Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, Contested, Commodified
Astrid Mager, Christian Katzenbach
Abstract
Preprint (March 2020) forthcoming in New Media & Society:Mager, A. & Katzenbach, C. (2020). Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, Contested, Commodified. New Media & Society. Online First. doi: 10.1177/1461444820929321.Visions of the future are omnipresent in current debates about the digital transformation. This introductory article and the full special issue are concerned with the function, power, and performativity of future visions and how they relate to the making and governing of digital technology. Revisiting existing concepts, we particularly discuss and advance the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. In difference to ephemeral visions and partisan ideas, imaginaries are collectively held and institutionally stabilized. Nonetheless, we hold that they are multiple, contested and commodified rather than monolithic, linear visions of future trajectories enacted by state actors. Introducing and summarising the articles of the special issue, we conclude that imaginaries are increasingly dominated by technology companies who not only take over the imaginative power of shaping future society. They also partly absorb public institutions’ ability to govern these very futures with their rhetoric, technologies and business models.