Finalist: Jackie Liu
New York University - Interactive Telecommunications Program, 2020

Website: https://jackieis.online/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-liu-b33027101/

Jackie’s OS is a speculatively-reimagined operating system designed for (and with) my childhood self. A web-based experience simulating the computing experience I wish I could’ve had, Jackie’s OS nostalgically longs for a timeline that never was - asking how things could’ve played out differently, both in how I grew up, and in the world of technology. Designed from a lens of nostalgia, reconciliation, and healing, Jackie’s OS is a critical exploration of my relationship with technology.

First making connections between my lived experiences and dominant, harmful systems of ideologies in computing culture, I have imagined an artifact designed with alternate socio-technical values that I wish I could have seen as a child.

Jackie’s OS is also my starting point to ask what it means for *others* to reimagine technologies for themselves, through a lens of healing. To collectively envision equitable futures, perhaps we must also provide tools to reflect on our pasts. In future work, I plan to design workshops and other educational activities around this prompt. Believing that better technological futures require transforming mainstream tech culture, I hope that facilitating low-barrier, personally-grounded methods for speculative practice can carve more space for critical, historical and imaginative thinking in the tech world.