Representing ‘Things to Come’: Feeling the Visions of Future Technologies

Samuel Kinsley
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Samuel Kinsley: Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England, Pervasive Media Studio, Leadworks, Anchor Square, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5DB, England

Environment and Planning A, 2010, vol. 42, issue 11, 2771-2790

Abstract: Visions of the future pervade the development of computing technologies. This paper addresses the production of embodied anticipation inherent to video representations of technological futures. The focus of inquiry is videos produced by HP Labs and Microsoft to illustrate future worlds of technological experience. The principal concern is that these videos, as visual content and artefacts, are performative in their evocation of bodily attunement to prospective technology use. In the first section I analyse the visually oriented logics that situate the videos. In the second section I investigate the evocation of prospective interaction with technologies by drawing upon and developing conceptualisations of affect and the technological unconscious. I argue there is a politics of anticipation of technical futures, understood as the multiple ways in which technological futurity is encoded and, in particular, the relation this has to embodied understandings of the world.

Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:42:y:2010:i:11:p:2771-2790

DOI: 10.1068/a42371

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