23/2 - Tech | Imaginations

Browsing 23/2 - Tech | Imaginations by Author "Schulz, Christian"

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  • Article
    From Mental Models to Algorithmic Imaginaries to Co-Constructive Mental Models
    Schulz, Christian (2023) , S. 66-76
    Not only in the course of technological advancements in the fields of machine learning and artificial neural networks in recent years, but also due to an increasingly widespread public debate regarding the regulation and transparency of socalled artificial intelligence, as recently demonstrated by the debates around generative AIs such as ChatGPT or Dall-E, there are increasing demands for the explainability of AI. But almost all work in the field of Explainable AI (XAI) is aimed solely at the perspective of researchers and developers and their intuitions of what constitutes a good explanation. This problematic perspective is also reflected in theoretical concepts important for the development of AI systems, such as the concept of mental models originating from cognitive science. As part of a coconstructive XAI research, and based on two central texts by Kenneth Craik and Donald Norman, this paper aims to argue for a reconceptualization of such models, widely received in computer science and human-computer interaction, using the media cultural studies concept of algorithmic imaginaries, and to point out future lines of research.
  • 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.