Design for the Long Now: Temporal Tools for Navigating Ethics in HCI

Design for the Long Now is a project inspired by the Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit promoting long-term thinking and responsibility in the face of rapidly accelerating technology and culture. This one-day workshop will provide a space for HCI researchers and technology designers to reflect on the timelines that govern their work and explore where and how ethical issues emerge. In drawing on real-world ethical dilemmas that participants have experienced, we hope to better understand how power dynamics and hierarchies can constrain or accelerate ethical decision making and consider the wider context and systems surrounding these processes. Through playful, creative experimentation, community building, and the use of non-violent communication and systems thinking tools, this workshop aims to build participants' agency and inspire collective action. We also hope to promote change in the design practices and norms that perpetuate harm.