How might our technologies evolve if their design principles were rooted in ancestral wisdom, communal care, and ecological balance? This Afrofuture World-build invites participants to imagine radical alternatives to today’s dominant tech paradigms by stepping into speculative, culturally grounded futures shaped by Black and African diasporic traditions.
In this facilitated session, we will challenge the “one-size-fits-all” mentality embedded in today’s design ecosystems, where efficiency often trumps equity, and abstraction erases cultural nuance. Drawing from the Dinkinesh Method, a futures-thinking framework developed by curator and Afrofuturist Ingrid LaFleur, this interactive workshop uses storytelling, system mapping, and collective dreaming to envision worlds where technology is not only inclusive but also liberatory.
We will begin by unearthing the default assumptions embedded in today’s platforms—such as surveillance-as-safety, speed-as-value, or neutrality-as-design. Then, participants will collaboratively world-build a speculative tech society where design is informed by intergenerational knowledge, spiritual sovereignty, and pluralistic cultural values. Together, we’ll co-create prototypes of systems, platforms, or rituals that embody alternate pathways: What does data stewardship look like when grounded in kinship networks? How might algorithms evolve if guided by principles of harmony, not extraction? Can machine intelligence be designed to support spiritual and emotional well-being?
This world-build is not about optimizing current systems—it’s about imagining what becomes possible when we center the sacred, the ancestral, and the collective in our design. Our goal is to make visible the hidden cultural scaffolding of dominant tech norms and illuminate futures where technology serves as a tool for restoration, joy, and sovereignty.
Open to technologists, artists, designers, organizers, and anyone curious about justice-centered futures, this Afrofuture World-build will leave participants with new design imaginaries, tangible prompts for decolonizing their practice, and the inspiration to create tech aligned with liberation.
Because the futures we envision today shape the technologies we inherit tomorrow.
