Making Media Futures : Machine Visions and Technological Imaginations

Making Media Futures offers a multi-perspectival exploration of how imaginaries and knowledge of the future are constructed in and through various media.

The volume addresses the discursive dimensions of imaginaries and future visions as well as the impact of technological, material, and cultural conditions on the propagation of future discourses through media. Providing both theoretically detailed and empirically rich investigations, the contributions offer a wide range of cases spanning the century from the end of World War II until today and looking at examples from the Southern Hemisphere as well as the Global North. Bringing together scholars in media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and the history and philosophy of technology, the chapters discuss future visions and imaginations of quantum computing, the uncertainty and impact of AI-based text-to-image generation, the ideology behind 5G telecommunication standards, imaginaries of the Internet of Things, transmedia strategies in global and local climate protests, how broadcast radio was implicated in the evangelical mission imaginary, and how early visions of automating scholarly information management shaped standards and ideals of academia. The volume thus complements existing approaches and analytical frameworks for the study of imaginaries and futures discourses with perspectives that are sensitive to the plurality of media-specific conditions and technologies.

The book will interest students and scholars working in media studies, STS, history and philosophy as well as at the intersection of engineering, humanities and social sciences, on matters such as sustainability, ethics, and responsible innovation.

Phillip H. Roth is a Media Sociologist and Science Studies Scholar, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.

Ana María Guzmán Olmos is a Research Associate at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Bonn.

Alin Olteanu is Associate Professor of Semiotics, Multimodality and Media Technologies at Shanghai International Studies University, China, and Associate Researcher with Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Stefan Böschen is Professor for Society and Technology, Director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research, and spokesperson of the Human Technology Center at RWTH Aachen University, Germany.