Digital Culture & Society (Dcs): Vol. 11, Issue 2/2025 - Towards Popular Techno-Futures: A Global Policy Perspective

Technology has the power to colonize our visions of the future. But those visions are always socially situated, relational, and enmeshed in societal sense-making from the past to the present. It is this social embedding that has the power to bring future ideas into material existence. How do communities around the world rethink techno-futures through friction, re-appropriation, spirituality and, possibly, wholesome change? This issue brings together articles exploring popular techno-futures from international and interdisciplinary perspectives, including cultural and media studies, science and technology studies, and related disciplines. The contributors decenter the discussion on socio-technical futures and the role of popular culture, aesthetics and media in their (re)production.

Jascha Bareis is a political scientist whose passion lies at the crossroads of academic AI research, political communication and future studies. He holds a Dr. phil. from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and is a senior researcher at Universität Freiburg. He analyzes and comments on the politics of hype, AI, tech oligarchy, and the field of autonomous weapons. Other fields of expertise include technology assessment, trust and technology and democratic theory.