Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future by Pink, Sarah;

Short description:

Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future invites us to think forward from our present moment of planetary, public and everyday crisis, through the prism of emerging technologies. It calls for a new ethical, responsible and equitable path towards possible futures.

Long description:

Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future invites us to think forward from our present moment of planetary, public and everyday crisis, through the prism of emerging technologies.

It calls for a new ethical, responsible and equitable path towards possible futures, curated through in-depth engagement with and across experiential, environmental and technological possibilities. It tackles three of the most significant challenges for contemporary society by asking: how emerging technologies are implicated in the sites of everyday lives; what place emerging technologies have in an evolving world in crisis; and how we might better imagine and shape ethical, equitable and responsible futures. The book interweaves three narratives, each of which advances three sets of concerns for our societal futures: ‘Emergence’, which addresses futures, trust and hope; ‘Worlds’, which addresses data, air and energy; and ‘Technologies’, which addresses the future of mobilities, homes and work.

Not simply a critical study of emerging technologies, this book is also an approach to thinking and practice in times of global crisis that plays out a mode of future-focused scholarship and action for the first half of the twenty-first century.

'What will our future look like? We often think of flying cars, holograms, vacations on a geostationary space station, robots preparing and serving our breakfast, kitchens with flashing buttons reminiscent of a spaceship's cockpit...
These stereotypical images foreground technologies and hide the humans. This book instead focuses on people and
their communities to present the key issues that will shape our future. Most importantly, it shows the value of social
sciences in designing new technologies for home, mobility, and work. Sarah Pink underscores the need for a new movement that unites anthropologists and other experts in interdisciplinary teams who dare to step to the edge of the future, look at the horizon, and explain how our stories might unfold on our planet and beyond, and how we might live well with emerging technologies.'

Dan Podjed, PhD, Research Fellow and Associate Professor, Institute for Slovenian Ethnology, Slovenia

'In this fascinating book, Sarah Pink draws on 20 years of pioneering empirical research and concept-making to examine how ethical, equitable and responsible futures can be produced in a world of rapidly evolving technologies that are designed to serve particular interests. Playful and provocative, Emerging Technologies unsettles how we think about and approach the future, challenging the reader to imagine and create new horizons.'

Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, Ireland

Table of Contents:

1. Emerging Technologies 2. Futures 3. Trust 4. Hope 5. Data 6. Air 7. Energy 8. Home 9. Work 10. Mobilities 11. Life at the Edge