Anti-consumerism is a sociopolitical ideology.^[1] It has been defined as "intentionally and meaningfully excluding or cutting goods from one's consumption routine or reusing once-acquired goods with the goal of avoiding consumption".^[2] The ideology is opposed to consumerism, being a social and economic order in which the aspirations of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those necessary for survival or traditional displays of status.^[3]

Anti-consumerism is concerned with the actions of individuals, as well as businesses where they act in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the perceived public good. Commonly, anti-consumerism is connected with concern for environmental protection, anti-globalization, and animal-rights. Post-consumerism, the prioritization of well-being over material prosperity, is a related ideology.^[4]

Anti-consumerism originated from criticism of consumption, arguably starting with Thorstein Veblen, who, in the book The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), suggested that consumerism dates from the cradle of civilization. The term consumerism also denotes economic policies associated with Keynesian economics, and the belief that the free choice of consumers should dictate the economic structure of a society (cf. producerism). Modern political anti-consumerism developed in the 2000's.^[2]

Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication)^[1][2] is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements^[3] to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of mass society.^[4]

Culture jamming employs techniques originally associated with Letterist International, and later Situationist International known as détournement. It uses the language and rhetoric of mainstream culture to subversively critique the social institutions that produce that culture. Tactics include editing company logos to critique the respective companies, products, or concepts they represent, or wearing fashion statements that criticize the current fashion trends by deliberately clashing with them.^[5] Culture jamming often entails using mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using the original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is also a form of subvertising.^[6][7]

Culture jamming is intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture, and can be considered a reaction against politically imposed social conformity. Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the Billboard Liberation Front and contemporary artists such as Ron English. Culture jamming may involve street parties and protests. While culture jamming usually focuses on subverting or critiquing political and advertising messages, some proponents focus on a different form which brings together artists, designers, scholars, and activists^[8] to create works that transcend the status quo rather than merely criticize it.^[9][10]

Tactical media is a term coined in 1996,^[1][2] to denote a form of media activism that privileges temporary interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets.

Tactical media projects are often a mix between art and activism, which explains why many of its roots can be traced to various art movements. It has been suggested by tactical media theorist Geert Lovink that "discourse plus art equals spectacle",^[3] reflecting its striking and memorable nature. Although there are no strict mediums through which it operates, tactical media can often have very high aesthetic value, adding to its "spectacle" and reinforcing some of its artistic roots.

In 1998, computer programmer and political activist Zack Exley purchased a domain and created a website titled GWbush.com.^[4] He invited the group RTMark (pronounced Art Mark) to build a copy of George W. Bush's official website, as they had done for some corporate websites.

Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that create "unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the algorithm.

Bias can emerge from many factors, including but not limited to the design of the algorithm or the unintended or unanticipated use or decisions relating to the way data is coded, collected, selected or used to train the algorithm. For example, algorithmic bias has been observed in search engine results and social media platforms. This bias can have impacts ranging from inadvertent privacy violations to reinforcing social biases of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. The study of algorithmic bias is most concerned with algorithms that reflect "systematic and unfair" discrimination.^[2] This bias has only recently been addressed in legal frameworks, such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (proposed 2018) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (proposed 2021, approved 2024).

Generative design is an iterative design process that involves a program that will generate a certain number of outputs that meet certain constraints, and a designer that will fine tune the feasible region by selecting specific output or changing input values, ranges and distribution. The designer doesn't need to be a human, it can be a test program in a testing environment or an artificial intelligence, for example a generative adversarial network. The designer learns to refine the program (usually involving algorithms) with each iteration as their design goals become better defined over time.^[1]

The output could be images, sounds, architectural models, animation, and much more. It is therefore a fast method of exploring design possibilities that is used in various design fields such as art, architecture, communication design, and product design.^[2]

The process combined with the power of digital computers that can explore a very large number of possible permutations of a solution enables designers to generate and test brand new options, beyond what a human alone could accomplish, to arrive at a most effective and optimized design. It mimics nature’s evolutionary approach to design through genetic variation and selection.^{[citation needed]}

A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication.^[1][2]

A fab lab is typically equipped with an array of flexible computer-controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make "almost anything".^[3] This includes technology-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production.

While fab labs have yet to compete with mass production and its associated economies of scale in fabricating widely distributed products, they have already shown the potential to empower individuals to create smart devices for themselves. These devices can be tailored to local or personal needs in ways that are not practical or economical using mass production.