Media Futures

This book deals with the connection between media and the future. It is about the imagination of futuristic media and what this says about the present, but it also shows how media are imagined as means to control the future. The book begins by describing different theories of the evolution of media and by exploring how this evolution is tied to expectations regarding the future. The authors discuss the theories of imagination and how the imagination of media futures operates. To do so, they analyse four concrete examples: the imaginations once related to interactive television and how they were performed in an important piece of media art; those on “ubiquitous computing,” which remain present today; those on three-dimensional, especially holographic, displays that are prevalent everywhere in cinema, and lastly the contemporary imaginations on quantum computing and how they have been enacted in science fiction. The book appeals to readers interested in the question of how our present imagines its technological futures.

Trailblazing women working in digital arts media and education established the Midwest as an international center for the artistic and digital revolution in the 1980s and beyond. Foundational events at the University of Illinois and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago created an authentic, community-driven atmosphere of creative expression, innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration that crossed gender lines and introduced artistically informed approaches to advanced research. Interweaving historical research with interviews and full-color illustrations, New Media Futures captures the spirit and contributions of twenty-two women working within emergent media as diverse as digital games, virtual reality, medicine, supercomputing visualization, and browser-based art. The editors and contributors give voice as creators integral to the development of these new media and place their works at the forefront of social change and artistic inquiry. What emerges is the dramatic story of how these Midwestern explorations in the digital arts produced a web of fascinating relationships. These fruitful collaborations helped usher in the digital age that propelled social media. Contributors: Carolina Cruz-Niera, Collen Bushell, Nan Goggin, Mary Rasmussen, Dana Plepys, Maxine Brown, Martyl Langsdorf, Joan Truckenbrod, Barbara Sykes-Dietz, Abina Manning, Annette Barbier, Margaret Dolinsky, Tiffany Holmes, Claudia Hart, Brenda Laurel, Copper Giloth, Jane Veeder, Sally Rosenthal, and Lucy Petrovic.

In the postwar years, an eruption of urbanization took place across Japan, from its historical central cities to the outer reaches of the archipelago. During the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese literary and visual media took a deep interest in cities and their problems, and what this rapid change meant for the country. In Residual Futures, Franz Prichard offers a pathbreaking analysis of the works wrought from this intensive urbanization, mapping the ways in which Japanese filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other artists came to grips with the entwined ecologies of a drastic transformation. Residual Futures examines crucial works of documentary film, fiction, and photography that interrogated Japan’s urbanization and integration into the U.S.-dominated geopolitical system. Prichard discusses documentary filmmaker Tsuchimoto Noriaki’s portrait of the urban “traffic war” and the remaking of Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics, novelist Abe Kōbō’s depictions of infrastructure and urban sociality, and the radical notions of landscape that emerge from the critical and photographic work of Nakahira Takuma. His careful readings reveal the shifting relationships among urban materialities and subjectivities and the ecological, political, and aesthetic vocabularies of urban change. A novel cultural history of critical urban discourse in Japan, Residual Futures brings an interdisciplinary approach to Japanese literary and visual media studies. It provides a vital new perspective on the infrastructural aesthetics and entangled urban and media conditions of the global Cold War.

An investigation of the future of various media industries and technologies that considers how media shape our future. How do we combat post-truth in the news? Are social media influencers the journalists of today? What is it like to live in a smart city? Does AI really change "everything"? The Future of Media investigates the future of media industries and technologies (journalism, TV, film, photography, radio, publishing, social media), while exploring how media shape our future—on a political, economic, cultural and individual level. Issues of diversity, media reform, labour, activism and art take the discussion into a wider social context. Through this, the book celebrates the importance and vitality of media in the modern world. The Future of Media is also an experiment in collaborative modes of thinking and working. Co-authored by theorists and practitioners from one of the world’s most established media departments, it offers a radical, creative and critical take on media industries—and on world affairs.

An investigation of the future of various media industries and technologies that considers how media shape our future. How do we combat post-truth in the news? Are social media influencers the journalists of today? What is it like to live in a smart city? Does AI really change "everything"? The Future of Media investigates the future of media industries and technologies (journalism, TV, film, photography, radio, publishing, social media), while exploring how media shape our future—on a political, economic, cultural and individual level. Issues of diversity, media reform, labour, activism and art take the discussion into a wider social context. Through this, the book celebrates the importance and vitality of media in the modern world. The Future of Media is also an experiment in collaborative modes of thinking and working. Co-authored by theorists and practitioners from one of the world’s most established media departments, it offers a radical, creative and critical take on media industries—and on world affairs.

This text investigates the integration of media and sport over the last century. At a time when the stability of the Western media sport order is under challenge, it analyzes a range of key structures, practices and issues, whose ramifications extend farbeyond the fields of play and national contexts in which sport events take place.

It's "Code Red" for humanity. How do the media respond to that? This book is for anyone who's interested in using storytelling and media with the aim to shape desirable futures for humanity and all other forms of life on Earth. We're facing a host of serious, global, complex, entangled problems. Nuclear weapons, runaway technology, indestructible waste, resource depletion, overpopulation, pandemics, radicalization, species extinction, ecosystem loss, climate change. It's breathtaking, life-threatening and truly existential. How can anyone look such challenges in the eye without feeling desperate? If humans are the cause of these problems, being as inventive and ambitious as we are, we can also solve them. It's being tried, with some positive effects. But that is not enough. The obstacle seems to be less of a practical nature than a matter of awareness. It's our collective incapacity to feel and act according to what is genuinely beneficial for us and the world we're part of. Humanity lacks a vision of what a livable future – pluralistic livable futures – could look like. There are hardly any convincing, aspirational myths for people to root for. More often than not, stories about tomorrow are dystopias. In the hour of danger our imagination fails us. This is not accidental. It's critical. There is no longer any doubt that we'll only be able to survive on this planet if we radically change our way of life, our economies, our societies. To achieve this, stories and media need to lead the way. We must get better at working with probable, possible and desirable futures. This would be a useful skill for anyone. It's a duty for all those who shape and create realities in the media. As journalists, writers, filmmakers, game designers or XR-creators we can present what we care about to many different audiences. We reach people. We touch them. Our projects can be starting points for collective sensemaking and inspire citizens to become agents of change.