HABITUS OF THE FUTURE: THE STRUCTURING EFFECT OF OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TECHNOLOGY Ralph Mercer

HABITUS OF THE FUTURE: THE STRUCTURING EFFECT OF OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TECHNOLOGY

By Ralph Mercer

MY interests focus on our relationship with technology as a force that influences individuals to accept and replicate certain behaviours, actions and beliefs. As a technology culturalist, I reflect on the importance of technology in determining our individual and social behaviour both in the present and, more importantly, our perception of the future. I suggest in this article that our relationship with technology might be better understood as a Habitus of the Future that creates patterns of behaviours that is unconsciously resistive to new ideas and opportunities to approach Future Studies.

The article had its beginnings in a parking lot, where I reflected on the grocery shopping app that had just guided me around the store, reminding me what to purchase. No intervention was required; the app knew which grocery store I was at based on my location data and what items I needed from my previous buying habits at this location. I didn’t question, just zipped through the store, ignoring isles that did not have the things I needed, just a fast in and out. The app maintained a laser focus on the list of items I required today while efficiently distracting me from the opportunity of considering items I might need tomorrow or next week.

While technology intervening in my life is not new, my phone provides a steady stream of what’s next from my digital calendars and AI assistants, effectively offloading my cognitive need to think ahead. It occurred to me that I had willingly surrendered the freedom to decide, passively accepting the behavioural norms designed into our technological tools from the number of steps I take a day to the emoji I select to give a quantification to my day.

Will the presentism encouraged by my technology limit my perception of the future? Maybe not, but here’s the thing, if we expand the influence of technologies’ to all the ambient influence to our daily lives to include the incredible amount of technology we unconsciously interact with daily and the dominant professional narratives about technology, it just might.

Technology has become the unblinking witness to many of our daily lives, providing efficiency as a substitute for an active partner who enriches our personal experiences. I remembered Riel Miller had commented on LinkedIn1 that he was struck by the robust framing of our possible futures by clear, goaloriented human choices that produce “concrete and radioactive wastes that are very persistent.” My concern is that our current relationship with technology has become a significant factor in creating the metaphoric concrete and radioactive waste in our lives.

There is a bigger social-technical picture; cellular networks, GPS, digital payments, broadband speeds, Wi-Fi and

NOTES:

1 Riel Miller Linkedin comments on Quishare Fest; https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update /urn:li:activity:6813398311962243072/ 2 Kurt Lewin; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin

social media (to name a few) mediate and shape the state of our present world our quality of life and possibly limit our perceptions of the future. The broader picture provides a venue that highlights the impact technological interventions have on our ability to function in the present and conceive the future.

The influential social psychologist 2Kurt Lewin affirmed, “If you want to truly understand something, try to change it”. From a technology culturalist perspective, Lewin’s statement might read, ‘to change the future; you first must understand our relationship with technology in the present.’

The key to understanding the future-human-technology relationship is to have the tools to describe how dispositions and dependencies work to harmonise individual and professional practices.

The concept of habitus is one of the tools I use to investigate this social phenomenon. Habitus comprises socially ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that shape and unify individual and group behaviours. Narrowing the focus of habitus to examine the field of futures studies offers a vocabulary to describe the present impact of the structures that result from the intra-actions between the technological world and individual practitioners.

Habitus of the future then becomes a critical narrative through the analysis of social expectations, modes of speaking, acting, and patterns of professional behaviours of the group. In this sense, when analysed, habitus makes the building block of professional culture visible and opens a path to understanding how work practices can replicate the status quo.

Technology is not neutral, rewarding actions and intentions through dependencies created through design, form and function. But, in many senses, the relationship is much deeper, becoming the catalyst that fed human evolution and is the driving force that shapes the possible future of the planet.

The human-technology relationship is not static. Our needs in the present and social behaviours drive the creation of technology, and, in turn, technology like habitus creates dependencies that structure the behaviours and practices of humans. The simple grocery app I mentioned earlier becomes an excellent example of that dependency. If we turn our tools of futures studies on ourselves, it forces messy questions about the human-technology relationship and the trajectory to the future it creates.

To turn the lens of analysis onto the habitus of the future is to question oneself and challenge one’s ingrained tendencies and self-understanding of what constitutes good Futures Studies practices. The act of questioning our practices forces a realisation that habitus offers comfort and confidence in one’s abilities that mask the sameness of behaviours and beliefs. At a practitioner level, using the theory of habitus of the futures to describe our practices opens pathways of understanding to change something as durable as an acceptable future. In many cases, it may force us to discard the core principles that sustain that vision of the future.

At a personal level, the next time I use the grocery app, I need to continually reflect on that relationship to understand how the many layers of influence shape my future behaviours. The process of reflection opens pathways to new modes of understanding about whom the future serves and encourages alternate methods to explore a future where technology, humanity and the planet are entangled in a partnership to survive.