What happens to politics in the postmodern condition? The Politics of Postmodernity is a political tour de force that addresses this key contemporary question. Politics in postmodernity is carefully contextualized by relating its specific sphere - the polity - to those of the economic, social, technological and cultural. The authors confront globalization and the notion of postmodernity as disorganized capitalism. They analyze the role of the mass media, the changing ways in which politics is used, the role of the state and the progressive potential of politics in postmodern times. Closing with a postscript on the future of the discipline of political science, this book offers a profound yet highly accessible account                                                  

With this paper, we suggest a new ethical and conceptual framework for how to enter into companionships with digital technologies and digital creations in an increasingly media dominated society. We argue that such a framework is needed, as recent developments within digital technologies have sparked cultural anxieties concerning the agency and liveliness of such technologies to the extent of creating popular imaginaries of “technologies-as-monsters” (Suchman 2018). Examples of such imaginaries of monstrous technologies can be found within contemporary popular culture, but the ties between the monster and technological developments have a much longer history and have been explored within literature and art for centuries, the most notable example being Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus (1818/2003). Using discourse and textual analysis, as well as Monster Studies and Feminist Posthumanism, we investigate the legacy of the cultural and scientific imaginary of technologies-as-monsters, and the role played by media in transporting these imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015). We offer an analysis of contemporary science fiction narratives across media – such as TV, film and novels – and discuss how they influence imaginaries of the technologies of the future. We also propose new methods based on creative writing for rethinking and retelling stories of future co-existence and companionship with techno-monsters. 

References

Jasanoff, Sheila (2015) “Future imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity”, pp. 1-34 in Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim (eds.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shelley, Mary (1818/2003) Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin.

Suchman, Lucy (2018) “Frankenstein’s Problem”, pp. 13-18 in Ulrike Schultze, Margunn Aanestad, Magnus Mähring, Carsten Østerlund and Kai Riemer (eds.) Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology. Cham: Springer.

Collaborative Future-Making is a research platform at the Faculty of Culture and Society at Malmö University that is concerned with how to envision, elaborate and prototype multiple, inclusive, and sustainable futures. The platform gathers around 20 researchers that share a methodological interest in how critical perspectives from the humanities and social sciences can be combined with the constructive and collaborative aspects of making and prototyping in design research.

The research centers around two major themes:

• Critical imagination​, which focuses on how basic assumptions, norms and structures can be challenged to widen the perspectives on what can constitute socially, culturally, ecologically and economically sustainable and resilient futures.
• Collaborative engagements​, which focuses on how we can set up more inclusive collaborations to prototype and discuss alternative futures, engaging not only professionals and policy makers but also citizens and civil society.

During 2019 the research group set out to make a shared glossary for collaborative future-making. The glossary is multiple in purpose and exists in several versions. Hopefully there will be more to come. At first, the making and articulation of the glossary was used within the research group as an exercise to share concepts that we found central to collaborative future-making, coming from different disciplines. This published version of the glossary was assembled to be used during a workshop called ​Imagining Collaborative Future-Making,​ which gathered a group of international researchers from different disciplines.

The collection of concepts reflects the heterogeneous and diverse character of the research group and a strong belief in that plurality regarding ontologies and epistemologies will be crucial to be able to handle the multiple uncertainties and complex challenges we have to face in the future. Some of the concepts are already well established within different research communities, but gain a specific meaning in relation to the research area. Others are more preliminary attempts to advance our understanding or probe into new potential practices within collaborative future-making. In that sense the concepts in the glossary are well situated and grounded in past and ongoing research within this research group, at the same time as they are meant to suggest, propose and point towards practices and approaches yet to come.

The concepts in this glossary are not only meant to be descriptive but also performative. In that sense, assembling and circulating this glossary is part of collaborative future-making. As pointed out by Michelle Westerlaken in her articulation of “Doing Concepts” (see page 15), “...without proposing, critiquing, or working towards a common or uncommon understanding of certain concepts, it becomes impossible to ‘make futures’ in any deliberate fashion.”

AI is not only a technology but also a powerful story about the latent future present. This narrative assemblage is visible across domains of industry, policy, academia, and debate. Characteristically, it bifurcates into binaries of possibility versus risk, augmentation versus replacement, and so on. This calls for a renewed critique. In this chapter, we argue for the importance of bothering these binaries by re-thinking AI as anticipatory existential media that allows for the unexpected, the impredicative, and the uncanny. Three voices from the continental tradition of philosophy offer possibilities for pluralizing the AI imaginary. Jaspers’ existentiality brings the reality of the vulnerabilities of the present digital limit situation to the fore, requiring response; Derrida’s hauntings allow the past to return as friendly and wise ghosts; and Bloch’s hopefulness challenges the inevitability of the processes at hand. Together, they allow us to reimagine more unruly AI futures in fruitful and urgent ways.

People depend on news to make sense of happenings in the world, but current digital news products do not live up to their potential in this regard. Interactivity in relation to news is often seen as a way to give the consumer control over when to consume something and on which platform. Less attention has been placed on what should be consumed and how. Within the project MyNews- MyWay, a news service has been constructed that makes possible a more in-depth and varied media consumption than what traditional news services offer today. In addition to time-shifting, the service makes it possible to shift also the shape of the material consumed. 

People depend on news to make sense of happenings in the world, but current digital news products do not live up to their potential in this regard. Interactivity in relation to news is often seen as a way to give the consumer control over when to consume something and on which platform. Less attention has been placed on what should be consumed and how. Within the project MyNewsMyWay, a news service was constructed that makes possible a more in-depth and varied media consumption than what traditional news services offer today. In the follow-up design study OurNewsOurWays, additional attention was put on the possibility of combining professional news material with user-generated content.

With many new forms of digital media–including such popular social media as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr—the people formerly known as the audience no longer only consume but also produce and even design media. Jonas Löwgren and Bo Reimer term this phenomenon collaborative media, and in this book they investigate the qualities and characteristics of these forms of media in terms of what they enable people to do. They do so through an interdisciplinary research approach that combines the social sciences and humanities traditions of empirical and theoretical work with practice-based, design-oriented interventions.

Collaborative media refers to digital media where people outside the traditional media industries participate in production as well as infrastructural design. We argue that (1) people’s use of computers today increasingly comprise communicating in collaborative media, and that (2) designing collaborative media implies fundamental changes to design processes and designer roles, which in turn (3) forms a challenge to the proactive position of the CHI community in shaping future computer use.

Collaborative media entail an emerging set of digitally mediated practices, characterized by collaborative communicative action within organically developing, cross-medial infrastructures. We argue that computers are increasingly turning from tools into (collaborative) media in everyday use, and that this shift poses a significant challenge to the discipline of interaction design. Particularly prominent aspects of the challenge include the way design processes are conceptualized and structured, and the way in which communicative perspectives take precedence over instrumental ones.

This chapter addresses the complex, sometimes unintended—but also potentially very rewarding—consequences of intervening into practices that are more commonly studied from a distance, and the political and ethical implications of this work. The case studies for this chapter explore what happens when media scholars become actively involved in the reshaping of media experiences and infrastructures, and in some sense become part of the very processes they seek to critique. Contributors were asked, has your applied media studies work ever produced truly unexpected results that raised unintended ethical or legal issues you had to address? How have you managed issues relating to Intellectual Property regulations with open, collaborative work online? Have you discovered any novel ethical challenges or responsibilities from putting work online—including objects created by people, living and deceased, from cultures that are different than your own? Have you ever been unexpectedly drawn into an applied media studies project as a participant in ways that redefined your understanding of your role as scholar, or expert, or lead investigator? How did you respond, and has this changed the way you work now?

Each of the collaboratively authored chapters of Applied Media Studies was produced through a series of interview-style questions that I, as editor, developed and circulated to the contributors. Through a dialogic process that took place in a deliberately conversational tone, I asked each contributor to answer questions related to a set of themes in the book as a whole, ranging from logistical concerns to methodological and theoretical problems. In this foundational chapter, I asked, “What does applied media studies mean to you? How and why did you start doing applied media studies? In your view, what is the theoretical, historical, and/or political rationale for reimagining humanistic media studies as an applied practice?” In addition to their written responses, contributors created short videos for a web-based companion to the book, hosted on the open-access Scalar platform (http://scalar.usc.edu/works/applied-media-studies/index).

This chapter serves as a conclusion by way of annotated compilation, gathering the contributors’ favorite resources for helping them, their colleagues, and their students do applied media studies work. I asked participants what conceptual models they have found helpful for extending and applying media theory as they move between making, writing, and teaching. Additional questions included, what articles, books, blogs, and Twitter streams would you urge readers to look into? And finally, what are the gaps in this field where you feel future research should be focused?

In this chapter, contributors address the core challenges of collaborating across academic divisions such as humanities and science, bridging academic and community practices, and translating between the diverse stakeholders involved in these projects. Much of the recent research on problem-based collaboration and innovation has noted the value of bringing together teams of people with radically different forms of expertise to solve complex challenges (Johnson 2010; Davidson 2011; Ness 2012). Contributors address a common question asked by academics interested in applied media studies, who don’t know where to begin: how do you find good collaborators in different, perhaps unfamiliar disciplines? Further, once those collaborators are found, how do you overcome the typical siloes of universities structured by departments within divisions like “humanities” and “sciences” to build effective working relationships with your collaborators? How do you translate between fields with radically different training, terminology, and theories of knowledge? What does it take to develop a shared vocabulary?

While doing applied media studies generally requires far fewer financial resources than doing applied science, issues of funding and sustainability nonetheless play a significant role in these projects. The multidisciplinary teams assembled to create applied media projects need space, technology, supplies, and human capital to succeed, and the pipelines for securing those resources are particularly limited in the humanities. This chapter asks contributors how they have managed to attain the needed resources for their projects, and what kinds of institutional homes they have found to house them. Further, to cultivate the necessary team members as participants come and go, we discuss what kind of background, training, and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty members, is needed to do this kind of work.

In this collaboratively authored chapter, contributors discuss why they do applied media studies, addressing both the great rewards and the significant challenges to shifting away from traditional models of humanistic research and teaching.

The media landscape has changed tremendously. New companies—Apple, Google, Facebook, and so on—have entered the landscape, reshaping it from the ground, and disrupting the business models of the traditional media companies. Media as such are increasingly being designed, produced and consumed collaboratively. And as evidenced in the Internet of Things discourse, more and more objects become media.

The Artificial Creativity virtual conference aimed to stir a discussion about the cultural, societal and ethical aspects of artworks featuring artificial intelligence or robots engaged in creative production. The conference dates were 19–20 November 2020 and it was hosted by the research lab Medea, the School of Arts and Communication, and the Data Society research programme – all at Malmö University, Sweden. The conference received generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Videos of keynotes and some participant presentations are available through Malmö University's video repository, MaU Play: https://play.mau.se/playlist/details/0_dvsr6i1f

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. habil. Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany). "Robots versus Machines".
• Professor Mark Amerika (University of Colorado, US). "Fatal Error: Artificial Creative Intelligence (ACI)".
• Professor Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths University, UK). "Beyond Machine Vision: How to Build a Non-Trivial Perception Machine".

Participants:

• Arandas, Luís, Mick Grierson, and Miguel Carvalhais. "Continuous Contributions of Artificial Agents in Performance Regarding Static Artefacts".
• Ashton, Daniel. "Assembling Creative Work Futures: Automation and Portfolio Working in the Creative Economy".
• Axhamn, Johan. "EU Copyright Law and AI".
• Balfour, Lindsay. "Beauty is in the Eye of the Algorithm: Artificially Intelligent Creativity and its Ethical Implications".
• Carvalhais, Miguel and Rosemary Lee. "Spectral and Procedural: A Perspective on Artificial Creativity Through Computational Art".
• Chia, Aleena. "Agency and Automation in Digital Game Production".
• Chow, Pei-Sze. "Ghost in the (Hollywood) machine: emergent applications of artificial intelligence in the film industry".
• Coelho, Inês Rebanda. "Authorship of fictional texts generated by AI".
• Feher, Katalin. "Narrow AI results in narrow creativity: Concepts of creative process in a decade’s perspective from media to art".
• Gallagher, Brad. "Do GPT-2s Dream of Electric Poetry?"
• Goddard, Valentine. "Art can shape how AI is governed".
• Ivanova, Nevena. "Computational Creativity: A Philosophical Study".
• Kadish, David. "Designing Endemic Robots: An Experiment in Sound".
• Koh, Immanuel. "AI-Urban-Sketching in the Age of COVID-19".
• Leach, Neil. "AI and The Limits of Human Creativity".
• Maraffi, Christopher. "Sherlock Frankenstein: Transmedia Character Design with AI Breeding Tools".
• McGarrigle, Conor. "Art Washing Machine Learning".
• Muia, Julian. "Downstream: New Developments in Algorithmic Composition and Music Streaming".
• Olszewska, Anna. "Reflections on machine situationism".
• Stephensen, Jan Løhmann. "Artificial Creativity, Anthropocentrism and Post-Creativity – The Political Stakes".
• Trillo, Roberto Alonso, Peter Nelson, Daniel Shanken, François Mouillot, Mathis Antony, Ryan Au, and Maya Duan. "Collaborative Artistic Production Using Generative Adversarial Networks".
• Wagman, Kelly B. "Ambii: An Ambient & Non-Anthropomorphic Digital Assistant".
• Wasielewski, Amanda. "What role can AI play in the creation and study of art?"
• Wellner, Galit. "Layers of Imagination".
• Willcox, Stacey. "Artificial Synaesthesia: An exploration of machine learning image synthesis for soundscape audio visualisation".

The conference also featured a virtual exhibition in Mozilla's Hubs with the following presentations:

• Emard, Justine. "Supraorganism"
• Partadiredja, Reza Arkan, Davor Ljubenkov, and Carlos Alejandro Entrena Serrano. "AI or Human?"
• Goddard, Valentine. "Introducing the 'AI on a Social Mission' conference".

The virtual exhibition was produced by Maria Engberg and Jay David Bolter within the research project "Virtual conferencing to promote research and scholarly exchange during the current pandemic and possible future disruptions".