What if games could help us imagine and shape different futures?
OCAD University is leading a three-day playshop to explore exactly that. And with a name like Jailbreaking Canada, it invites participants to question assumptions and unlock new possibilities for more equitable and sustainable tech futures.
Presented by the OCAD U research labs Super Ordinary Lab and game:play Lab, in conjunction with authors and futurists Cory Doctorow and OCAD U alum Madeline Ashby, the three-day event will feature Doctorow's public talk: (Digital) Elbows Up: How Canada Can Become a Nation of Jailbreakers, Reclaim Our Digital Sovereignty, Win the Trade-War, and Disenshittify Our Technology on Nov. 27 (7 to 8:30 p.m. at 100 McCaul St.).
Led by Dr. Emma Westecott, associate professor and chair of the Digital Futures program, and Suzanne Stein, associate professor and director of the Super Ordinary Lab, the Jailbreaking Canada playshop draws on their combined strengths in futures thinking and playful design to envision equitable and sustainable technological futures for all.
Community members interested in joining Jailbreaking Canada can apply through the online form, which remains open until Thursday, Nov. 20 at noon.
“We live in a world in which tech monopolies control our access to each other by locking us into increasingly egregious closed systems that monetize our attention for the gain of their shareholders and not to our mutual benefit,” says Dr. Westecott. “This is not the way that technology has always been - the old days of the internet emphasized open standards, interoperability, and wide access.”
Drawing inspiration from Doctorow’s activist work on breaking tech monopolies, strengthening global regulation and interoperability, and advancing tech-workers’ rights, Dr. Westecott and Stein have designed a set of playful activities to guide participants as they develop, refine, and prototype new concepts throughout the event.
The playshop begins on Nov. 26 with a lecture by Ashby to set the stage, followed by team-led ideation games to generate concepts and form project teams. Over the next two days, teams will prototype their selected ideas, receiving feedback from the facilitators, Doctorow, and Ashby at key stages. Doctorow’s public lecture on Nov. 27 will provide additional inspiration to inform the final prototypes, which will be presented on Nov. 28.
“Futures thinking is taught across OCAD U and is an established set of approaches that help us all imagine how we might anticipate the future,” adds Dr. Westecott. “Without imagining a future, it is hard to build one, so our event centres on a series of playful design exercises to extrapolate forward to design artefacts, experiences, and interventions that may help us move towards a more inclusive future for all.”
