Our paper focuses on implicit promises of – or hopes invested in – artificial intelligence, digitalization, and robotics as solutions to wicked problems in society. We discuss how envisioning omnipotent technologies intertwine with everyday practices and organizational infrastructures.
Drawing on recent philosophical discussions of temporality and the domain of the ‘not yet but soon’, we argue that anticipation has become a common state when it comes to the regimes of technology politics, shaping innovation and technological investments in multiple sectors of society. Inspired by Sheila Jasanoff’s notion of “sociotechnical imaginary”, we use the term “imaginary technologies” to refer to devices and applications that do not exist yet but are expected – indeed, hoped for – to be deployed soon.
Imaginary technologies are not just harmless visions on policy papers but have many concrete effects on people’s activities. The rhetoric of futurity and anticipation dominating discourses on technologies, information systems tend to be launched to users as incomplete, with the hope of developing and completing the beta versions with the help of users’ feedback. The ‘semi-finished’ modes of digital systems not only make life and work stressful and cumbersome but can also cause even life-threatening situations.
Jaana Parviainen & Seija Ridell: “’Not yet but soon’: Misplaced hope invested in imaginary technologies as solutions to wicked problems”. Digital Geographies of Hope Conference, Tampere University, 21 Sep 2023