Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere

In 1996, poet and activist Jayne Cortez titled her collection “Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere”—a phrase that captures something essential about this moment in human-computer interaction. We find ourselves perpetually in motion toward territories we can’t yet fully map, building tools and interfaces that extend what’s possible while staying grounded in the lived realities of the communities we serve.
Like the musicians Cortez celebrated—those who found resilience and transformation within harsh urban realities—today’s designers and technologists are working within constraints to imagine futures that don’t yet exist.

The changing same of interaction design 
What folklorist and labor advocate Archie Green understood about workers’ culture applies equally to our field: the most meaningful innovations emerge when we listen to how people actually engage with tools in their native habitats. Green reminded us that “the peasant fiddler is as worthy as the symphony violinist; the village cobbler more precious than a pair of boots.”
Our 2026 speakers will explore how designers today are tracing what hip-hop scholars call the “changing same”—the ways traditional human needs and behaviors persist even as the technological tools for meeting them evolve. From neighborhood co-working spaces where startups are born to international stages where AI-assisted creativity plays out, we’ll examine the networks that connect emerging practices to enduring human values.

Tools that enable, tools that foreclose
For those of us who spend our careers seeking to understand how systems guide individual behavior through the tools they produce (and how we, as innovators, users, and thinkers work on our systems using those same tools), the question is always, to echo Marshall McLuhan: what do these tools make possible, and what might they foreclose? As Green observed, we face “a time of instant and incessant mechanical talk” alongside urgent social challenges. The truth that human-centered design is valuable and that everyone deserves a voice in shaping our technological future, needs to be sung now more than ever.
This series will bring together voices from the margins and the mainstream, from traditional craft communities and cutting-edge labs. Our speakers will share what they’ve learned from watching people work in their own contexts, on their own terms, and how their relationships with communities have shaped their own practice.
Whether designing brain-computer interfaces or community resilience platforms, creating AI-assisted design tools or reimagining accessibility for emerging technologies, they’ll share how their work amplifies the projects and possibilities of the people they serve.
Green believed that cultural work “had the potential to help Senators and Representatives walk the high road.” We believe that thoughtful, collaborative design can help all of us walk that high road together. Somewhere in advance of nowhere, with community as our compass.

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