SoLiXG:Imaginary

SoLiXG Key concepts: Index | All | Help

Imaginary

• Imaginary v. 2.0

Technological change is always accompanied by stories, ideas and visions of the future. After departing the laboratories of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Internet became imbued with ideas of individual self-determination, libertarian anti-statism and a countercultural ethos (Fred Turner) rejecting the "Governments of the industrial world" (J.P. Barlow). Today, digital infrastructures promise security, resilience and sovereignty and are pictured as technological fixes for crises ranging from global warming to demographic change. Sometimes hyperbolic, such ideas animate and shape technological development and become entrenched as its results are implemented. Digital infrastructures have a "poetics" - semiotics and aesthetics (Brian Larkin), affects and ideas attached to them (Lisa Parks). These elements are part of digital infrastructures just as much as the material connections made from glass fibre and copper cable are.

In the Study of Science and Technology, such collective ideas and social vision that shape material technology are described as "socio-technical imaginaries" (Jasanoff & Kim). Imaginaries are harbored not only by regulatory bodies and state actors, but also by corporate actors or by civil society groups. Different collectives might perform different imaginaries, competing for dominant visions of what a technology does, who it is for and what values it embodies (Mager & Katzenbach). Imaginaries are therefore intertwined with political and economic interests, and relations of power and oppression. Think of how the anti-statist ethos in technology development has enabled the unregulated ascend of tech monopolies to global power, or how processes of automation and digital taylorization have increased control of labour processes and weakened workers' bargaining positions. "Imaginaries" can serve to gloss over or embellish the more mundane operations of power and capital.

Seen in this light, the imaginary concerns the relationship between the appearance of things and social relationships, and their material operations. It is thus not surprising that the "Imaginary" is also a core term in the study and critique of ideology. Departing from the psychoanalytical understanding of the imaginary as a basal process of mis-perceptoin, Louis Althusser defines ideology as the "'representation' of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence". Philosophers such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Paul Ricoeur or Claude Lefort have debated and disagreed about the relationship between the dissimulating and emancipatory qualities of the imaginary, the ways in which they provide a resource for challenging as well as for obscuring relations of power and exploitation. In analyzing "XG" infrastructures, we want to revisit and reconsider this tradition of thinking about the imaginary.

• Imaginary v 1.0

Technological change, such as the proclaimed digital transformation is seemingly always accompanied with stories or imaginaries about the future. How to make sense of these imaginaries and how they are conceptualised theoretically varies broadly. What these conceptualisations have in common, however, is that the imaginaries matter – for the present and the future. Popular proponents of the concept, respectively, their advancement of the “sociotechnical imaginary” are Jasanoff and Kim , which they understand as:

“collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (p. 4)

While the previous focus was on state actors, the extension allows for sensemaking of corporate imaginaries as well as counter-imaginaries . The openness of the broadened understanding, allows us to operationalize it further for our research at SoLiXG. These imaginaries can be constructed by technology development and connected to infrastructure imaginaries, when promoted by corporations building XG infrastructure. They can be put forward and perpetuated by policy stakeholders or shaping policy. However, there can also be emancipatory instances, e.g. building counter-imaginaries to hegemonic imaginaries also tied to power.

---

Alex: (29.8.24): I have reworked the Keyword but am not fully happy, and I have kept Annas version since the changes are so substantial. I tried to work in some examples, and for various reasons I tried to give more space to definitions or reference beyond Jasanoff and Kim. I have put in the "Ideology" turn, which I would like to keep, but the ending is very weak.

Anna: This is my first draft for the keyword Imaginary. I drew mostly from Mager and Katzenbach (2021) but also from the Working Paper from Alex. I know it is too much focused on Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Jasanoff & Kim right now. So feedback is very much welcomed!