Living in a Bio-Digital Material World : Anticipating Regenerative Technological Futures Via Speculative Design Praxis

This paper discusses how designers can begin to better consider the entangled ecological, technological and societal interdependencies and tensions that a socio-technical paradigm, rooted upon a bio-digital materials, may herald. In outlining these new sensibilities and capabilities for design, the paper envisions how such regenerative stewardship can nurture deeper, more appropriate and meaningful kinship between humans, their technologies (e.g., devices, the Cloud, and GenAI) and non-humans (e.g., flora, fauna, and the planet). The paper embodies this stance through the notion of Regenification, using this term to describe a transformative, future-facing design approach that challenges the hegemonic barbarity, ‘enshittification’ and systemized obsolescence that characterize today’s digital technologies as controlled by Big Tech. Regenification seeks to go beyond ineffective ‘mop-and-bucket’ environmental solutions, like recycling and carbon offsetting, which merely sustain the capitalist, extractive status quo.