This is the second of three in a series of 3 rejoinders commissioned from the Authors of Issue 20 Networked Utopias and Speculative Futures ahead of a launch and workshop based on the issue, the forthcoming ‘Trolls CFP’, and the future of publishing. This rejoinder is written by Andrew White of University of Nottingham Ningbo…
This is the first of three in a series of rejoinders commissioned from the Authors of FC-20 Networked Utopias and Speculative Futures ahead of a launch and workshop based on the issue, the forthcoming ‘Trolls CFP’, and the future of publishing. This rejoinder is written by Heather Davis of Concordia University. Heather co-authored of FCJ-143 Ouvert/Open: Common…
Edited By Jason Wilson, Christian McCrea and Glen Fuller A great deal of thinking about the Internet and politics is still structured by a desire for deliberative democracy. From 1993 – when Howard Rheingold enunciated one of the Internet’s key founding myths – the virtual community – scholars have sought and found communities characterised by…
Ulises A. Mejias SUNY Oswego After some initial fascination with the concept, there now appears to be more skepticism than support for the idea that tools like Twitter and Facebook are single-handedly responsible for igniting the Arab Spring movements. As we witness the immense effort and human cost that has gone into uprisings in Algeria,…
Rowan Wilken Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne Introduction This article explores the complicated historical relationship between ideology and utopia in European thought, and what this relationship can teach us when faced with the exuberant promises that characterise much new media discourse. Discussion is divided into two parts. The first develops a detailed account of how…
Andrew White University of Nottingham Ningbo China There is no such thing as utopia. But without utopianism we cannot begin to address some of the global political problems that the first decade of this millennium has magnified. This is manifest in a widespread perception of increasing environmental degradation, a seemingly permanent state of emergency in…
Marina Levina University of Memphis In 2010 General Electric launched an initiative called Healthymagination. On its website, GE declared that Healthymagination is about becoming healthier, ‘through the sharing of imaginative ideas and proven solutions’. Looking to explore/exploit the growing field of health information technologies, GE declared that through sharing health information in the networked social…
Nathalie Casemajor Loustau and Heather Davis McGill University and Concordia University Introduction The geography of the city functions as a mechanism for distributed power. Power manifests in the physicality of everyday urban life, through planning, government jurisprudence and resident use. The train tracks in the Canadian city of Montréal are one site where this dialectic…
Carl DiSalvo Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Introduction Speculative design is a practice of creating imaginative projections of alternate presents and possible futures using design representations and objects. At times critical and at other times whimsical, it is a distinctive, if loose, grouping of projects. Using the term broadly, speculative design covers a range of…
Dan Frodsham University of Exeter There still exist – and there may exist in the future – spaces for play, spaces for enjoyment, architectures of wisdom or pleasure. In and by means of space the work may shine through the product, use value may gain the upper hand over exchange value: appropriation, turning the world…