They Were Remembering

A Meditation on Black Imagination and Technology

Tending is my personal curriculum and a new series on Getting Acquainted. Each month I’ll share what I’m learning about technology, design, and culture, as a designer and curious creator.

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I find myself surrounded by technology on a pretty consistent basis. There is almost always a phone, tablet, or laptop nearby. I have gaming systems, additional monitors, not to mention the devices that support and maintain it all. This is nothing new for me. I have been the “tech” person in my family since I was a kid. Creativity, imagination, and a connected device somehow just went together. I wanted all the new tech from CD players and iPods to drawing pads, laptops and now tablets. Technology has always been a part of my process as a creative.

I view technology as a way to connect and create, so as technology progresses I have become more and more connected to it. I remember hogging the family desktop just because I was interested in the possibilities. The question was always, “What can I make today?” Between burning CDs, writing school papers, and customizing my MySpace page I lived at that desktop.

In preparation of this Tending post, I started thinking about technology’s consistent presence in the lives of the marginalized, especially Black people. My series topic, Technology as a Means for Movement, is intentionally broad because there is so much to discover. Movement, in this instance, can be physical migrations along with social and cultural shifts towards new ideas and experiences.

Initially, I sought out to learn more about how Black people, especially those who were enslaved, interacted with technology. From inventions for efficiency to survival and resistance. I found a paper titled “The Underground Railroad as Afrofuturism: Enslaved Blacks Who Imagined a Future and Used Technology to Reach The ‘Outer Spaces of Slavery’” by Dann J. Broyld that provides a new metaphor for something that I’ve learned about my whole life. I’ve never thought of the Underground Railroad experience outside of its literal definition. Broyld identifies similarities between the Underground Railroad and space travel. He includes the coded language, quilts, and astrology as systems and technologies that aided those searching for freedom.

The Underground Railroad paper really got me thinking. How does environment and circumstance shape one’s imagination and use of technology? Broyld says, “Just because (Harriet) Tubman was illiterate, even in freedom, that didn’t make her a fool: the theory of multiple intelligences reveals that she could read people, landscapes, and the night sky, which was the skill-sets she needed to undermine captivity.” Tubman’s ability to survive was her technology. Traditional knowledge systems were either incapable of providing her what she needed for her mission or they weren’t nuanced enough to capture her specific needs of obtaining freedom for herself and others. Because she imagined a future of freedom she cultivated a knowledge base that supported those desires and imaginations.

While reading about the Underground Railroad and other more tangible technologies I listened to Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, the first book in the Xenogenesis trilogy also known as Lilith’s Brood. Dawn is a post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi novel that takes place 250 years after a nuclear war wipes out most of humanity. Technology in this novel is relational, biological and tied to survival and transformation. The way the Oankali, the alien species responsible for saving humans in the book, “trade” their essence is such an interesting idea brought to life by Butler. This trade is so intuitive and ingrained in the culture of the species that as the reader it’s hard to ignore the extent of their abilities. While I am not particularly interested in biotechnology, I am intrigued by how relational the technology is in Dawn.

How does Butler even imagine such a thing? Technology as a part of one’s being. This futurist thinking goes so far as to remove any resemblance of current technology from even the reader’s visualization of the novel’s setting and characters. There are no wires, wi-fi, or circuit boards, only the alien species, their knowledge, and how they plan to use it. Whatever the Oankali’s goals, among themselves and for humans, they are already embedded into who they are. That’s when Harriet Tubman and the theory of multiple intelligences came back to me. Harriet Tubman and Octavia Butler were doing the same thing, using their imaginations to envision and build a technology that existing systems couldn’t support.

Then, I started thinking about how that connection reaches back to before Butler and even Tubman. This is an ancient practice. The Griots of West Africa came to mind. Their technology is relational, hereditary, and a significant part of their culture. Relational technology is not an emergent trend, but a traditional and ancient practice that is being sustained. Tubman and Butler weren’t just imagining, they were remembering. I stumbled upon these connections in search of something else. This is so relevant for the current times. From the 13th century Mali Empire to the Underground Railroad, our ability to imagine, build, and share technology is ancestral.

This research has completely shifted my way of thinking. I no longer think of technology as just these materials we carry in our hands and bags, it is so much more. Black people have consistently imagined and built these relational and hereditary technologies that have existed outside of the history typically recognized as technology.

As a designer, systems thinker, and curious creator I am always looking for connections and this one is just too beautiful. This kind of thinking as a part of my own personal technology has me feeling inspired to dig deeper and learn more.