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Paper short abstract

This paper proposes social technologies (SoTech) as a framework for reimagining futures beyond techno-solutionism. Drawing on critical futures studies and decolonial perspectives, it highlights community knowledge, collective agency, and pluriversal pathways for future making.

Paper long abstract

In contexts shaped by colonial legacies, technocentric and techno-solutionist imaginaries of progress remain dominant. These imaginaries promise innovation, automation, and efficiency, often tied to digital technologies and the interests of powerful corporate and geopolitical actors. Despite growing critiques, few frameworks examine alternative futures rooted in care, community knowledge and collective autonomy. In response, this interdisciplinary contribution draws on critical futures studies and design to propose a theoretical framework centred on the notion of “social technologies” (SoTech) – practices, relationships, and systems that integrate lived experiences and embrace the diverse epistemologies and methodologies of communities, particularly those emerging from the Global South. These approaches challenge extractive models of innovation by promoting alternative pathways for technological development based on community dreams, needs, and aspirations. SoTech opens space for culturally grounded, non-hierarchical models of creation, fostering ecosystems in which technology functions as means of solidarity, sustainability, and self-determination rather than as a tool of control or commodification. By examining the intersections of technology, power, and culture through a decolonial lens, this work advances a pluriversal perspective that questions dominant narratives of progress by exposing their underlying assumptions. The implications of this research are threefold: it expands STS studies by integrating decolonial perspectives, opens pathways for interdisciplinary inquiry into community-based solutions, and inspires futuring approaches that center relationality with community- and nature-driven processes. The paper concludes by arguing that integrating social technologies into futures practices can expand how societies imagine and enact alternative futures beyond Western-centric and technocratic paradigms.