I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of “well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine”.
I mean there’s gotta be another way. Examples?
Check out Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds
Try searching for authors who describe their work as “Speculative fiction” - that’s the way most of them don’t admit to writing low-brow schlock like sci-fi.
Also near future sci-fi tends to be a bit lighter on the “magical machine” plot tropes. Climate fiction might be worth looking into too, most of the near future books exploring possible global warming consequences aren’t all hopped up on magical technological advances.
Edit: also check out various books described as literary speculative fiction. Authors who want the intellectual cred of being a literary writer tend to land in the speculative fiction genre more often than not.
Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic piece of sci-fi that spends most of its time in future medievalism but it kind of cheats in that it’s both post-apocalypse and society rebuilds its tech base by the end.
Other than that it sounds like you want future fiction without all that pesky science.
If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re looking for fiction that focuses on framing more of cultural and societal shifts than technological changes?
What you’re looking for is difficult to find in the framing of Science Fiction because its very framing invokes technological advancement - technology is the application of science, and machinery is the result of technological innovation. Science fiction is, at its core, about how discoveries in science may change the world.
Nonetheless, you may want to look into the sub-genre referred to as “social science fiction”. Although it’s not going to be devoid of advanced technology, the focus will be more on the social and societal impacts thereof, than the machinery itself.
What you’re looking for is difficult to find in the framing of Science Fiction because its very framing invokes technological advancement - technology is the application of science, and machinery is the result of technological innovation.
Machinery’s certainly a result of technological innovation, but not the only result. Different materials, even altogether different forms of organisms are also results of technological innovation. OP’s left it rather open, so it may be that they also mean these different applications of science.
What are some examples of things you don’t like? That’s really necessary to give examples. Science fiction usually has technology in some form or another. Sometimes it’s the focus of the story (eg The Last Question or Permutation City). Sometimes it’s a tool for the story (eg The Expanse or Neuromancer_). Other times it’s set dressing like magic in fantasy (eg Dune or Book of the New Sun). Outside of hard SF and beyond Golden Age SF you run into more “tech as device or background.”
