First Threads
In 1986, feminist sci-fi writer Ursula LeGuin introduced a “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” [1]– a meditation on the stories we tell about science and technology, and how they could be told otherwise. LeGuin [1986] drew on Elizabeth Fisher’s [1979] “The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution" in her book Women's Creation [2], telling the story of evolution from a feminist perspective. LeGuin’s [1986] text became fundamental for thinking about sci-fi and other forms of writing, and inspired revisions of methods and historiographies in multiple other domains, including media studies, architecture, technology, (cultural) criticism, and others. With this contribution we offer such a perspective for computing as a discipline in crisis.
This contribution-artefact is a digitally threaded carrier bag containing elements of critique of the current modes of computing as well as trajectories germane to a story of computing otherwise. Our critique entails accounts of computing as discipline, crisis of theory – particularly in HCI as a field that is predominantly concerned with sociotechnical connections, the master/killer story of computing, and its educational trajectories. The threads we weave towards an alternative approach to computing unravel the metaphor of the carrier bag by asking: what different conceptual understanding and praxis of computing might open up from a carrier bag perspective? These threads include conceptual focus points (materiality, embodiment, the mundane and vernacular in computing), methodological and pedagogical re-orientations rooted in ethics of care, value of the commons, and lateral stories (such as semiotic approaches to computing, computing as Gestaltungswissenschaft, and examples of storytellers that interrogate computing from intersectional perspectives).
We argue that the Carrier Bag Theory of Computing is a figuration, a lens, and a metaphor that helps investigate and invest in underexplored paths and hidden figures to construct a parallel plane for computing that intersects with the mainstream canon but also diverges from it: a minor trajectory of computing that is grounded in material concerns and the vernacular, as opposed to grand inventions and applications at scale. This figuration offers a perspective for computing that softens the hard edges of the discipline and shifts its model practice from engineering towards composition with diverse knowledges.
In a performative gesture, we constructed this artefact as a wiki-like document, hyperlinked across itself and with sources outside of its own fabric. All the threads have been constructed through collaborative writing, interweaving perspectives from Sociology, Media Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, Gender and Diversity Studies, and Informatics, with a focus on human-computer interaction and design. Similarly, accounting for our geographical situatedness, we introduce references from the Germanophone semiotic and materialist Informatics traditions, which in itself constitutes one of the minor trajectories and often forgotten parallel histories of computing.
To account for the decennial perspective, we suggest a long-term vision of the submission: building a community-wide wiki that offers methodological, pedagogical and conceptual resources towards a carrier bag approach to computing and forms a network with other critical, particularly feminist intersectional projects (such as e.g. Full Stack Feminism). The concrete engagement format will be defined in case of possible acceptance in collaboration with the critique chairs.
Prologue - Aarhus 2025 Call
“Today, ‘crisis’ characterises seemingly perilous moments linked to the climate, economic and social inequality, democracy, relations among societies and, more broadly, a flourishing life for all critters, human and otherwise. And at the same time computing seems omnipresent, providing glimmers of hope but at the same time acting as a source of the troubles.”
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from aarhus2025.org, accessed last on 18th of February 2025
Second Prologue
The first authors - the initiators of this artefact are situated in a computer science department at a university in Germany. We work across different disciplines but under an umbrella of participatory design. To maintain our different perspectives, we wrote this text in six different voices that sometimes diverged, sometimes converged. Wherever possible, we marked these voices in different colours not so much to maintain authorship, but rather to trouble it by showing its multiplicitous splintering and coalescing across our writing.
[Individual positionality statements temporarily removed in accordance with anonymisation requirements.]
Welcome to the Carrier Bag Theory of Computing
The Wiki for the Minor Trajectories in Computing
We suggested an interlinked/interwoven net of thoughts as a potential submission format to Aarhus 2025, as it counteracts the linear (and thereby heroic) telling of a story of computing and allows to showcase the different branches that ideas and stories can take and have taken. Additionally, it showcases the historically most relevant form of a carrier of collective thought in computing: the hyperlinked internet [33]
There are different possibilities to make your way through this collection of thoughts and ideas. Below you can find some of the topic areas that are discussed in relation to computing being in crisis, and the contribution of the carrier bag theory.
On all pages, you can return to the problem diagnosis and the suggested Carrier Bag Approach of Computing, as well as this landing page.