23/2 - Tech | Imaginations

Browsing 23/2 - Tech | Imaginations by Author "Schröter, Jens"

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  • Article
    An Early Future of the Internet
    Schröter, Jens (2023) , S. 80-92
    The essay on "early Internet futures" reconstructs an episode from the early history of what later would be called "the Internet". It shows which socio-technical imaginations in the early developments at the (D)ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office existed. Two of the most influential ideas will be focused: Firstly, J.C.R. Lickliders early concept of an "intergalactic network" which evolved into, secondly, into his (and Robert Taylor's) famous paper on the computer as a communication device. This shows how new technological developments are connected to socio-technical imaginaries from the very beginning.
  • Journal Issue
    Tech | Imaginations
    (2023)
    These imaginations reveal a lot of the political and ideological self-descriptions of societies, hence the (techno-)imaginary also functions as a kind of epistemic tool. Concepts of the imaginary therefore have experienced an increasing attention in cultural theory and the social sciences in recent years. In particular, work from political philosophy, but also approaches from science and technology studies (STS) or communication and media studies are worth mentioning here. The term "techno-imagination", coined by Vilém Flusser in the early 1990s, refers to the close interconnection of (digital) media and imaginations, whose coupling can not only be understood as a driver of future technology via fictional discourses (e.g. science fiction), but much more fundamentally also as a constitutive element of society and sociality itself, as Castoriadis has argued. In the first part of the issue several theoretical contributions add new aspects to the discussion of socio-technical imaginaries, while in the second part a workshop held in January 2022 at the CAIS in Bochum is documented, in which the case of the imaginaries of “Future Internets” was discussed.
  • Article
    Tech | Imaginations. Introduction
    Schulz, Chrisitan; Schröter, Jens (2023) , S. 7-14