Technocultural Futurism Talk
I was fortunate enough to attend “Moving the future” which was a talk from the Technocultural Futurism Panel. Most of the discussion from the panel was based on the future and how we move towards it. There were many key topics that were discussed but a main theme was to re-analyze how we are viewing certain social trends that might help us lead to a brighter future.
Ricardo Dominguez, a professor from UCSD, talked about how he utilized art to push a different social message. He showed us artistic pieces that showcased dystopian futures of ruins. These ruins had popular companies associated with them to showcase how tech conglomerates can potentially influence the future negatively. He stated that he doesn’t suggest a perfect future but by creating a bleak image, he is helping poke holes at the current future by showcasing the social decay that is taking place in the world. He utilized electronic civil disobedience through his electronic disturbance theatre which ran many social activities. He was able to use poetry to anger people and he made artistic displays that showcased the bad things people were doing. He was accused of cyber terrorism when he was helping zapatistas but was let off because there were no malicious intentions. He held a subtle optimism about the future of the world but continues to depic a bleak future in order to hopefully make an impact.
Alexander Galloway, a professor at NYU, discussed very technical terms and how we come to reason about them. He showed how many different terms used to mean the exact same thing and we have slowly come up with an organized nomenclature for various concepts. He describes things being digital as things that are uniquely different. He showed us an example of a blip of electricity and how it has peaks and valleys. These peaks and valleys represent difference as a high is a 1 and a low is a 0. This is the basis for creating a numeric system using binary code. This digital concept of showcasing difference is able to help us reason about the world and properly distinguish concepts.
Nishant Shah, a professor at Leuphana University, gave an interesting talk about the term techies and data migration. He started off by discussing how distance is no longer the constraint or an issue as we have technologicaly advanced to the point where we can travel places far away. The big constraint that we now have created for ourselves is time itself. Due to the globalization of the world, we have come to measure things in costs of time. He talks of his IT experiences in India where only certain major tech hubs are places where people can be considered techies and outside of those places people aren’t considered techies. These techies happen to be socially mobile but still culturally inferior as they are viewed as nerds. He talks about how he had to change his name to Nick over the phone with customers because Nishant was too hard to pronounce. He also related his talk to a concept from a reading we touched on in class. He stated how cyborgs don’t need a unified stable identity and they can exist without an essentialist identity. He concluded with a piece about data migration and how anyone can conceal certain pieces of themselves due to the internet. People can reinvent their historic markers and make a life for themselves. We can basically filter and masquerade our relationships and images of ourselves.
Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism by Judy Wajcman had many similarities with some of the panelist’s information. The book is complimentary as it also talks about time being the measurement of how we view progress. The book talks about how time is seen as a way of finding out if something is being run efficiently. It also talks about how our system of recording time isn’t fully representative of all the characteristics of time. The book also mentions how technology might be an easy outlet to blame for the loss of time. This compliments the talks as it shows that people choose to spend their time on various things. As we proceed to the future, people can choose to focus on various aspects of their life. Hopefully, we won’t feel as restrained by this social construct of time measurements that we have created and can have a bright future.
