Decision-Making and Worldbuilding
How can the design of algorithmic interactions be successfully grounded in a sense of the world, and in the plurality of behaviours and social constructs?
The technique of ‘worldbuilding’ can be used a means of examining the context in which automated decision-making (ADM) is to be used, whether this is a close representation of selected aspects of the present world or a variant of it with significant and specifically chosen differences to the present, and that may represent a desirable future state. Worldbuilding is a term originating in the media arts where a specific ‘world’ is designed through a multidisciplinary collaboration, with the aim of containing and helping to shape a particular narrative – allowing it to function across multiple dimensions: social, political, economic, philosophical, artistic, environmental, scientific and technological.
The seven divisions of worldbuilding. Based on Leah Zaidi, Building Brave New Worlds: Science Fiction and Transition Design, 2017, and the work of Alex McDowell.
Decision-making, and the technological tools and processes used to enact decision-making, can be seen as having a role in creating a particular kind of world that actualises the starting out points or sustaining logics that were initially encoded into these tools. Stories and their ‘storyworlds’ are thus a valuable means of evaluating the actual or potential impact of ADM in a given situation. Worldbuilding is a creative and analytical technique, or collection of techniques, that can be used to identify and understand how different stakeholders interact with each other, and how these relationships are impacted by the various tasks they carry out in the world. It is an approach that enables the designers of algorithmic interactions to not only understand what types of ADM are necessary, by reading backwards (‘backcasting’) from a desired future or storyworld, but also to read forwards from the present and model and explore a range of possible ADM or algorithmic design futures that emerge from a present world that is different from ours in only a few respects.
A schematic view of how worldbuilding activity is organised, across time and space, from the individual in the centre, to the outermost and highest level of abstraction, that of civilisation. Based on Leah Zaidi, Building Brave New Worlds: Science Fiction and Transition Design, 2017, and the work of Alex McDowell.
Worldbuilding often starts with a ‘What if?’ question – “imagine a world where...” This leads to a cycle of new questions, each suggesting a new chain of events. By continually asking further questions, the world thickens and takes on new dimensions. When creating a narrative of any kind, it will be enhanced by the presence of not just a backstory for the characters within it, but also a world that contains the story. For example, where a character lives, works, how they move between places, where they have lunch, what they eat, who makes it for them, do they speak to each other, what kind of thing do they talk about, who do they vote for, what is the philosophical, cultural or religious background? It is this local and global setting and the informative details of their world that help to develop a sense of immersion inside a story. ‘Storyworlding’ is an alternative term for the activity of building worlds that hold stories (used by Brett Leonard as reported by Bailenson): “the stories are not told but lived, and the creators build worlds from which the stories emerge.” People Powered Algorithms has been exploring the potential of storyworlding, or worldbuilding, to develop narratives that question the way we interact with algorithms and experiment with ways of bringing a sense of agency into this relationship with technology.
Collaborative worldbuilding is a multidisciplinary exercise in sharing expertise and raising questions about the assumptions built into a storyworld. According to Alex McDowell, “stories question it and push it forward across different scales – the human in the neighborhood, the neighborhood in the city, the city in the world – all inform each other, and the world evolves” (McDowell, Storytelling Shapes the Future). In order to bring agency into our algorithmic interactions and our relationship with technology, PPA argues that it is necessary to construct a view of the world as it might be, interrogating the present by considering familiar-looking but alternative configurations of current world-elements as well as those that do not exist yet. As McDowell says:
“worldbuilding is about collaborating across art and science. The next generation I see emerging… are taking on the role of art-scientists. They are turning storytelling into a new form, one that can powerfully change the world.”
