Showing papers on "Dystopia published in 2022"

The Carceral Automaton: Digital Prisons and Technologies of Detention

Abstract: Prisons are on the cusp of a technological transformation as twenty-first-century digital connectivity in ‘free’ society permeates prison design and offender management. This article will begin with an overview of the digital technologies in ‘smart’ prisons. Two limbs are emerging: technologies that are embedded into the infrastructure of prisons to benefit authorities through heightened security, and technologies that may benefit prisoners by providing them with positive opportunities to access justice, maintain family relationships and engage in programs aimed at optimising their post-release circumstances and rehabilitation. However, recent case law paints a picture of prison life devoid of human contact during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing isolation and heightened anxiety. Through the lens of emergent conceptions of digital criminology, this article will analyse Australian case law to examine whether the automated, smart or digital prison offers a utopian vision of safe detention and rehabilitation or a dehumanised and punitive dystopia.

The Idea of Development in Africa: A History

Abstract: In The Idea of Development in Africa, Corrie Decker and Elisabeth McMahon examine development theory and practice over time, asserting that development “arose directly out of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism” (275). This text not only situates development in a historical setting but also explains key theories and connects the past to the present. Ultimately, Decker and McMahon conclude, “Despite the rhetoric on saving, helping, and equalizing, the development industry has done more to maintain global and local inequalities than it has to dismantle them” (16). Thus they make a compelling argument for rethinking established development paradigms by centering the futures and visions that Africans have for themselves.This work builds on a body of literature that has focused on how the construction of both development expertise and the objects of development have been political projects. Unlike previous scholarship, Decker and McMahon emphasize the origins of what they call “the development episteme itself,” shifting the standard narrative away from the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions and instead locating those origins in Enlightenment philosophies and the “civilizing mission.” In doing so, the authors argue that the “logic of difference and differentiation is built into the foundations of development,” and they then show how these ideas have shaped policy and practice up to the present (4–5).Relying largely on published scholarly works, published primary sources, online reports, and news media, along with limited oral histories and archival research, The Idea of Development is broken down into three parts. Part 1 examines the origins of the development episteme in the nineteenth-century world, emphasizing its imperialist setting, knowledge production, and racist ideologies, and closing with a chapter calling for decolonizing development. Part 2 explores how these ideas have shaped colonial and postcolonial development practice in Africa, with chapters on the importance of science, African contestations of development, economic development theories, and nongovernmental organizations. Part 3 focuses on some specific development “problems” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Here Decker and McMahon take residential spaces, education, health care, and manufacturing as their case studies.This work is at its strongest when centering African ideas, explaining difficult concepts, and tying the past to the present. The section on African communities' vernacular notions of progress illustrates, for example, how various societies “have generated their own diverse meanings of development” (5). The authors' explanation of knowledge production—noting that “its collection and construction by individuals was deeply subjective”—will be especially helpful for undergraduate readers (42). Perhaps most important, this work emphasizes that the racist underpinnings of early colonial development have endured in more recent development discourse that distinguishes between the “developed” West and the “developing” countries of Africa.Such contributions will be of interest to students and scholars alike. The focus on the genesis and earlier history of development, as well as the accessibility of the writing, make this an especially appealing book for teaching. Readers of Agricultural History will also find much of relevance in this volume. With sidebars on the Amani Research Institute, the Tanganyikan groundnut scheme, usufruct land tenure, Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, and pastoralism, there is ample space devoted to agricultural development. Various chapters, particularly in part 3, delve into additional questions related to agriculture, such as land resettlement, agricultural commodities, and irrigation schemes.The book not only provides rich insights into an impressive number of development topics, but it also covers the history of development in Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. Writing such a sweeping history is no easy task and necessarily entails making some omissions. This monograph does tend to emphasize the more distant past as well as the present, with the mid- to late twentieth century—particularly, the rise of neoliberalism and the implementation of structural adjustment programs—garnering less attention.Even so, this is an important work and will be essential teaching material for courses on the history of development. The authors strike a delicate balance between writing a history that pushes scholarly understanding forward, while also making this work accessible to students. The epilogue persuasively argues, “Development is not the powerful edifice it claims to be; it is a holdover of colonialism that is quickly losing relevance in our current world” (288). The Idea of Development in Africa is a smart and engaging study, which will be of interest to scholars and students of African history, development history, agricultural history, and labor history.

Algorithmic Reason

Abstract: Are algorithms ruling the world today? Is artificial intelligence making life-and-death decisions? Are social media companies able to manipulate elections? As we are confronted with public and academic anxieties about unprecedented changes, this book offers a different analytical prism to investigate these transformations as more mundane and fraught. Aradau and Blanke develop conceptual and methodological tools to understand how algorithmic operations shape the government of self and other. While disperse and messy, these operations are held together by an ascendant algorithmic reason. Through a global perspective on algorithmic operations, the book helps us understand how algorithmic reason redraws boundaries and reconfigures differences. The book explores the emergence of algorithmic reason through rationalities, materializations, and interventions. It traces how algorithmic rationalities of decomposition, recomposition, and partitioning are materialized in the construction of dangerous others, the power of platforms, and the production of economic value. The book shows how political interventions to make algorithms governable encounter friction, refusal, and resistance. The theoretical perspective on algorithmic reason is developed through qualitative and digital methods to investigate scenes and controversies that range from mass surveillance and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK to predictive policing in the US, and from the use of facial recognition in China and drone targeting in Pakistan to the regulation of hate speech in Germany. Algorithmic Reason offers an alternative to dystopia and despair through a transdisciplinary approach made possible by the authors’ backgrounds, which span the humanities, social sciences, and computer sciences.

When Virtuality Surpasses Reality: Possible Futures of Ubiquitous XR

Abstract: Is our future heading towards enhancing the human experience with computer-mediated reality? Immersive technology is unique, existing between the world and our senses, letting users traverse wholly virtual environments (i.e. distant places or fantasy worlds) or augment the real world with virtual objects, and any mix of virtuality-reality in-between. This paper explores the philosophical and social ramifications of ubiquitous immersive technology, envisioning a relatively near-future where mainstream technology has been replaced and a dystopian far-future wherein individuals may choose to abandon reality in favour of virtual worlds. Creating design fictions as thought experiments, we explore the open challenges of possible futures in XR, researching tomorrow’s technologies today.

Imagining a post-antibiotic era: a cultural analysis of crisis and antibiotic resistance

Abstract: The study presented in this article is about the role played by imagination when national and international organisations convey the idea of a dystopian crisis involved in the real transition to a postantibiotic era. The present is an era that can be defined as a time when no new antibiotics are discovered or developed, and existing antibiotics simultaneously become less effective since bacteria develop resistance against the active substances. Today, antibiotic resistance is an international fact; thousands of people die every year in Europe and the USA as a result of bacteria that have become resistant. Then, imagination can conjure up a different and a much more dystopian future. This article stems from a public debate concerning the global increase of antibiotic resistance; and will examine how the concept of fantasy and imagination is central in picturing such a future crisis in society. The article’s empirical basis mainly consists of reports from global and Swedish organisations, dating from the 1990s and onwards. These fantasies show that our society has a strong urge to always try to understand and explain present time and to identify how ‘our’ era relates to the past as well as the future. The concept of crisis plays an important role in these fantasies, it is key to use it when thinking about change. The analysis builds on texts and illustrations from global organisations like the WHO and also national authorities in Sweden that aim to convey the science behind the challenge. The aim is to develop a theoretical and empirical understanding, from the perspective of cultural analysis, of how fantasy and crisis are linked when the future is conceived.

Forecasting interprofessional education and collaborative practice: towards a dystopian or utopian future?

Abstract: There are professionals, some known as futurists, who are paid to predict the future even though it is a notoriously difficult and unreliable thing to do. Wittgenstein is quoted as saying: “I won’t say ‘See you tomorrow’ because that would be like predicting the future, and I’m pretty sure I can’t do that” (Drury, 1984). Yet here we are in this article considering the future of interprofessional education (IPE), which both of us have attempted in this journal before (Langlois et al., 2020; Thistlethwaite, 2008). There is a tendency when considering the future to state what we would like to happen (aspirational and typically utopian) rather than what is more likely to happen taking into account current trends and the lessons of history (speculative and more often than not dystopian). Predictions vary depending on their provenance. For example, higher-income and Western-facing jurisdictions’ future-gazing frequently assumes that personalized or precision medicine, based on genomic screening and targeted treatments, is the future of healthcare and will be widely available (see for example, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, 2017). The impact of the social determinants of health that affect lowerand middleincome jurisdictions, and the economically disadvantaged in their own higher-income countries, tends to be neglected.

Data Analytics and Cloud-Based Platform for Internet of Things Applications in Smart Cities

Abstract: With the advancement of technology urban city dynamics are changing rapidly. Cities are becoming smart faster with different initiatives taken by the government along with private organizations. These technical upgradations are changing the life of the citizens at a fast pace. The needs of the citizens are the primary driving forces behind the city's and society's overall technological growth. In this research work, made an attempt to simulate all the possibilities with their analysis to bring our Indian smart cities to new technologies like IoT, WoT and Bigdata while also getting as a result a high level of scalability and flexibility by incorporating them in our smart city model with reliable embedded devices.

No Other Planet

Abstract: Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemporary debates around the Anthropocene; as well as to develop a political theory of radical transformation that avoids not only debilitating fatalism but also wishful thinking. This book juxtaposes theoretical interventions, from Bruno Latour to the members of the Dark Mountain collective, with fantasy and science fiction texts by N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, debating viable futures for a world that will look and feel very different from the one we live in right now.

Deepfake Nightmares, Synthetic Dreams: A Review of Dystopian and Utopian Discourses Around Deepfakes, and Why the Collapse of Reality May Not Be Imminent—Yet

Abstract: ABSTRACT:Since appearing in 2017, deepfakes have inspired a predominantly negative public response. Substantial research has been devoted to the danger that deepfake technology—as a deceptive audiovisual device—poses to democratic and evidentiary systems; and to the development of AI and legislative mechanisms to control it. However, the diverse and multiplying ways in which deepfake practitioners, researchers, and consumers are now viewing, framing, and using deepfake technology—and its positive applications in commerce, science, education, and the arts—deserve closer attention. This article assesses the plausibility of dystopian and utopian narratives around deepfakes to offer a more nuanced understanding of deepfake technology as a novel synthetic media tool: one which, like any screen-based illusion, can be harnessed for malign and benign purposes, and whose cultural and political power rests—for now at least—not with the machines that create it, but the human beings who use it.

Living in dystopia: Fractured identities and COVID-19

Abstract: In literary terms, we seem to be inhabiting a post-apocalyptic dystopia. A virus has run rampant across the world. Millions have died. Breathing has become difficult. People often have to wear masks to venture outside. Social gatherings are tightly policed. Our movements are tracked by the state. Meanwhile on social media people share selfies that promote state edicts, and reveal that far from being individualistic, social media exhibit “the group character of online culture” (Wansbrough 2021, 43). But misinformation and antivaccination lies also continue to proliferate online. Poorer nations tend to suffer the most as social fractures have become more visible than ever, thus pointing to a continuing neglect of health infrastructure in the Global South. Travel between nations has become nearly impossible, as nation states increasingly adopt fortress mentalities. Reactionary mobs clash with police. What can literature tell us about how this might resonate within postcolonial and decolonial contexts? How might we understand COVID-19 textually? While linking the pandemic crisis to the precarious Global South, Wilson, Prakash Dwivedi, and GámezFernández (2020) point to the therapeutic role of literature, and the “interventions” it can offer in “the forms of healing, resilience, and resistance represented through literature and art, which can imagine new futures and utopian worlds” (442). Although the COVID-19 pandemic has been framed through apocalyptic cinema, television (Nulman 2021; O’Mahony, Merchant, and Order 2021), and literature (Kaminski 2021; Herrero and Royo-Grasa 2021), its significance to postcolonialism is still being considered. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact and relationship to postcolonialism has been examined from a number of angles. Kwok (2020), for example, notes the way that colonial prejudices come to the fore, with former President Donald Trump’s characterization of COVID-19 as the “China virus”. Kwok is also keen to accentuate the legacies of colonialism with respect to other pandemic responses, including how immigration is handled amid the crisis. Likewise, Dwivedi (2020) argues that “to see this pandemic through a racial lens alone would be naïve, as it obfuscates the larger issues that have unfolded from the present crisis” (n.p.). Other analyses have focused on healthcare in relation to social media (Roy, Das, and Deshbandhu 2021) in a postcolonial context, while still others have sought to accentuate the role of postcolonial histories in responses to COVID-19 (Anderson et al. 2021), and vaccine distribution. The very term “vaccine imperialism” helps designate the continued legacies of imperialism in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Choose your own future: the sociotechnical imaginaries of virtual reality

Abstract: Virtual Reality has been heralded variously as the next steppingstone in technological innovation, a utopian ‘empathy-machine’ and a dystopian addictive technology. Using critical discourse analysis, we explore the types of narratives underlying this global attention and the ideological values, beliefs and interests therein. We contribute to the critical marketing literature by demonstrating how an examination of sociotechnical imaginaries reveals the ways in which the market mediates the reception of new technologies and the kinds of worlds these technologies bring about. Through an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ narrative, we bring these imaginaries into relief and invite readers to navigate alternative potential futures for VR. The data underpinning the narrative highlight the role of marketers and marketing in shaping our social, political and economic reality.

Dealing with dystopia: Freire’s Gnostic cycle and media ecology in a post-pandemic world

Abstract: In recent years, commentators have characterized the disruptive social occurrences and technological changes as dystopic. As we attempt to address and deal with this melee of events with their associated emotions and reactions, this article mines media ecology literature, the work of renowned Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, and other sources to propose some answers and choices for the path forward. More specifically, this article defines dystopia and describes Freire’s Gnostic cycle, which is comprised of active research, learning and teaching as a possible antidote. It highlights media ecology articles complementary to Freire that may be further leveraged. Finally, the article focuses on Freire’s Gnostic cycle in offering suggestions regarding future media ecology work to contribute in building a post pandemic world.

The problem of film comedy in the twenty-first century

Abstract: ABSTRACT Radical comedy liberates spectators from their compulsive attachments to volatile objects. In that spirit, modernist film theorists placed their hopes in the raucous, world-shattering laughter elicited by violent slapstick comedies to explode the crises of the present and their foothold in habituated perception. But what remains of laughter’s revolutionary modernist project in the twenty-first century? In this article, I rethink the concept of cine-genre to pursue tropes of uncanny, uncontrollable laughter that have proliferated across all genres of contemporary cinema. Conventional genre provides an aesthetic contract of solid expectations (brokered between audiences, media-makers, and producers) to sustain the hope for what’s possible through the repetition of what’s imaginable. But in times of escalating crisis, genre itself falls apart, spawning perverse hybrid mutations. Cinema, I argue, in its renewed capacity for dialectical ‘hybridity’ can give rise to radical forms of embodied perception and affective experience that slam the brakes on the nightmare of postmodern carnival and reveal new ways forward toward a less dystopian future.

Insistent Hope as Anti-Anti-Utopian Politics in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy

Abstract: abstract:This article discusses the politics of hope in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. Drawing on scholarship in utopian studies, science fiction studies, and Africana studies, it discusses the ways in which Jemisin uses two intentional community experiments depicted in the trilogy as "critical utopias" in order to work through problems involved in collective living, including the potentially anti-utopian aspects of these communities' shortcomings. Ultimately, despite the apocalyptic setting that has attracted the most attention from critics, this article argues that The Broken Earth ultimately affirms the necessity of utopian hope, even amid anti-utopian circumstances, and as such is an important and timely political statement. In a historical moment marked by social and racial strife and, in the literary realm, by what Sean Guynes calls "dystopia fatigue," Jemisin's trilogy does not promise utopia, but insists on the need for hope in seemingly hopeless times, the "anti-anti-utopian" orientation described by Fredric Jameson.

Regulating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Abstract: AbstractThis chapter discusses whether on-going EU policymaking on AI is relevant for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and what it would mean to potentially regulate it in the future. AGI is typically contrasted with narrow Artificial Intelligence (AI), which excels only within a specific given context. Although many researchers are working on AGI, there is uncertainty about the feasibility of developing it. If achieved, AGI could have cognitive capabilities similar to or beyond those of humans and may be able to perform a broad range of tasks. There are concerns that such AGI could undergo recursive circles of self-improvement, potentially leading to superintelligence. With such capabilities, superintelligent AGI could be a significant power factor in society. However, dystopian superintelligence scenarios are highly controversial and uncertain, so regulating existing narrow AI should be a priority.Keywordsartificial general intelligenceregulationrisk managementexistential risksafetyEuropean Unionlaw

A Gothic Dystopia at the Antipodes

Abstract: This article offers an analysis of texts which were written in 1802-3 and published in 1812 under the title Panopticon versus New South Wales, namely Jeremy Bentham’s first two letters to Lord Pelham and A Plea for the Constitution, arguing that, in his attempt to show the superiority of his Panopticon plan over the transportation scheme, the reformer depicted New South Wales as a Gothic dystopia. ‘Gothic’ is here understood as a literary genre (with its motifs and scenarios), an ideological term and a critical tool. Bentham upset the conventional cartography of his time by showing that the ‘archaic’ or ‘barbarian’ practices that Gothic novels located in Catholic Europe were actually present in British penal policies. In addition to drawing on the rhetoric and the dichotomies which underlay the Gothic novels published during his lifetime, Bentham anticipated scenarios – such as reverse colonization and contamination – which would be explored in Victorian fiction. By extrapolating in dystopian fashion from trends which were present in the British body politic, Bentham’s Australian writings show how a historical period may be haunted by its future potentialities.

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Abstract: “Fantasy’s main claim to cultural importance resides, I believe, in the work of redefining the relationship between contemporary readers and mythic texts. ... [If we take] myth ... to designate any collective story that encapsulates a world view and authorizes belief, ... fantasy offers a glimpse into the process by which mythic patterns transmit cognitive structures even without the sanction of official belief. ... Fantasy’s enduring appeal is [its] capacity for mythopoiesis: the making of narratives that reshape the world.” (Brian Attebery, Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth)

Mathematics Education as Dystopia: A Future Beyond

Abstract: Synopsis We argue that scholars and practitioners of mathematics education need to find new directions through recognition of its dystopic characteristics, and embrace these characteristics as both the source of challenges and method of response. This contrasts with the generally utopic approach of most scholarship in the field. We offer critical ethnomathematics education as a model, since it has its own origins in lingering dystopic legacies. A perpetual hopelessness and disempower-ment is one implicit curriculum of contemporary mathematics education, where the mathematics one learns might help to describe things, yet hardly assists in transforming the reification of power and agency in society. Embracing dystopia rather than trying to circumvent it generates new questions and pathways.

Diasporas in the post-digital age ‐ capitalism + digitalization = dystopia: Sibylle Berg’s novel GRM

Abstract: Sibylle Berg’s novel GRM: Brainfuck (2019) deals with profound structural changes that are directly linked to the growing digitalization and datafication of our world. Together with a strong neo-liberalism, this has provoked severe grievances, which have in turn led to important migratory movements. Berg lays this situation out thanks to the characters of the novel ‐ most of them are migrants or have a migrant background. They have experienced different kinds of discrimination and social exclusion that hinder their integration into the host society. The frustrated yearning of many migrants for recognition interestingly becomes apparent in the lack of opportunities for self-representation through digital media, which are described as powerful tools that reinforce and (re-)produce stigmatizing discourses. In addition, the novel shows how mass datafication allows the almost complete surveillance of all citizens. Nevertheless, the main characters in the novel try to resist this total control by choosing a different kind of digital diaspora, which means a retreat to an exclusively analogue life ‐ an impossible endeavour.

Fashion retailing in the metaverse

Abstract: As fashion and retail technologies have become more sophisticated, consumers are vastly connected to the multiverse, both through the cloud and the integration of physical and digital spaces called phygital. This type of omnichannel commerce has become a requirement for brands to stay relevant. Developing parallel to the world of omnichannel has been digital gaming. Imagine these two worlds converged into one concept. Enter the metaverse. The idea of the metaverse or a virtual alternative reality is not new. With various iterations in pop culture, the concept of escaping into another dimension, whether dystopian or utopian, is part of the human psyche. Fast forward to a virtual post-pandemic society, the concept of the metaverse and the community it develops is timely. The metaverse allows the consumer to dive into a far more stimulating and immersive experience that have fashion brands collectively strategizing their deliveries. This article will conduct a discourse analysis on the metaverse and its gaming roots, how fashion and retail hope to build community and compelling applications of brand deliveries through these digital worlds. The article will review the adoption challenges that may arise with the consumer, applications that are kink free, privacy protection, regulation, payment systems, adoption of entrance devices and brand deliveries using NFTs or non-fungible tokens.

Crumbling modernisms: Luanda architectonic utopias after the boom

Abstract: In Luanda maybe more than elsewhere, controlling the city landscape is synonymous with controlling the polity at large. Despite a tremendous political change in Angola during the twentieth century, the paper traces how the modernist plans elaborated in the late colonial period (1945–1975) have influenced the planning imagination of Luanda until today. It argues that the construction boom that reshaped Luanda at the end of the war in 2002 can be interpreted as a modernist promise to break the middle class free from a hopeless urban fabric by promoting a specific urban aesthetic rather than facilitating social transformation. These continuities are, however, complex and fragile. What happens when the utopia of a city under control starts to lose power? Reflecting on two urban projects built around half a century apart, this paper explores how the kinesthetic experience of the city might constitute an unexpected form of ideological dissent able to disrupt modernism at large. The trajectory of Kilamba City, in particular, is the epitome of the oil-fed reconstruction frenzy of the late 2000s that brutally ended in 2014. Looking at how residents, planners and even state media relate to this project suggests that the unsustainability of a utopian suburban life eventually triggers new political subjectivities and directly challenges the modernist ideology that endured for so long.

Dystopian cases of orcid identifiers: animal-associated accounts

Abstract: DYSTOPIAN CASES OF ORCID IDENTIFIERS: ANIMAL-ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS