Digital Witchcraft: Magical Thinking for Digital Design
summary
Claims that magical thinking is a design methodology get tested with fieldwork and prototypes rather than metaphors. Comparative ethnography finds concrete overlaps between hackers and shamans (rituals, mask use, trance‑like coding), Cuba fieldwork documents street Wi‑Fi networks in Havana engineered to bypass embargo constraints, an Android teaches Buddhism and is treated as a valid interlocutor by monks, and speculative prototypes (a migration‑focused boat concept plus a short film) get built and shown in galleries.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:23Background and Career
- 2:22The Digital Witchcraft Project
- 3:36Magic as Technology's Mother
- 6:13Hackers and Shamans
- 9:14Connectivity in Cuba
- 10:52Android Spirituality in Japan
- 11:55Arabic Folklore and Tech
- 13:22Speculative Design Prototypes
- 20:25Reimagining the Internet
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