaves, wildfires, soil erosion, floods, droughts, melting and dislocation of polar ice, species extinction, degradation of ecosystems, sea-level rise, and more. As stewards of the field, it is up to us to decide what to do next, and how to act accordingly. We draw encouragement from Light et al. [189] who say about HCI: “We are practical people, as well as dreamers and theorists ...we can choose to have a role in producing alternative narratives for present generations of humans and those who depend on them, such as other species and [future] children.” Post-growth philosophy can provide invaluable support towards “prefiguring the type of world that [we] want to produce and inhabit” [152], offering concrete suggestions in the form of universal basic income, shorter work weeks, job sharing, redistributive taxation, and learning from the Souths, among others. The emergence of post-growth sensibilities in HCI demonstrates that the field is full of critical and subversive thinkers. Such thinkers are needed to confront the unprecedented changes and challenges we face today.

There may be barriers to engaging with post-growth, and we must move past them together. HCI practitioners may feel constrained in incorporating post-growth ideas in their work [84]. However, these barriers can be and have been surmounted through collective action. For example, at Amazon, employees asked for the release of a company-wide climate plan; the company had to respond [95]. Uber employees entered a leadership meeting to question the slow progress on climate initiatives; the company announced the initiatives a month later [133]. HCI academics are typically expected to publish early and often, making it more challenging to embrace post-growth philosophy, which requires time-consuming critical reflection and system development. But academia is meant to cultivate deep thought, discourse, and action; that is its true essence. Berg and Seeber [29] push for prioritizing “deliberation over acceleration” in academia, reminding us that academics “need time to think, and so do our students. Time for reflection and open-ended inquiry is crucial to what we do.” HCI research can investigate models that nurture critical deliberation, discussion, and action, as the discipline of ecological economics has done [124, 139, 164]. Together, we can look into establishing networks of peer support that permit slowing down, reflecting, and critically engaging with post-growth ideas.

Some in HCI might find it hard to engage with post-growth when the larger computing discipline is fixated on growth. However, HCI can work towards catalyzing change. It can help in spreading the ideas to related disciplines and the larger academic community. Change to post-growth is necessary to avoid a sudden collapse and subsequent human suffering and irreversible environmental devastation. This change is inevitable. Now, it is upon us to either “change voluntarily, smoothing the transition through civilized redistribution, or it will happen, probably with dire consequences, involuntarily,” as Nardi [213] stresses.

Pargman and Eriksson [223] argue that it is crucial “to ask better questions, and to help others ask better questions—instead of coming up with tired knee-jerk answers that have proved to be inadequate again and again.” Our aim with this paper was to articulate crucial questions that HCI has been grappling with: how can we frame a conscious, compassionate, and appropriate response to the consequences of economic growth? How might we transition to a more sustainable, just, and humane post-growth society? How does post-growth translate into practical reimaginings of HCI? These questions are vast and complex, and cannot be reduced to simple “solutions.” We encourage our readers to pause, ask questions, and critically reflect on what they have done and can do to support the transition to and building of a post-growth society. For those who may not be ready to adopt a post-growth orientation yet, we request that they make note of points of disagreement so that we can discuss them, learn collectively, and do better HCI.

We now invite the HCI community to embrace post-growth ideas, learn more about them, engage and critique them, and, most importantly, leverage them to ideate and innovate in ways that will help us thrive sustainably. We end this paper proposing the area of Post-growth HCI, i.e., the study, design, and development of digital post-growth technologies for building a more sustainable, just, and humane post-growth society. We ask the community to join these efforts, and together, we can chart a more hopeful trajectory in which sustainability challenges have been rendered less turbulent and a solid foundation for justice has been laid, with intent, mediated through technology. A better HCI is possible.

Acknowledgments

We are immensely grateful to the post-growth community for paving a path forward to move away from unsustainable and unjust economic growth. We dedicate this paper to the scholars, activists, and proponents across generations in the Global Souths and North who have influenced, supported, and contributed to post-growth’s theoretical and practical development. We thank Amy Chen, Anupriya Tuli, Azra Ismail, Karthik S. Bhat, Marc Hassenzahl, Meena Devii Muralikumar, Nadia Fereydooni, and Sachin Pendse for their support and comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are grateful for the insightful feedback offered by our reviewers.

Footnotes

Also called the growth economy, the globalized economy, the market economy, the free market economy, and capitalism.

A rock-bottom measure based on the average value of goods to sustain a person as set by the World Bank.

The Indian constitution uses both India and Bharat as official names [5].

⁴

We use the term “Global Souths” to denote the diverse cultures and philosophies in the South and the growing South within the North [55].

⁵

Use-value is a physical property of a commodity that satisfies a human need [201].

⁶

Upcyling transforms an object into greater quality or value for reuse.

References

[1]

[n.d.]. LIMITS 2021 – Workshop on Computing within Limits. Retrieved From 16 July 2021 https://computingwithinlimits.org/2019/

Abstract

1 Introduction

2 Economic Growth and HCI

2.1 Impacts of Economic Growth

2.1.1 Economic Inequality.

2.1.2 Environmental Devastation.

2.2 Economic Growth in and through HCI

2.2.1 Rebound Effect.

2.2.2 Planned Obsolescence.

2.2.3 Labor Marginalization/User Exploitation.

3 Post-growth Philosophy

3.1 Post-growth History and Definition

3.2 Some Post-growth Ideas

3.3 Post-growth Stances on Technology

4 Post-growth and HCI

4.1 Post-growth in HCI

4.2 Post-growth through HCI

5 Orienting HCI to Post-growth

5.1 Develop Economic Literacy

5.2 Mediate Policy-making

5.3 Evaluate the Political Economy

5.4 Normalize Redesign and Undesign

5.5 Nurture Solidarities

5.6 Recognize Limits

5.7 Cultivate Critical Pedagogy

6 Conclusion and an Invitation

Acknowledgments

Footnotes

References

Cited By

Index Terms

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Post-growth HCI: Co-Envisioning HCI Beyond Economic Growth

Turn to the Self in Human-Computer Interaction: Care of the Self in Negotiating the Human-Technology Relationship

Means and Ends in Human-Computer Interaction: Sustainability through Disintermediation

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