Expanding Imagined Affordance with Futuretypes: Challenging Algorithmic Power with Collective 2040 Imagination

Imagined affordance speaks to the hidden affordances not often seen of user expectations. What if we asked a group of working class, ethnically diverse range of people to re-imagine alternative forms of digital platforms for 2040, and other time horizons? What would they re-imagine? How might this approach expand our set of theoretical constructs, methodologies in design practice for digital social media (DSM)? Student stories and our analysis of them comprise a hybrid of evidence interweaving design thinking with textual analysis and future studies. Informed by an analysis of social and technology trends, students explore the citizen imaginary for peerproducing alternative visions of our DSM. An analysis of student visions uncovers future memes of civil rights; platforms as new governing states; and resistance to algorithmic capture. These stories become a collective selfie into re-imagined social worlds. In their wake, futuretypes, signals of platform alternatives, emerge--an expanded range of citizen emotions, feelings, and desires.