DECENTERED FUTURE By Ralph Mercer
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HIS article aims to introduce the concept of ‘Decentred Futures ’ as a means to explore posthumanism as a philosophy/ practice to examine the future. In future technology notes, the futurists’ relationship with technology, the assumptions, methods, and beliefs as a habitus that presently frame our perception of possible futures will be explored in more depth. As a futures concept, philosophical posthumanism focuses on decentring the human from the discourse and can be described as post-humanism (not post-human), postanthropocentrism, and a post-dualism approach. The ‘post’ of post-humanism does not advocate
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HUMAN FUTURES
moving beyond the human species in some biological or evolutionary manner. Instead, offering a new vantage point to understand what or who has been omitted from an anthropocentric worldview. Posthumanism becomes a futures tool to peel back the layers of our hierarchical legacies that betray our assumptions and biases about our technological partner. Technology and human futures are entangled in the evolution of human social and cognitive development, pre-dating the creation of future studies, literacies, and the accepted boundaries that separate them. The boundaries that separate the human from material world are often a result
