Ageing technofutures in the making: Challenging regimes of anticipation in a datafied world?
Who or what is able to claim the future is an exercise of power and a matter of social justice (Urry 2016). The future is not simply happening but is made now – through regimes of anticipation that shape our expectations, imaginaries, visions and hypes, and define what is thinkable and desirable (Poli 2017, Markham 2021). Current anticipations circulating about a datafied future are often determined by powerful social actors such as states or technology companies. The anticipations for datafied futures of ageing populations are—in addition—often based on ageist assumptions about the lives of older populations. In this presentation, I explore how we might open up futures making to different people and what we might learn from their responses for the design of digital technologies, but also for our own research practice. Based on a series of speculative design and futures workshops with older adults, civil society organisations and civil servants in Germany and the UK, my analysis draws out how concepts of care and connectivity are imagined, what kinds of assumptions around older adults and technologies are being claimed and who or what stands to gain power and influence. I explore critical questions including tensions related to surveillance, autonomy, privacy, data ownership and inequalities.
The presentation is based on joint work with Prof Dr Helen Manchester (University of Bristol).
http://sociodigitalfutures.info/
References
Markham, A. (2021). The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms. New media & society, 23(2), 382-405.
Poli, R. (2017). Introduction to anticipation studies (Vol. 1). Springer.
Urry, J. (2016). What is the Future?. John Wiley & Sons.