The Future Is Low-Tech

The Future Is Low-Tech is a talk, framework and growing body of work by tech anthropologist Jésabel DC and Rebekah Heppner. After debuting at SXSW, it was presented to over 3,000 designers at Figma Config, where the ideas began circulating far beyond the room.

The work looks primarily at the early 2000s: an era when technology was embedded in everyday life, but many products had not yet been reengineered around continuous engagement. Interfaces gave people clearer orientation, more visible feedback, stronger boundaries and a better sense of what was happening – and when they were done.

The Future Is Low-Tech asks what disappeared as technology became increasingly seamless, automatic and optimized for retention – and what might be worth bringing back. Not the devices themselves, but the principles underneath them: orientation, boundaries, agency, visible systems and intentional friction.

The question is not how to make technology less advanced. It is how to build technology that can be commercially successful without extracting more and more attention from the person using it.

The project is now expanding into a participatory format: throughout the talk, participants use a workbook to examine something they have already designed, built or use regularly, apply the framework to it, and identify where greater orientation, clearer boundaries, intentional friction or more agency could improve the experience.