principles of engagement

1. Explore Impact.

Rather than solely focusing on a single technology (such as ai) as field of applied innovation, the network makes the question of collective intelligence the focus of non-disciplinary inquiry and experiment. This allows us to approach, explore and comprehend the wide-ranging implications and possible impact of machinic intelligences without locking us into the dynamics of technological development or established disciplinary methodologies.

2. Imagine Innovation.

New imaginaries, new narratives, new horizons - if we are to anticipate worlds in which human and non-human actors become part of collective intelligences, we will need all of these. In imagining alternative futures, the network widens the space of innovation. This goes both ways, as we also need to open up imagination. New technologies change the way we can arrive at concepts, tell stories, foresee futures. This opens up new problem spaces and calls for new conceptual blueprints to ultimately create new instruments for the organization of change.

3. Co-Create Discourses.

We can only find the new if we have a language that allows room for the unknown. Otherwise we may not be able to name the new when we encounter it - or miss it altogether. The network critically assesses the terms we have come to use to talk about the new - and creates new terms whenever we think existing terms won’t do. The co-creation of new languages is one way to anchor technology design in a broader and more holistic conversation about how we want to live and work.

4. Make Worlds.

The distinctions we have established in education and research have served us only so well in building new alliances. Rather than struggling to re-connect what we have come to accept as always already separate - IT, SSH, Arts and Culture - we begin with a non-disciplinary view of the systems and worlds of which we are a part. In the context of ecological crisis, we need to have a better sense of how the world exists - its interdependencies, its timescales. If technology is to play a role in addressing this crisis, we need a way of speaking about worldmaking that acknowledges that technologies can play multiple roles, and that our ways of exploring impact must acknowledge the complexity of technological agency.

5. Contextualize Agency.

The conditions of change frame our agency - as they change, so do our options for individual and collective action. Awareness of contexts directly translates into new possibilities for action. We need to rethink how we can explore anticipatory assumptions, harnessing structures for mutual learning to meet these challenges. By collaborating with a wide range of actors, we can devise new educational formats to properly assess, scope and tackle more complex and chaotic problems.