The Oracle is a card deck used in workshops as a tool for speculative futures and technologies embedded with transfeminist values

Throughout history, human beings have used a wide variety of divination procedures – such as tarot decks – as technologies to understand the present and reshape our destinies.

The Oracle is a space that provides tools for enabling collective brainstorming on alternative imaginaries surrounding technologies. There is substantial evidence that most of the algorithms that command our digital interactions are biased, particularly towards reproducing what black feminist scholar patricia hill collins calls the matrix of domination (capitalism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and settler colonialism). In other words, tech is currently designed in a way it helps to maintain the status quo of social inequality and the norms of consumerist, misogynist, racist, ableist, gender binarial and heteropatriarchal society.

What would the future look like if we could hack this trend? The wisdom of the oracle, embedded with transfeminist values, will help us foresee a future where technologies are designed by people who are too often excluded from or targeted by technology in today’s world.

​This project is developed in partnership with Coding Rights and MIT co-design studio, inspired by a speculative feminist writing workshop from cooptecniques, methodologies co-designed by coding rights at ietf to bring human rights considerations into standards and protocols, and by contemporary design ideation practices. Situation cards were based on the Feminist Principles of the Internet.

You can be a part of collectively imagining better futures. Send us ideas that emerged from playing with the cards at home or in a workshop – or even prototype your creation! You can also collaborate by donating to help us further develop this project.

Check the platform here.