Digital
media, networked services, and aggregate data are beacons of the future. These
incessantly emerging tools and infrastructures project new ways of
communication bring unknown kinds of information and open up untrodden paths of
interaction. Yet digital technologies do not only forecast uncharted times or
predict what comes next. They are, it seems, both prognostic and progressive
media: they don’t await the times to come but realize the utopian as well as
dystopian visions which they have always already foreseen. At the same time,
all calculation of anticipations has to rely on past data that profoundly shape
our ability to manage expectations and minimize uncertainties.
In these
fast forward dynamics, the special issue of Convergence, The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies examines the
futuremaking capacity of networked services and aggregate data. We ask
contributions to consider: What role do digital technologies and data play in
the construction and circulation of future knowledge, e.g., through
forecasting, modelling, prediction, or prognosis? What expectations and
anticipatory visions such as promise or warning do accompany the creation and
diffusion of new media? Over the course of history, which imaginaries of social
and technological futures have been propelled by the media innovations at that
time? How do new media technologies and discourses contribute to the production
and reproduction of social time that is future oriented? How do they impact on
the ability to exert control over the future?
