Miracle Machine in the Making: Soulful Speculation with Kabbalah

Abstract

What does it mean to design for a miracle—an ineffable phenomenon that might just exist in the world, but might also transcend it? Focusing on an esoteric strand of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah, we draw from speculative interview activities with 11 Jewish creative interlocutors to describe a process of designing a “miracle machine.” Interweaving foundational Kabbalah literature with design inquiry, we find that lived experiences of miracles span life-saving events, effortful acts of love, and ineffable forms of knowledge. We also learn that people envision miracle machines as natural, cosmic, and sensory systems with transcendent capacities. These insights rework a normative focus on the human mind (cognition) and body (embodiment) by embracing the all-too-often overlooked soul as a design resource. We end with a reflection on what soulful speculation entails and the purview that it expands, reorienting our understanding of what machines are altogether.