Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.15
G. Endfield
This chapter draws on empirical research from an AHRC-funded project entitled Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation: Extreme Weather in the UK, Past, Present and Future, to illustrate the complex historical geographies and politics of ‘weather wising’ and different forms of weather prognostications. Endfield considers the different ways in which particular historical subjects imagined and articulated knowledge about weather futures and examines the different temporalities implicated within such practices: from anxieties over immediate weather futures expressed in daily agricultural diaries to longer-term annual forecasting associated with annual almanacs. Uncovering a range of tools and technologies involved in weather forecasting—including both human and non-human methods of forecasting, phenological observations, and prognostications associated with animal behaviours—Endfield explores questions of credibility, authority, and status in terms of knowing and articulating understanding of future weather.
{"title":"Future Weather","authors":"G. Endfield","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.15","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter draws on empirical research from an AHRC-funded project entitled Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation: Extreme Weather in the UK, Past, Present and Future, to illustrate the complex historical geographies and politics of ‘weather wising’ and different forms of weather prognostications. Endfield considers the different ways in which particular historical subjects imagined and articulated knowledge about weather futures and examines the different temporalities implicated within such practices: from anxieties over immediate weather futures expressed in daily agricultural diaries to longer-term annual forecasting associated with annual almanacs. Uncovering a range of tools and technologies involved in weather forecasting—including both human and non-human methods of forecasting, phenological observations, and prognostications associated with animal behaviours—Endfield explores questions of credibility, authority, and status in terms of knowing and articulating understanding of future weather.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85505153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.9
P. Jedlowski, V. Pellegrino
This chapter adopts a sociological approach to conceptualize futurity as a horizon of expectations. It provides a practical application of sociological theory—future present and present future, horizon of expectations, futurization and defuturization—to contemporary discourse. It observes that hegemonic discourses emphasize ‘defuturization’—decreasing the openness of people’s present futures—and explores the problems this poses for the self-expression of younger generations. As well as exploring the impact of futurity/defuturization upon the development of processual research methods, the chapter reflects upon ways in which sociology may intervene in communicative practices and foster the capacity of individuals to work through their own horizons of expectations and open up the present future.
{"title":"Future as a Horizon of Expectations","authors":"P. Jedlowski, V. Pellegrino","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.9","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter adopts a sociological approach to conceptualize futurity as a horizon of expectations. It provides a practical application of sociological theory—future present and present future, horizon of expectations, futurization and defuturization—to contemporary discourse. It observes that hegemonic discourses emphasize ‘defuturization’—decreasing the openness of people’s present futures—and explores the problems this poses for the self-expression of younger generations. As well as exploring the impact of futurity/defuturization upon the development of processual research methods, the chapter reflects upon ways in which sociology may intervene in communicative practices and foster the capacity of individuals to work through their own horizons of expectations and open up the present future.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81547755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.4135/9781446247501.n1583
J. Gidley
This chapter examines and critiques the changing socio-political implications that accompany the shift from the concept of a singular future to the pluralization of futures. From the 1960s onwards, the emergence of multiple futures enabled larger sections of society to envision and create ‘alternative futures’ to the status quo. In this chapter Gidley brings to bear the democratizing effect of multiple possible futures upon the evolution of theory and practice across academic disciplines. In particular, she illuminates how the theory and practice of futures studies has paralleled developments in the evolution of science and the social sciences, to incorporate critical futures, cultural futures, participatory futures, and integral futures. She concludes with reflections about how the field of futures studies will continue to evolve so that it can diversely represent the future conceptualizations and actions of scholars, practitioners, and researchers globally.
{"title":"Futures Studies","authors":"J. Gidley","doi":"10.4135/9781446247501.n1583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446247501.n1583","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines and critiques the changing socio-political implications that accompany the shift from the concept of a singular future to the pluralization of futures. From the 1960s onwards, the emergence of multiple futures enabled larger sections of society to envision and create ‘alternative futures’ to the status quo. In this chapter Gidley brings to bear the democratizing effect of multiple possible futures upon the evolution of theory and practice across academic disciplines. In particular, she illuminates how the theory and practice of futures studies has paralleled developments in the evolution of science and the social sciences, to incorporate critical futures, cultural futures, participatory futures, and integral futures. She concludes with reflections about how the field of futures studies will continue to evolve so that it can diversely represent the future conceptualizations and actions of scholars, practitioners, and researchers globally.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83216750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.26
David Benqué
This chapter employs critical design practice to examine a specific form in the history of prediction—almanacs—and ultimately interrogates the nature of current forms of algorithmic prediction. The chapter revolves around the concept of monism—the idea that the same universal laws govern both natural and social worlds—and focuses on the role monism plays in predictions within almanac publications. It draws on empirical evidence from the Monistic Almanac—an ongoing practice-based research project which revisits the almanac as a site for experiments across the blurry boundary between data science and astrology—in order to conceptualize almanacs as precursors to the current regime of algorithmic prediction. The chapter experiments with computational astrologies and reflects upon the diagrammatic operations of data science. Benqué argues that divination opens up opportunities for critical design practice to question the authority of current notions of predictions.
{"title":"Making an Almanac","authors":"David Benqué","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.26","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter employs critical design practice to examine a specific form in the history of prediction—almanacs—and ultimately interrogates the nature of current forms of algorithmic prediction. The chapter revolves around the concept of monism—the idea that the same universal laws govern both natural and social worlds—and focuses on the role monism plays in predictions within almanac publications. It draws on empirical evidence from the Monistic Almanac—an ongoing practice-based research project which revisits the almanac as a site for experiments across the blurry boundary between data science and astrology—in order to conceptualize almanacs as precursors to the current regime of algorithmic prediction. The chapter experiments with computational astrologies and reflects upon the diagrammatic operations of data science. Benqué argues that divination opens up opportunities for critical design practice to question the authority of current notions of predictions.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81296187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.22
Julia Nordblad
This chapter examines how the relationship between present and future generations has been articulated and envisaged in four discussions on climate change and global environmental crises from the late 1980s onward. Nordblad exemplifies how the very concept of future generations harbours disparate and sometimes conflicting views over the extent future generations can be known, and the political, economic, and ethical complexities embedded in constructions of the relationship between present and future generations. She explores climate economics with its presumptions about substitutable and transgenerational values; Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, which describes future generations as a call for moral regeneration; the Brundtland Report, which emphasizes solidarity in the allocation of common resources; and the academic discussion on the non-identity problem, posing our relation to future generations as a moral and political enigma.
{"title":"Concepts of Future Generations","authors":"Julia Nordblad","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.22","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how the relationship between present and future generations has been articulated and envisaged in four discussions on climate change and global environmental crises from the late 1980s onward. Nordblad exemplifies how the very concept of future generations harbours disparate and sometimes conflicting views over the extent future generations can be known, and the political, economic, and ethical complexities embedded in constructions of the relationship between present and future generations. She explores climate economics with its presumptions about substitutable and transgenerational values; Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, which describes future generations as a call for moral regeneration; the Brundtland Report, which emphasizes solidarity in the allocation of common resources; and the academic discussion on the non-identity problem, posing our relation to future generations as a moral and political enigma.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"833 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84201820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.6
Laura Wittman
This chapter examines the development and changing artistic and socio-political implications of a particular temporal modality—‘the present as history’—within a variety of Futurist texts. It draws on the work of Frederic Jameson to argue that the Italian Futurists sought to radically disrupt a particular representation of the present in their calls to destroy the past and attempts to endow futurity with the urgency of fully embodied agency. Wittman argues that the Futurists reject a specific, historicist, bourgeois understanding of history and seek to inaugurate a new sense of time, an explosive ‘now’. Comparing early and later texts by Marinetti and other Futurists, and identifying their debts to anarchist thought, the chapter demonstrates that their strategy of breaking into the present can only counter totalitarian appropriations if it remains anchored in embodied practices.
{"title":"Italian Futurism and the Explosive ‘Now’","authors":"Laura Wittman","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.6","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the development and changing artistic and socio-political implications of a particular temporal modality—‘the present as history’—within a variety of Futurist texts. It draws on the work of Frederic Jameson to argue that the Italian Futurists sought to radically disrupt a particular representation of the present in their calls to destroy the past and attempts to endow futurity with the urgency of fully embodied agency. Wittman argues that the Futurists reject a specific, historicist, bourgeois understanding of history and seek to inaugurate a new sense of time, an explosive ‘now’. Comparing early and later texts by Marinetti and other Futurists, and identifying their debts to anarchist thought, the chapter demonstrates that their strategy of breaking into the present can only counter totalitarian appropriations if it remains anchored in embodied practices.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88249919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198806820.013.29
C. Garsten, Adrienne Sörbom
This chapter critiques the anticipatory practices of contemporary organizations, such as think tanks and management consultancies, which offer methods and forecasts about possible and desirable futures. These organizations, the chapter argues, contribute to creating a sense of urgency with respect to the future, capitalizing on the perceived need among decision makers to grasp contemporary events, and provide tools and content by which the future can be designed. It argues that future forecast scenarios assist in the creation of a particular type of authority: one geared to the contemporary global situation and to an increasingly complex system of global governance. The chapter interrogates this particular type of authority to argue it is not singular and dominant, but instead comprises the varying interests of many different actors and is underscored by rational process, which offers the possibility of a wider shared understanding
{"title":"Future by Design","authors":"C. Garsten, Adrienne Sörbom","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198806820.013.29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198806820.013.29","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter critiques the anticipatory practices of contemporary organizations, such as think tanks and management consultancies, which offer methods and forecasts about possible and desirable futures. These organizations, the chapter argues, contribute to creating a sense of urgency with respect to the future, capitalizing on the perceived need among decision makers to grasp contemporary events, and provide tools and content by which the future can be designed. It argues that future forecast scenarios assist in the creation of a particular type of authority: one geared to the contemporary global situation and to an increasingly complex system of global governance. The chapter interrogates this particular type of authority to argue it is not singular and dominant, but instead comprises the varying interests of many different actors and is underscored by rational process, which offers the possibility of a wider shared understanding","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80036619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.19
A. Sandberg
This essay considers the notion of the ‘exoself’ as a vision of the extended human in the future. Sandberg reconsiders the advancements in technology which allow us to modify bodies and outsource cognition and examines the profound ways in which they change ways we relate to the world: from exoself components, like watches and smartphones which are now experienced as everyday parts of life, to rarer, more exotic visions of futurity such as prosthetics, spacesuits, and exoskeletons. The chapter considers other mediums of the exoself vision such as art, fiction, and demonstrations. Sandberg maintains that while radically enhanced posthumans are too abstract to visualize, exoselves provide a ready-made image of a transhuman that is concrete.
{"title":"Post-Human Design","authors":"A. Sandberg","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.19","url":null,"abstract":"This essay considers the notion of the ‘exoself’ as a vision of the extended human in the future. Sandberg reconsiders the advancements in technology which allow us to modify bodies and outsource cognition and examines the profound ways in which they change ways we relate to the world: from exoself components, like watches and smartphones which are now experienced as everyday parts of life, to rarer, more exotic visions of futurity such as prosthetics, spacesuits, and exoskeletons. The chapter considers other mediums of the exoself vision such as art, fiction, and demonstrations. Sandberg maintains that while radically enhanced posthumans are too abstract to visualize, exoselves provide a ready-made image of a transhuman that is concrete.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90388957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.23
Liliana Doganova
This chapter analyses the political, environmental, and human implications of acts of discounting. Discounting is an economic instrument used by companies and policymakers to make the future commensurate with the present. This chapter argues that discounting is a political technology: it embeds debatable assumptions about value and the future, and it produces tangible effects in an expanding range of empirical domains. Drawing on examples from the history of discounting (capital budgeting, forest management, environmental regulation, and pharmaceutical research and development), the chapter discusses four of its political qualities. First, discounting equips collective decisions about the allocation of resources; second, it shapes the characteristics of future entities; third, it is an instrument for governing behaviour that guides decision-making in a myriad of places and instances; and fourth, it problematizes the very separation of the present and the future.
{"title":"Discounting the Future","authors":"Liliana Doganova","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.23","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyses the political, environmental, and human implications of acts of discounting. Discounting is an economic instrument used by companies and policymakers to make the future commensurate with the present. This chapter argues that discounting is a political technology: it embeds debatable assumptions about value and the future, and it produces tangible effects in an expanding range of empirical domains. Drawing on examples from the history of discounting (capital budgeting, forest management, environmental regulation, and pharmaceutical research and development), the chapter discusses four of its political qualities. First, discounting equips collective decisions about the allocation of resources; second, it shapes the characteristics of future entities; third, it is an instrument for governing behaviour that guides decision-making in a myriad of places and instances; and fourth, it problematizes the very separation of the present and the future.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"123 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91206854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.11
J. Ward
This chapter explores science fiction, computer simulation, and Thatcherism in the long-range and business planning departments of the British Post Office’s Telecommunications Division and its successor, British Telecom, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government transferred telecommunications from public monopoly, run by the Post Office, to liberalized corporation, run by British Telecom. Ward charts the negotiations between simulated and literary utopias and dystopias, analysing managerial representations of information technology’s transformative power. Managers understood computer simulations as interactive futures, bringing techno-moral changes of predictive markets and emancipatory electronics from the future to the present. They dismissed the dystopias of H. G. Wells and George Orwell as outdated, in contrast to the computer’s predictive power, but in doing so, these managers tacitly accepted the ‘hypersurveillant’ power of computer simulation, where customers could be simulated and surveilled ahead of time. Ward thus highlights digital utopianism’s contradictory values of deregulation, personal freedom, and technological planning.
{"title":"Nineteen Eighty-Four in the British Telephone System","authors":"J. Ward","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.11","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores science fiction, computer simulation, and Thatcherism in the long-range and business planning departments of the British Post Office’s Telecommunications Division and its successor, British Telecom, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government transferred telecommunications from public monopoly, run by the Post Office, to liberalized corporation, run by British Telecom. Ward charts the negotiations between simulated and literary utopias and dystopias, analysing managerial representations of information technology’s transformative power. Managers understood computer simulations as interactive futures, bringing techno-moral changes of predictive markets and emancipatory electronics from the future to the present. They dismissed the dystopias of H. G. Wells and George Orwell as outdated, in contrast to the computer’s predictive power, but in doing so, these managers tacitly accepted the ‘hypersurveillant’ power of computer simulation, where customers could be simulated and surveilled ahead of time. Ward thus highlights digital utopianism’s contradictory values of deregulation, personal freedom, and technological planning.","PeriodicalId":54222,"journal":{"name":"Nano Futures","volume":"375 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72505576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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