What is Post-growth?
Post-growth combines theories and ideas from degrowth and post-development to achieve a global steady-state economy. While degrowth considers economic growth in the Global North damaging to be stopped, post-development seeks alternatives to centralized industrial development in the Global South based on local production, leveraging local resources and indigenous knowledge. A steady-state economy aims to achieve equilibrium between population growth and production by maintaining a constant rate of material throughput. Post-growth proposes building society by (a) transforming production and consumption to be ecologically sustainable long-term, (b) supporting social justice and self-determination to strive for a good life, and (c) redesigning infrastructures to become substantially less dependent on capitalist expansion. Transitioning to and building a post-growth society involves shifting radically 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. Such a society must include solidarity, sufficiency, leisure, conviviality, autonomy, and other values that cannot be reduced to material accumulation.
What is Post-growth HCI?
Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) makes a significant contribution to economic growth; it is crucial to the market success of digital technologies, including digital services, platforms, and devices, which drive the economic engine. Many of HCI's research and design activities are innovation-oriented, driven by companies' interest in securing future market shares and sales (e.g., in the automotive industry). Tomlinson argued, "By aligning and integrating well within that [growth] paradigm, HCI is also, in part, responsible for it \dots 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." Most improvements in user interactions consume additional energy and resources. For example, the infrastructural support that cloud computing requires, consisting of data centers with high-core-count CPUs, may consume 30 billion watts of electricity per year—much more than traditional computing. On-demand streaming platforms, such as YouTube and Netflix, may consume up to 200 terawatt-hours annually.
Some HCI researchers have problematized the field's engagement with growth, suggesting the post-growth philosophy as an alternative. Borning et al. noted 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. recommended 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.” Recently, Sharma et al. suggested ways to question growth's inevitability, neutrality, and desirability. They recommended HCI professionals develop economic literacy and learn alternative economic theories, design systems to mediate policy-making while participating in policy-making at different scales, evaluate the political and economic implications of technology design, normalize redesigning and undesigning technologies, nurture solidarities across geopolitical borders and more-than-human lives, consider ecological limits in technology design, and cultivate critical thinking in HCI students. The authors proposed 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, inviting HCI professionals to integrate post-growth ideas into transformative HCI practices for technology-mediated change.