Life and Tech at the Edge: Refiguring Possible Futures

A recording of the talk can be found here:

Event is hybrid. Participants may attend in person (T1, Computer Science Building, Aalto University) or online on Zoom.

Speaker: Sarah Pink
Professor of Design and Emerging Technologies
Director, Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University

Talk Abstract: 

How might automation become part of possible futures, shaped by everyday life? And how might people, other species and environment participate in the ways that automated systems and technologies emerge? In this talk I refocus the concept of emerging technologies away from seeing them as the drivers of societal change, towards asking how existing and future technologies might emerge as participants in sustainable futures. I will discuss design ethnographic futures and documentary filmmaking research undertaken in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, focusing for example on energy futures, future mobilities and air futures. I will argue for a new futures focused movement in social science, to join design, computer science and other disciplines in reshaping how futures are conceptualised and constituted in ways that build on but go beyond the conventional work of futurists, foresight, forecast and predictive data analytics, and I will explore the concept of the Edge and how it might help us to work towards futures in ways that surpass existing approaches.