Research Note

Self-(De)termination: The Fatal Ambiguity of Digital Identity

As you read this, the world has entered an era where no recorded voice or face can be trusted, driven by an incomplete reckoning of the electronic self that endangers individuals and societies alike. How can this be brought to an end?

Research Note

Identifying & Defining the Digital Self

What does it take to assemble a digital identity? What do different implementations of digital identity share? An abridged introduction to digital identity as part of a larger New Design Congress research project.

Essay

The Para-Real: A manifesto

Defining the space where digital realms and the physical world converge, and their powerful or transformative potential.

Report

Memory in Uncertainty: Web Preservation in the Polycrisis

A deep research report documenting the threats and opportunities for web preservation practice and tooling in a changing world.

New Design Congress
is an independent research group confronting the gap between what is said to be happening and what is actually happening in digitised societies.

Latest Activity /

Cable

Another world is possible

In CABLE 2024/02, we share the second digital identity research note, our appointment to the DC4EU, document our meeting with Furscience, and reflect on the new popularity of 90s cyberpunk anime as a systemic anxiety.

Research Note

You Best Start Believing in 90s Cyberpunk Dystopias, You're Living in One

A short reflection on the resurgence of 90s cyberpunk as an example of societal anxiety around digitisation.

Cable

Paperclips, Decomposition and Disillusionment

On collapse in three theatres: conflict, context and culture.

Essay

Too Late for the Earth, Too Soon for the Stars

On the Para-Real, virtual ecologies, climate grief, and the experiences of the middle children of history, born too late to explore the Earth and too soon to explore the stars.

Stream

IPFS and digital preservation in the multi-crisis present

A presentation on the 2022 ground-breaking research into how decentralised digital archiving, its technologies and institutions are out of step with the realities of rising instability and complexity of the 21st century.

Para-Real

The Para-Real, Tactical Media & the Failure of European Tech Criticism

At the Institute of Network Cultures, Cade lays bare the multi-decade failure of tech criticism and open source, and the hubris of European funders masquerading as operatives for change.

Research Note

Material Dematerial

A deeply held contemporary belief is that our digital-first world is of pure intellect. This blind optimism, already ridiculous 70 years ago, has become much more constricting in the new century.

Stream

NM56 The Para-Real w/ Cade Diehm of New Design Congress

A deep dive into the Para-Real with New Models' LILINTERNET and Carly Busta.

Research Note

Rare-Earth Ceasarism

We must reinvent the fundamentals upon which technology is built, lest they further enable reactionary power structures and their ringleaders.

Research Note

The Fragile Green Future

In early October, the New Design Congress team attended the European Forest Institute’s Scientific Seminar in Barcelona.

Policy

Toward Re-entanglement: a Charter for the City and the Earth

Co-authoring a charter for the healthy and regenerative re-connection of human activity with the Earth’s natural systems.

Research Note

The Coming Game Engine Inflection Point

Today's game engines sit at the centre of a key ideological and economic battleground and the two most popular game engine companies face uncertain futures. What is the alternative?