Title: And Now, Post-growth HCI1

Date: July 14, 2025

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

Location (virtual): https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96638484195 

Vishal Sharma

Ph.D. Candidate, Human-Centered Computing

School of Interactive Computing

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee:

Dr. Neha Kumar (advisor) – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ellen Zegura – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Rebecca E. Grinter – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Shaowen Bardzell – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Bonnie Nardi – Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine 

Abstract:

“The IT industry has linked itself strongly to this [growth] ethos, with some particular manifestations being the constant need for novelty, the accompanying throw-away culture around consumer electronics, and the glorification of disruption for its own sake. Yet growth that requires evermore material resources cannot continue forever in a finite world.” — Borning, Friedman, and Logler2

Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) notably relies on and significantly contributes to economic growth. Advances in user interaction, such as higher screen resolutions and smoother refresh rates, often require increasingly powerful hardware, consuming more energy and resources. User experience, a core focus of HCI, plays a pivotal role in the market success and widespread adoption of digital technologies, fueling economic expansion. However, as noted by many scientists, activists, and policymakers, unbridled economic growth has caused unsustainable development, leading to environmental devastation, economic inequalities, social inequities, and other painful realities we confront today. Considering the global crises in the making, HCI can no longer ignore its engagement with growth and continue doing business as usual. Post-growth philosophy offers an alternative to growth, prioritizing improving the quality of life over relentless material accumulation. It suggests radical shifts from production to redistribution, acquisition to sharing, and industrial expansion to localized development where fulfillment is based on values including solidarity, cooperation, care, sufficiency, and equity. This dissertation examines the opportunities of integrating post-growth thinking in the field of HCI, and by extension, the discipline of computing, to guide technology design that promotes planetary care and well-being for all.

I begin with a scoping review of HCI scholarship on addressing sustainability predicaments and development problems — the two major consequences of growth. I complemented the review with interviews with researchers in HCI to critically examine how sustainability and development are framed, what problems are prioritized, and what epistemologies and institutions are privileged. Through this inquiry, I traced the discourses addressing the consequences of economic growth and gesturing to the limitations of growth in HCI, prefiguring both the need and relevance of orienting the field toward post-growth. To further investigate the politics of nurturing post-growth values in a world governed by growth imperatives, I conduct three case studies examining digital technology use within different capitalist formations: platform capitalism, welfare capitalism, and state capitalism. Drawing on qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory research methods, these cases discuss implications for responsibly appropriating, designing, or resisting digital technologies to alter our political economy from within. Synthesizing insights from across these empirical and conceptual investigations, I offer a series of critical provocations and pragmatic recommendations to help HCI professionals interrogate the assumed inevitability, neutrality, and desirability of growth in and through their work. Finally, I reflect on the challenges of pursuing this critical inquiry in HCI, respond to critiques and misunderstandings of post-growth, share endeavors to nurture a Post-growth HCI collective, and lay out directions for future investigations.

This dissertation contributes to emerging climate-conscious, decolonial, and post-capitalist discourses in HCI. It aims to make visible the often invisible economic assumptions embedded in technology design and use. Rather than offering a finished blueprint, it represents an ongoing effort to support HCI’s pursuit of realizing socio-ecologically just futures3 — futures grounded in planetary care and interdependence rather than politics of division and extraction. These futures are not predetermined; they remain open, contested, and collectively negotiable for us to imagine and enact them.

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1. This dissertation's title takes inspiration from the opening of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: Atha-Yoganusasanam (And now, yoga). In this foundational text of yoga, Patanjali suggests that the path of yoga, i.e., the realization of oneness with all, becomes truly accessible only after one has tasted success, power, or pleasure and come to recognize their impermanence, that they do not yield the lasting fulfillment once imagined. Or perhaps, after life’s inevitable hardships provoke a moment of reckoning: "Now what?" "And now, yoga." In a similar spirit, this dissertation begins with a recognition that HCI must also confront its moment of reckoning. For decades, HCI has operated within and often reinforced paradigms of growth, efficiency, and novelty. While these values have advanced usability, they have also fueled extractive design, ecological harm, and social injustice. The familiar promises of progress and innovation no longer suffice. It is time to look beyond the temptations of growth and to grapple with the political economy that underpins them. Now what? And now, Post-growth HCI.

2. Borning, A., Friedman, B., & Logler, N. (2020). The 'invisible' materiality of information technology. Communications of the ACM, 63(6), 57-64.

3. I use “futures" to represent a plurality of possibilities built on diverse cosmologies, epistemologies, and ontologies coexisting in harmony.

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vishāl sharma
phd candidate, human-centered computing
school of interactive computing, college of computing
georgia institute of technology
https://vishalsharma.phd/