ProlepSys = Prolepsis Systems
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Prolepsis is the key guiding principle of ProlepSys Lab, shaping how we engage with emergent social technical systems by drawing on future possibilities to inform present actions. Prolepis is “the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished” (Cole, 2023, p. 235).
A familiar example of prolepsis can be found in fiction, where future events are foreshadowed by things like storms in the background, broken mirrors, prophecies, dreams, flashbacks or flash-forwards, or da-dum, da-dum, da-dum…musical scores.
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Prolepsis is to human development what foreshadowing is to fiction. It’s the cultural driver of human development, coupled with the mediation which human-created symbolic systems enable (Vygotsky). Consider how parents and caregivers think ahead for their children and narrate about their future, planning things out so they can grow up ready for what's next. Parents use their knowledge from their cultural past to shape a child's environment, embodying an imagined future by constantly anticipating their needs, behaviors, and potentials. They guide their children’s growth and development, they prepare their children for their world on the horizon, helping them develop values, knowledge, and skills that will serve them throughout life.
That’s what ProlepSys is all about: using our imagined yet possible future to shape how we engage with socio technical systems today.
where we worry about “lock-ins” and believe that more than one technological future is possible (Lanier)
ProlepSys
where technology is allowed to join in the Human-Centered Loop
​where children are partners in our infrastructuring activities
[where] learning is innovative and safe
where technology brings people closer together
[where] technology isn't the solution to every problem
where we carefully consider what tasks should be delegated (Latour) to technologies and what should remain distinctly human.
[where] “use is design” (Pea)
[where we go] “…back and forward between the possible and the actual…"(Bruner)