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.

Essay

The Para-Real: A manifesto

Defining the space where digital realms and the physical world converge.

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?

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 /

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.

Stream

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

The limits to intellect A deeply held contemporary belief is that our digital-first world is of pure intellect, a dematerialised era in the process of abstracting itself away from harsh conditions, physical toil and material requirements. The blind optimism and political naivete of such technocratic tenets were already downright ridiculous...

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.

Stream

The Para-Real World Fair: The Logistics of the Largest Immersive Digital Arts Market

At the height of the worst economic crisis in nearly 50 years, an underground creative class was putting the finishing touches on one of the largest showcases of digital assets assembled to date.

Stream

Decentralised Networks of Care: The Para-Real as Mutual Aid

In an era of fractured exploitation and inequality, how can we take health and care back into our hands? The Hologram is social medicine for a cooperative species and is a bold vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network.

Stream

We Are Here Because of Those Who Are Not: Claiming the Para Real

Through reflection on their trailblazing work, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley details the shortfalls of today's digital identity systems and the missing voices from early digital culture.

Research Note

Making Demands in an Unaccountable Time

The development of frameworks for the common good are an essential tool for peaceful change. But as the material conditions of societies unravel, this tactic appears to be in political retreat, despite being louder and more widely deployed than ever.

Stream

“It’s Weird, Okay!? I Get It’s Weird!”: Embodying the Self in the Para-Real

The Para-Real is an ephemeral space that exists in the moment where digital systems and the real world collide. But what does that look like, and how does it affect us?