Appropriate technologies: for regenerative practices and ecological citizenship, yielding planet-centred design

Technologies are more than instruments of extraction and control: they are agents in themselves, entangled within ecological, social and infrastructural systems. This holistic analysis works towards a research orientation which resists the binary opposition of nature and technology, while remaining critically aware of the socio-ecological risks technology presents.

In this paper, the authors explore a number of project case studies which indicate how – from the perspective of planetary kinship – technology creation, deployment and governance could be improved in the future. They investigate how these projects can help us to turn from an anthropocentric approach to technology towards one which fully acknowledges our planetary existence.

Of particular importance to these technological developments are four design principles. Technology should be:

• Non-extractive
• Created in collaboration
• Designed for future ownership, governance and designed for exit
• Produced in consideration to its surroundings.

The ECT Framework is a generative scaffold that builds from these principles and supports designers and citizens to reorient their technologies towards ecological attunement. It invites those working with it to engage with the unknown, to speculate: rather than seeing the unknowable as something to be eliminated, it must be embraced as a condition to be designed with in a journey towards greater planetary kinship.